People, Leadership & Culture

Enhance your organizational culture with best practices from industry leaders

Enhance your organizational culture

Enhance your organizational

A strong cultural identity is essential for businesses success. It helps to keep employees happy, encourages new ideas, and leads to overall success. But what makes the best companies stand out? The secret lies in how they build and maintain their workplace culture. In this article, we explore some of the successful strategies used by top companies. You can apply these practical tips and examples to enhance your organization’s culture and achieve excellent results.

Niek Klaver

Netherlands

Enhance your organizational culture with best practices from industry leaders: feedback, collaboration and learning & development

Organizational

Culture Development

HR & People Analytics

Transforming Culture: The Key to Psychological Safety

Transforming Culture

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Have you ever silently questioned your boss's decisions but chose to keep your thoughts to yourself? In many organizations, people feel unsafe to speak up due to the prevailing culture. Unfortunately, this can lead to serious consequences. What if your input could have prevented a mistake or inspired your boss to find a new solution? When employees don't feel safe to speak up or take risks, it can result in preventable errors, missed opportunities, and a lack of new and innovative ideas. This hesitance to share his concerns and ideas often comes from not feeling psychologically safe, which is really important for creating a productive and innovative work environment.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Gender Mobility

The gender balance in the inflow, through-flow and outflow of employees says something about the Diversity and Inclusiveness of an organization. Thus, a good understanding of the mobility patterns of men and women is crucial for any organization that is serious about Diversity and Inclusion. Indeed, understanding these patterns helps to formulate answers around the questions below.
<ul><li>Are enough women coming in to maintain diversity?</li><li>Do women have the same opportunities as men to be promoted?</li><li>Is there a glass ceiling?</li><li>Does the organization have more/less difficulty engaging women?</li><li>What is the likelihood that diversity goals will be met?</li></ul>

Henrieke van Bommel

People Analytics Transformation

Calculate employee turnover (Employee turnover analysis)

Calculate employee turnover

Structurally high employee turnover is problematic for organizations. Excessive employee turnover incurs significant costs and can even impact issues such as business continuity and customer satisfaction. An employee turnover analysis, through advanced statistical analysis, identifies risk groups, helps to understand the causes of turnover, predicts how employee turnover will develop and predicts where turnover will occur.

In short, deploying HR Analytics on the topic of employee turnover gives organizations the tools to prevent employee turnover!

Irma Doze

Employee Experience

Labor-market positioning

Having the right people in the right place at the right time is critical to an organization's success. To effectively bring in the right people, it is essential to understand how your organization is viewed from the job market.
Are potential employees familiar with the employer brand? What positive and lesser associations do they have with the employer brand? To what extent is there an employer brand preference?
Answers to these and other labor market positioning questions will help you reach the right target group with an appealing message.

Employee segmentation

Every employee is unique. Yet some employees have more in common than others. Employees who are more alike often want similar things in their work. So it is useful to distinguish such groups within your workforce. This can be done through employee segmentation.

Strategic Workforce Planning

The Intelligent Fleet Scowl

The Intelligent Fleet Watch

Often the immediate supervisor assesses the quality of employees by determining, on the one hand, the performance in the recent past (performance) and, on the other hand, the expected potential contribution in the near future (potential) on a scale and thus identifies the top talents. But when do you speak of moderate, sufficient or excellent potential? The intelligent fleet review offers a solution!

Recruiting bias check

Does everyone have an equal chance of being considered for a job? AnalitiQs' Recruitment bias check analyzes whether there are significant differences between groups of applicants and the ultimate probability of being hired for a job.
The job market is upside down and every organization does its utmost to attract good staff. Nevertheless, there is a large group of people in the Netherlands who want to work (more), but ultimately do not get this opportunity. CBS calls this unused labor potential.
In an organization, this can mean that certain groups of people, for example women or people with a different or bi-cultural background, have less chance of being hired. Alternatively, they may be hired but have to prove themselves first and are therefore lower graded. A direct cause of pay differences.

Data & AI

Workshop AI for HR

Do you recognize yourself in the following situation?
You're not sure if AI is just a hype, but you also feel like you should do something with it because if it’s not a hype, you don't want to miss the AI boat.
You've read a bit about AI, but it all remains very abstract. You need an explanation in simple, straightforward language.
You want to practice applying AI tools to HR topics such as employer branding, recruitment, diversity &amp; inclusion, engagement, and employment conditions in a playful and safe way.
In that case, the practical workshop "AI for HR" is something for you and your team!

Business Agility

From HR Business Partner to Transformation Consultant

Highberger Philippine den Brave

Philippine den Brave

Before Transformation Consultant Philippine den Brave joined Highberg, she gained extensive experience in the HR field at Danone and ING. Why did she decided to make this switch and how did Highberg supported her? Read about it in the interview down below.

Highberger Philippine den Brave: From HR to Transformation Consultant

Fueling Growth: The Power of a Strong Feedback Culture

The Power of a Strong Feedback Culture

Employees truly are the backbone of every company. How successful a company is, comes mostly down to how well employees are performing. And for employees to perform well, they require feedback. 
In an organization where receiving feedback and giving is the norm, individual and organizational performance as employees feel more engaged and valued when they receive constructive feedback. This helps them identify areas for improvement and grow. As a result - greater organizational success. 
But how can your organization build such a feedback culture? 
This article explains:
▫️ the benefits of a strong feedback culture ▫️ provides practical steps to achieve it 
Keep reading to discover how feedback can fuel your workplace success.

Becoming an Transformation Consultant at Highberg: Partner Niels Groen

Becoming an Transformation Consultant

Niels Groen profile picture

Due to the great variety of projects in which Highberg is involved, it can be somewhat challenging to come up with an unambiguous explanation of how Highberg consultants deliver value to their clients. This can be particularly challenging for future candidates. To be able to explain this better, our Highberg consultant Mika Ambrose speaks interviewed one of our partners, Niels Groen. The most important thing you should know as a potential consultant at Highberg is how we deliver value, and how we make sure that we create a long-lasting impact.

Mika Ambrose

Niels Groen

Logic, Design and Implementation

Organizing around Value Streams

organizing-around-value-streams-in-product-and-service-development

One of the key challenges for optimal competitive performance of organizations in the digital age is ensuring high speed of value delivery in product and service development. Faster delivery in development processes not only enables earlier return on investments, but also allows faster validation of the real value of product and service innovation so that investments in unsuccessful initiatives can be minimized. Organizing around ‘Value Streams’ is a key step to optimal value delivery in the shortest sustainable lead time.
In this Insight, the logic of organizing around Value Streams is explained, guidelines are given on how to design Value Streams, and a five-step implementation approach is provided.

Florian van Santen

Organizing around Value Streams in Product and Service Development

Strategy & Change

Government and Public Sector

Case study 'Redesign HR Operating Model' NS

Highberg collaborated in a transformation with the HR Department of Dutch railroads on improving the HR service delivery model. Subsequently the HR Target Operating Model was newly developed. Read below about the context, approach, and the results which were achieved.

Mariëlle van Tilburg

Heiko van Eldijk

Case study: Redesign HR Operating Model for NS

Digital Strategy & Execution

A Highberg Case study: Productization in Shell’s Cloud

Case study: Productization in Shell’s Cloud

A Highberg Case Study

Following Shell’s Enterprise Cloud Platform transformation journey from project to product.

Koen Harbers

Simon Atteveld

Kelly Hauwert on her journey from trainee to senior consultant

From trainee to senior consultant

Microsoft Teams image 2

In 2022 Kelly Hauwert enjoyed her second promotion at Highberg. As she prepares to take on the new role of Senior Consultant with the organizational transformation firm, Kelly spoke to Consultancy.eu about how the firm’s entrepreneurial and warm culture has helped her grow while feeling at home. 
When Kelly Hauwert initially trained in social sciences with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, she never imagined that she would become a consultant. However, after a brief stint in the world of public relations, she heard about a consultancy traineeship with Highberg that piqued her interest. 
After speaking with some of the firm’s colleagues and partners, and passing a capability assessment, Kelly soon found herself walking through Highberg’s doors as an employee.

Kelly Hauwert

Would you like to change your organizational culture?

Change your organizational culture

Culture; a fairly vague concept, yet everyone manages to give it a description. You probably recall the observing attitude that arises when you enter another family's home, visit another country, or experience the dynamics of a group for the first time. (Un)consciously, you take note of what is or isn't customary. What is being discussed here? What is valued? Or what isn't? What behavior or story can you expect a positive reaction to? In addition to families, countries, and groups of people, organizations also have their own culture. (Un)written rules set boundaries for employees' behavior in the background. If you want to develop your organizational culture, you must bring these unwritten rules out of the shadows and make them explicit. Therefore, Highberg's approach is aimed at converting the versatility of culture into behavior and concrete roles, creating control over the desired cultural change and the implementation and support of this change.

Riet Smits

Lianne Swenne

Would you like to change your organizational culture? Make desired behavior explicit and bring unwritten rules out of the shadows!

Stop looking in the rearview mirror. A plea for actionable metrics

A plea for actionable metrics

Portfolio Performance Measurement #2: Stop looking in the rearview mirror. A plea for actionable metrics

There is nothing wrong with looking in the rearview mirror. It is necessary. The obvious nuance being it should not be the only thing you do as you drive your car down a busy road. In our previous blog ‘<a href="https://highberg.com/insights/are-project-metrics-dead-a-quick-guide-to-lean-portfolio-measurement" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Are Project Metrics Dead?’</a>, we introduced two insights aimed at broadening our view of metrics. If we want to continue the car analogy; it is not just the roads, or the other cars around, but also the speedometer plus a mindful eye on any blinking red lights trying to warn you of a future car failure. We hope these first two insights will lead you to a more holistic understanding of ‘portfolio performance’. 

With such a wide set of metrics to choose from comes the next challenge: what should we focus on? How to use them to effect? Building on our first 2 insights, with Insight 3 we introduce the distinction between leading and lagging indicators. Insight 4 takes us to goal setting and one of the more popular tools in strategy-execution today, Objectives Key Results.

Portfolio Performance Measurement Continued: A Plea for Actionable Metrics

Are project metrics dead? A quick guide to Lean Portfolio Measurement

Are project metrics dead? 

Are-project-metrics-dead?

Do on-time, on-scope and on-budget metrics really have no place in modern, product-led, and agile-embracing organizations?

Risk, Resilience & Compliance

We've selected five measures that you should take to enhance your cyber resilience.

Five Measures to Increase Cybersecurity

Five Essential Measures to Increase Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience

Companies and governments will need to pay much more attention to cyber resilience to prevent serious damage in the future.

Steven Debets

Many crisis plans or business continuity plans stated: teams should exercise annually.

Annual Drills: What a Nonsense!

In many crisis plans or business continuity plans, it is stated that teams should exercise annually. Some organizations do this diligently, either due to a strong intrinsic belief in the importance of regular practice or a good routine. However, there are instances when such exercises become an eccentric motivation, as they might be carried out because the regulator, safety authorities, or adherence to a framework mandates it.

Floris Baauw

Gamification is a scalable change approach to achieve sustained desired behavior

Gamification for behavioural change

whitepaper-gamification-for-behavioural-change

Gamification is a scalable change approach to achieve sustained desired behavior and improve performance in the workplace.

Whitepaper: Gamification for behavioural change

Challenges around organizational transformation within large, Dutch organizations

Organizational transformation challenges

whitepaper-five-challenges-around-organizational-transformation

Five challenges around organizational transformation according to leaders within large, Dutch organizations and our reflections on them.

Whitepaper: Five challenges around organizational transformation

Innovative compliance therefore creates more ethical behavior.

Research compliance and innovation

white-paper-research-compliance-and-innovation

An innovative compliance program makes for an effective compliance program. Innovative compliance therefore creates more ethical behavior.

White paper: Research compliance and innovation

Exemplary behavior of leaders is crucial with integrity issues.

Moral leadership – the theme of this time

whitepaper-moral-leadership-the-crucial-theme-of-this-time

The exemplary behavior of leaders is crucial to reduce the reputational risk of integrity issues within your organization.

Whitepaper: Moral leadership – the crucial theme of this time

In this whitepaper, we compare Lean and Agile side by side.

Whitepaper: Lean vs Agile

whitepaper-lean-vs-agile

When is Agile working a good idea? And when is Lean working a better idea? In this whitepaper, we compare Lean and Agile side by side.

For an effective game fulfilling the conditions is crucial.

The 6 ingredients of an effective game

whitepaper-the-6-ingredients-of-an-effecitve-game

To ensure that a game is truly effective and contributes to the organizational objectives, fulfilling the conditions is crucial.

Whitepaper: The 6 ingredients of an effective game

Balancing between innovation and stability

Is Agile working the end of ITIL?

Is-Agile-working-the-end-of-ITIL?

No more long queues at the town hall, you can simply arrange your parking permit from your couch. Or send a payment request via WhatsApp after a night out. Nowadays, we consider these things normal. Services are available everywhere and anytime. Additionally, customers and citizens are becoming increasingly central. This requires continuous innovation on the one hand and services that are always available everywhere on the other. Many organizations find themselves in a dilemma between quickly responding to changing needs and offering 24/7 services. Organizations are looking for ways to meet these demands, and sometimes it seems like these demands conflict with each other. Below, we look at two examples of common frameworks for continuous innovation and 24/7 services. We also explore how these frameworks can contribute to delivering business value.

Pim Schouten

Digital

Media and entertainment

Effective growth strategies for media firms

Media growth: Organic or acquisitions?

organic-or-acquisitions-which-growth-is-more-effective-for-media-companies

"Anyone who does what they can already do, always remains what they already are." This quote from the American automotive pioneer Henry Ford is more relevant than ever. Today, innovation and investment are required. Growth is not just an option, but a necessity for media companies.

Hendrik Langen

Germany

Organic or acquisitions – which growth is more effective for media companies?

The Next 5 years decide

Transformation endgame (part 1)

transformation-endgame-the-next-5-years-decide

Newspaper publishers are facing the biggest challenge they have ever faced in their history. The next few years demand radical action. Even if you only hear the wind rustling softly in the distance: the storm is coming, and it is brutal.

Christoph Mayer

Transformation endgame (part 1) - the next 5 years decide

A Highberg customer story: DNB, Greater clout through ICT outsourcing

DNB: Greater clout through ICT outsourcing

In 2017, the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) decided to outsource its workplace services, data center, network services, application development and application management. DNB's goal with the outsourcing was to increase the flexibility and agility of the ICT organization, achieve a relevant digital transformation and a more sustainable support of ICT services. In addition, the aim was to make the ICT more efficient. This should become possible, among other things, through the deployment of cloud technology.

A Highberg customer story: Data protection within healthcare (NEN7510/AVG)

Data protection in healthcare (NEN7510/AVG)

The careful and secure handling of (personal) data of clients is an essential component for quality healthcare. The most recent figures from the Personal Data Authority show that the healthcare sector in the Netherlands is most affected by data breaches and information security incidents.

Sander Vols

Data protection within healthcare (NEN7510/AVG): "catalyst for quality"

A Highberg customer story: The Nutrition Center's new canteen scan

The Nutrition Center's new canteen scan

The Nutrition Center is the authority that gives consumers reliable and independent information about a healthy, safe and sustainable diet. The 'Disk of Five' is familiar to many people, but in addition the Nutrition Center also provides advice on 'eating environments' and how organizations can achieve a responsible food supply. The starting point is to let the healthy choice be the easy choice.

Wilbert Enserink

A Highberg customer story: Cals College Digital, Secure and Transparent

Cals College Digital, Secure and Transparent

Good ICT support as key to flexible education

Due to the increasing digitization of education and the introduction of the AVG, security and careful handling of (personal) data and supporting resources have become increasingly important. This is also observed by the Cals College, a secondary school community with two branches: one in Nieuwegein and one in IJsselstein. The Cals has recently taken a professionalization step in the field of information management, privacy and information security. In this process, Highberg advised and provided and implemented methods to get a better grip on the management of ICT, privacy and information security. In addition, Highberg fulfills the role of Data Protection Officer (FG) and Privacy Quartermaster.

Wim Kok

Financial Services

AFM is optimizing and digitizing its levy process

Establishment of the levy process at AFM

Establishment of chain collaboration and control of the levy process at afm

The Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) is optimizing and digitizing its levy process. An advisory report has been developed by Highberg, and the next step is implementation. This involves setting up cross-departmental (chain) collaboration with effective governance and meeting structures, communicating the change, and involving the organization.

Establishment of chain collaboration and control of the levy process at AFM

Healthcare and Life Sciences

As the existing strategy was no longer current, Menzis aimed to establish a new vision

Customer service strategy development

Menzis strategieontwikkeling klantbediening

Menzis has the mission to strengthen the vitality of every individual by ensuring high-quality and affordable healthcare. Customer &amp; Operations (C&amp;O) is responsible for all operational insurance processes, customer interactions, and is the largest cluster within Menzis with 600 employees. As the existing strategy was no longer current, the director of C&amp;O, who took office in 2020, aimed to establish a new vision that transcends the cluster.

Menzis – Customer service strategy development

Energy and Utilities

After a long period of stability, Enexis is under pressure

Guiding year plan process for the BOD and EB

guiding-year-plan-process-for-the-board-of-directors-and-executive-board

After a long period of stability, Enexis is under pressure to increase productivity and reduce costs to accelerate the energy transition

Guiding year plan process for the board of directors and executive board

How an effective onboarding process increases employee retention and productivity.

Onboarding a process, not a project

Saulo mohana w Nz7 5 Ev UWU unsplash

Onboarding and integrating new employees constitute an essential aspect for many companies. Research indicates that organizations that enhance the onboarding experience reap various benefits, including increased engagement, shortened onboarding periods, and <a href="https://highberg.com/capabilities/people-leadership-and-culture/talent-acquisition-retention" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reduced employee turnover</a>. At Highberg PLC, we don't view the onboarding journey merely as a one-time project but rather as an ongoing process. This approach enables us to continually strive for optimization, as we believe there are constant opportunities for improvement.

Alex Hellemons

How an effective onboarding process increases employee retention and productivity

Technology and Telecommunications

We guided Ctac in their organizational transformation

Organizational transformation with CTAC

organizational-transformation-with-ctac

We guided Ctac in their organizational transformation focusing on the axes of processes, governance, behavior, and leadership, with the goal of achieving higher returns, increased employee satisfaction, and enhanced customer satisfaction.

Manouk Hertogs

The HR department of ProRail aimed to achieve an Agile transformation

Agile transformation ProRail

ProRail is responsible for the railway network in the Netherlands. Together with transport companies, they work 24/7 to ensure that passengers and goods arrive safely and on time at their destinations. The HR department of ProRail aimed to achieve an Agile transformation.

Agile transformation ProRail - increasing agility and customer centricity

ProRail – Agile transformation

Customer request

Task for Highberg

Our approach

Results

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