At Helloprint, our culture has been leading from the very first start. We believe that building a beautiful company all starts with gathering great talents, giving them the tools to thrive and giving them trust, responsibility, and freedom to become the best version of themselves and unlock their full potential. It is therefore with great pleasure to announce that we are officially a certified Great Place to Work for both our offices in Rotterdam and Valencia.
To reach our Great Place to Work status, we extensively surveyed our teams across all countries, something we already do consistently over the past 9 years, but now in the GPTW format. Our teams were asked - anonymously - about their experiences in the company around various topics. Because we believe that an inclusive company starts with full transparency, we shared the outcomes with all team members and we had in-depth team sessions to work on improvements. Here you can find some of the interesting outcomes.
We believe that professional people will thrive the best if you give them the freedom to design their journey in the way they think it is most beneficial. It was therefore good to see the positive correlation between employee happiness and when motivation for working at Helloprint is focussed on professional and career advancement. The overall agreement with the statement: “Taking everything into account, I would say this is a Great Workplace” ended up with a score of 84%. The group of employees motivated by development (44%) agreed for 94% with this statement.
Naturally teams and departments can differ in experience. Here we see that Customer Experience has the biggest portion of neutral answers and 7% is negative.
In a high performance culture, a healthy work-life balance is important. 31 employees noted that a good work-life balance is their motivation to work at Helloprint. But when we separately asked: “People are encouraged to balance their work life and their personal life” 63% agreed with that statement. We don’t believe in measuring ‘hours worked’, the focus should be on output and performance while maintaining a healthy balance for people. We believe in giving our team the freedom to find a balance that works for them and want to continue working in that way. However, this score does indicate that our team needs more guidance in finding their balance. We will therefore adjust our communication about this topic and have conversations with team members who struggle to find the right balance. At Helloprint we don’t believe in strict policies, but in personal customization and conversation.
Helloprint is proud of the culture we’ve created and we believe that culture requires continuous attention. Many comments refer to our company culture. We believe we are a team, but as one comment noted: “At Helloprint we get to really get to know one another regardless of department and positions. We all get together frequently to collaborate or socialize. It feels like a work family more than a 9-5 job. It's a great social environment.”
Part of Helloprint’s culture is the social aspect, activities and events. Where for most employees this is considered a benefit and key element of Helloprint’s culture, some small other groups note the downside. They might feel some social pressure or note that unpaid events outside of working hours should be optional. Whilst we don’t believe in forcing employees to attend, we do value time together to foster a sense of community and camaraderie. This feeling is overwhelmingly felt within Helloprint as we see in the survey at 92% is very positive about the social aspect. This includes the feeling of being yourself, celebrating special occasions, feeling cared for, working at a fun place, feeling welcomed and counting on each other.
Pride in your job and the company you work for are important ingredients for employee happiness. Within this theme we scored the lowest - 69% positive - on the statement: “I feel good about the ways we contribute to the community”. At Helloprint we are committed to taking steps to become more sustainable and give back to the community. That is why we support local initiatives, ecosystems and entrepreneurs to thrive, such as AMREF, Familiehuis Daniel den Hoed, JINC, Handen van Humanitas, Jarige Job, Gladiatoren aan de Maas and many others. While we are working on different volunteering projects, this score does indicate that we should provide concrete projects for employees to contribute to. One of the things we’re concretely doing here is to set up a collaboration with JINC, this organization helps young people between 8 and 16 years of age to get a good start in the labor market. Through the JINC programme they get acquainted with various professions, find out what kind of work suits their talents, and learn how to apply for a job. Helloprint will create an account at the JINC platform for employees to sign up for volunteering with JINC. Our goal was to have employees volunteer at least one day every quarter, but this past 2 quarters we didn’t reach this goal.
One of the most important aspects of our company’s culture is the way we evolve our culture bottom up. We firmly believe that culture has its fundamentals, but that culture also should be in motion, so that it adapts to the phase we’re in and the world we live in today. At Helloprint, it really does not matter what role you have at the company. So whether you are an intern, a starter, one of our founders, a techie, a data cruncher, a marketing guru or an experienced supply chain specialist, as soon as you are part of the team, you get the opportunity to make a difference and you can add value since we take you seriously from day one.
As one anonymous comment noted: “The opportunity that everyone is given to take responsibility for things. The opportunity to try new things and develop yourself at a super high pace. The trust Helloprint has in their team members allows us a lot of freedom to make our own decisions.” Of course experiences differ and we also see feedback on our transparency on growth and giving clarity on growth within departments and teams.
Helloprint believes in taking ownership of your personal development and growth, we call it: design yourself. The room to grow is there, only 7% of the Helloprinters feel that they are not offered training or development opportunities. Only 5% of our Helloprinters believe that we don’t celebrate people who try new and better ways of doing things, regardless of the outcome. Only 3% disagrees that management genuinely seeks and responds to suggestions and ideas.
In the Great Place to Work survey the statement: “I am treated as a full member here regardless of my position” had an agreement of 90%. We believe that everybody can make an impact and it is good to see people feel this within our culture. This also relates to how we treat people. At Helloprint people are treated fairly regardless of their sexual orientation, race, age and gender and 96% fully agree with this statement. Of course we believe this number should be at 100% and with 36 nationalities and about 200+ employees we should be able to achieve this.
In the whole company the lowest scoring statements and comments are related to compensation, benefits and profits. In the Valencia office these statements are much lower than in Rotterdam. For example 61% believe in Rotterdam they receive a fair share, but in Valencia this is 23%. The survey confirmed signs that change was necessary. We did an additional survey to involve the team in the designing of our remuneration packages. We also asked the Valencia office what they found more important (salary, growth, bonuses etc). Based on those outcomes, and various new team sessions, we implemented a new salary structure, increased the minimal salaries and were transparent about growth and perspective.
Being critical about statements and scores is what drives Helloprint to improve. We notice in the survey and the conversations with the teams that information about changes, expectations and goals are not always clear for everyone. Being transparent about goals, growth, remote work, salary and development are our biggest take away points.
We also worked on an extensive Culture Audit, to demonstrate our vision on the development of culture. The document served as the basis for our recognition. You can find the document here.
Interested in our culture? Download our culture book here, or just reach out to Lenneke or Hans to discuss the future of work. Also check out our webpage, dedicated to our culture. We’re happy to share our insights or to welcome you in one of our offices to discuss it at our home; one of the Great Places to Work® ;-)
Although we have a score in the higher spectrum for medium enterprises, we believe there's a lot of room to further improve our culture and work environment. That's why we had many sessions together with our teams to come up with a concrete plan of action. By doing this and involving everyone in our teams, we believe we create an improved environment where everyone thrives.
- Improve communication, information and toolkits on salaries, profits, decisions and organizational changes.
Great Place to Work® is the international standard in defining the quality of workplaces. It makes it easy and objective to survey employees, uncover actionable insight and get recognized for your great company culture. Business leaders, research institutions, and the public all rely on the Great Place to Work® Trust Model© as the definitive standard of what it means to be a great workplace. Through their Certification Program, Best Workplaces lists and Culture Consulting Services, thousands of organizations each year use this Model to assess their workplaces and benchmark themselves against the Best Workplaces in the world.