CEO Marion van Happen 100 days on board: "What an energy in this club!"
CEO Marion van Happen 100 days on board: "What an energy in this club!"
CEO Marion van Happen' s first 100 days at HeadFirst Group are over! In her own words, the time has flown by. She got to know hundreds of entrepreneurial colleagues, met clients, suppliers and professionals, talked to stakeholders in politics, industry organizations and had the first press moments. Her most important experiences and steps taken? She shares them based on the three core values of our organization.
1. Connecting people
"I started the day after the opening of our new state-of-the-art, energy-neutral headquarters in Hoofddorp. We celebrated this grandly in our own in-house theater! How wonderful also to see the face-to-face interaction between all colleagues. We have now found a balance between working at home and in the office. But 'connecting people' also stands for our core task: connecting professionals and clients. In this time of scarcity in the labor market - which, based on labor force figures, will continue for years to come - we fulfill a rewarding role: helping organizations find high-skilled professionals."
2. Learn every day
"Every day a little better, that's the vision. There are certainly things that could be improved in the organization, but above all I have seen good things and enthusiastic colleagues. To lay the foundation for further growth, I introduced the Lean methodology to improve processes. Starting with our contracting and finance process. We are progressing rapidly with the development of our platform, deployment of AI and data maturity. This allows colleagues to add more "touch" to our tech processes, makes colleague functions even more enjoyable, and makes clients, vendors and professionals happy. Finding the perfect balance between tech and touch, that's my goal. In addition, we are going to work structurally on innovation with a growth board, for example, continuously taking our Professionals & Partners services to a higher level and further rolling out our Total Talent Management proposition."
3. Customer first
"When I came in, there was already a clear strategy to 2025, which I fully endorse. Yet it is in my nature to test that strategy against the current image that clients, suppliers and professionals have of us and how they see the future with us. That helps to achieve perfection in our services. The study is now underway with an external partner. Meanwhile, I have started talking to clients myself and invited suppliers to our office. It makes me happy what I get back from that in valuable feedback: we are a reliable and creative partner, with whom they see a bright future. And then in the meantime we are working on new, innovative services: soon first for the thousands of professionals and suppliers in our network and later this year we will present a smart matching solution for medium-sized clients, based on our platform that we are providing with a new UX."
HeadFirst Group has embraced Marion, when will you follow?
Discover our learning platform
Discover our learning platform
Learn every day, one of the three core values of our organization. For this reason, all colleagues have access to the training platform 'HeadFirst Group Academy'. In this learning environment it is possible to follow (online) trainings, virtual labs and/or bootcamps. Meanwhile, many have already found their way to it, so the time to look back at the experiences. Saskia Kleinendorst shares hers.
"I am very eager to learn so I immediately looked at the offer."
Since 2021 Saskia is bid manager within HeadFirst Group and in her role deals with tenders and tender processes at (potential) clients. Within her work, Saskia is always looking for that little bit extra. HeadFirst Group Academy offers her this opportunity. "I am very competitive and like to be one of the first to discover a training course. That doesn't always have to be something that is directly related to my job, like most recently the training course Creating Infographics with Infogram." says Saskia.
"There are trainings and labs offered at the beginner level, but certainly at the expert level as well."
You keep track of your own progress through the personal dashboard and/or the monthly progress email. It motivates Saskia to complete the trainings even faster. She also keeps a close eye on the trainings that colleagues complete. In this way, she hopes to knock colleague Erix Santman, who is also very active at HeadFirst Group Academy, off the throne. It is a neck-and-neck race who has completed the most trainings.
Learning Paths
Learning paths allow you to aggregate training, e-books, videos and knowledge sessions and put them into a schedule. In this way, you cut up an end goal into pieces. In line with the organization's core values, three learning paths have also been prepared. "I soon completed these learning paths and start looking for a new end goal to work toward," Saskia said.
Saskia believes that all colleagues should discover the learning platform, "Knowledge is the future. HeadFirst Group Academy makes it possible to continue learning with each other in a central way."
Do you also think it's important to keep developing? At HeadFirst Group you get this opportunity! Take a quick look at our current vacancies here!