Power to the employee

“Employees becoming ambassadors is the best publicity for your company,” says Kristof Stevens, Co-Founder of Huapii. “When you are searching for a restaurant, you do not hesitate a second to browse through reviews, and that is also a logical step when looking for work.” “By drawing on authentic stories and experiences of employees, you give potential candidates a glance behind the scenes,” adds Sarah Coolkens, Talent Manager at DPG Media. “How do you create active ambassadors? Thoughtful performance management is an excellent start.”

Architect your own career

Sarah: “DPG Media has ambitious goals in a rapidly changing and competitive market. Today, our competitive advantage lies in the innovativeness and creativity of our people and this can only be realised by focusing on performance management.

Performance management can be seen as a way of achieving the organisation’s key goals as efficiently and effectively as possible. But for us, it is more than that. It is a way of putting employees in the driver’s seat of their career and personal development, fostering a culture of open feedback and ensuring that everyone feels heard, seen and valued.”

“Committing to the development of each employee is not only an asset for recruiting new workers, it also makes it easier to retain them,” Kristof adds. “Emphasise the opportunities for further development and encourage them to grow into a new position in the company. Internal mobility brings a lot of great opportunities in today’s race for talent.”

“Engaged and committed employees who are happy and motivated add more value to your business,” Sarah says. “If you do not invest in performance management today, then I am convinced you will not be able to bring talent in house and certainly not retain them. And that is why we partnered with Huapii, a user-friendly and flexible online platform that helps us put employees centre stage and build and continuously optimise a strategy concerning performance management.”

GRIP

“In a lot of performance management systems, we see executives setting targets and that does not make sense in a culture that advocates putting the employee first,” says Kristof. “You have to extend the philosophy and put the employee in the lead. A platform can help move towards more dynamic objectives and concretise and track all actions taken.”

“We have renamed Huapii at DPG Media GRIP,” Sarah continues. “Grip on your career and career path. It is also the acronym for Growth, Results, Interaction and Perspective. When you invest in personal growth, you boost business results. In addition, you need to be able to focus on priorities to achieve results. Furthermore, we believe in the power of cooperation: alone you go faster, but together you go further. Finally, you need a clear perspective of where you want to go and what your ambitions are.”

Kristof: “GRIP acts as an environment where everything around your career is collected. Objectives, internal vacancies, feedback… employees can find everything there. For employers, in turn, it is a place where all the data is conveniently brought together. It is a go-to place for everyone in your company.”

“At DPG Media, we want to go even further,” Sarah explains. “In Belgium, 97% of our employees have used GRIP at least once. By continuously emphasising the ‘why’ in our entire communication, we want to eventually develop the platform into a way of working or even better a way of living.”

The fuel of the future

Kristof: “According to McKinsey research, being appreciated by your manager and colleagues is one of the main reasons why people remain loyal to their employer today. Mutual appreciation can only be obtained through open feedback. It is the engine for evolving both personally and professionally, and it helps break down silos. Teams learn to work together, employees show more understanding of each other and everyone knows immediately what their strengths and opportunities for growth are.”

“That allows you to make very specific choices in your further personal development,” Sarah adds. “And let precisely that be one of the most important aspects when people make a choice regarding a new job. Especially with the younger generation. Young people want to work for an organisation where they have the opportunity to develop themselves. Huapii, or in our case GRIP, helps with this. Of course we encourage face-to-face feedback, but the tool simplifies it and makes it fun.”