Great Place To Work Netherlands

Great Place To Work, in brief

Great Place To Work helps organizations improveemployee experience and retain talent through certification programs, coaching and engagement surveys. The company is owned by UKG, an American HR software company with around 15,000 employees. However, all its offices are locally owned and managed, as is the case for the office in the Netherlands.

Key figures :

• 10 million employees surveyed worldwide
• 18,000 companies supported in 170 countries
• 50 offices worldwide

Why we exist: To help organizations become great places to work for everyone.
Website: https: //www.greatplacetowork.nl/ 

Context

Seven years ago, the Dutch office of Great Place To Work (GPTW) was taken over by new owners who were adept at self-management (also known as self-governance). On this occasion, René Brouwers was recruited as CEO of a self-organized team. However, neither he nor his team knew how this model worked, as they were used to a traditional hierarchical structure.

Promoting trust and autonomy within organizations is at the very heart of Great Place To Work's mission. The company therefore wanted to apply these principles internally. However, self-management quickly showed its limitations. Employees didn't know exactly what they were supposed to do, what their responsibilities were, or how to achieve their objectives.

After two years, part of the team called for a return to a more traditional structure, with centralized decision-making. René Brouwers resigned and was hired as CEO of a hierarchical organization. This choice gave GPTW a structured framework and clear direction.

Three years later, the company decided to reintroduce self-management, but this time in a progressive and structured way. They chose to do this with Holacracy, a model that combines autonomy and clarity, and chose the Talkspirit platform to support this transition.

Challenges

• A team accustomed to a hierarchical structure and unfamiliar with the principles of self-management and the notion of roles.
• A culture that promotes decision-making by consensus, not consent.
• A lack of structure and clarity in responsibilities, leading to tensions and slow decision-making.
• Unclear objectives and KPIs, making performance evaluation difficult.

Why Talkspirit

Great Place to Work Netherlands chose Talkspirit to support its transition to self-management for :

• Its ability to document roles and responsibilities clearly and transparently.
• Its compatibility with self-management.
• Smooth user experience.
• Its range of governance and collaboration functions.

Terms of deployment

• External support: GPTW worked with Energized.org, a specialist consultancy, to implement self-management.
• Team training: Some of the members have been trained to support the rest of the teams and encourage the sharing of best practices.
• Progressive introduction: GPTW began implementing self-management in the marketing department. Within 8 months, this first team was up and running, and after a year the whole organization had fully adopted these new working methods.
• Structured adoption: Talkspirit was used to formalize roles, structure meetings and ensure clear, effective governance.

Functionalities used

• The dynamic organization chart The dynamic organization chart: clarifies the purpose and responsibilities of each role.
• Customizable fields : used to provide transparency on the level of seniority and experience of each employee, and the level of performance expected.
• Meetings Meetings: structure meetings, access minutes and facilitate decision-making within the organization.
• Projects Projects: make it easy to keep track of projects and tasks.
• OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) : help align teams with common objectives, and the projects that flow from them.

Benefits identified

• Clarity and transparency: Roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, thanks to an evaluation process based on personalized profiles and experience levels. 
• Greater autonomy: Employees make decisions in line with their roles, without constant validation, which increases the level of autonomy and responsibility within teams. The trust index reached 89/100.
• Meeting efficiency: Structured, centralized minutes facilitate access to information and improve decision-making.

Read more about Talkspirit's implementation at Great Place to Work Netherlands in this article.