The Special Awards celebrate the Best Workplaces™, who went the extra mile last year on the following three topics: “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”, “Corporate Sustainability”, and “Employee Empowerment”. Even during these difficult times, these organisations managed to be great employers! To get insights into how these organisations overcome obstacles and, as a result, received these awards, Great Place to Work® organised the “Learn from The Special Awards” Inspiration Session.
Learn from the Special Awards Winners: 3 tips of Axxes on how to install an ‘Employee Empowering’ culture
Suzanne van den Hout, HR Business Partner of Axxes, inspired us with the story of how Axxes managed to get the ‘Employee Empowerment’ Special Award.
Employee empowerment according to Axxes is “creating an environment where everybody can reach their highest potential, which Great Place to Work identifies as a high trust/ high learning culture”.
Here are three tips of Axxes on how to install an employee-empowering culture:
1. Foundation of trust
“Creating an atmosphere of trust is not something you can push forward; it is something whereby you need to prove yourself”. Axxes does this by enhancing transparency, open communication, and having a personal approach throughout the employee life cycle. The company works, for example, on a first-name basis with everybody in the organisation to improve honest conversation, which is the first step in getting people to trust you. “You need to walk your talk to give your employees the opportunity to be a part of the strategy design and implementation”. Axxes namely believes that knowledge sharing is the key to the success and future growth of their employees.
2. One size does NOT fit all
Learning and development take a central place at Axxes. Therefore, they installed a ‘Flexible Education Plan’, where individual learning paths are drawn up. This can be as steep as employees decide so that they can grow at their own pace. They are at the steering wheel of their own careers. “Everybody is different and unique and we try to create an environment where everybody has the opportunity and the best possible support to become their best selves”.
3. Learn from mistakes
“Axxes strongly believes that learning from failure is the key to success”. It is about creating opportunities and chances for people to step up to let them experiment. As an organisation, Axxes gives its employees the time and resources they need to do their own thing. It is about empowering your employees, letting them be in control and seeing what happens. It does not matter whether it will be a success or not, somebody will learn something either way. “Leaders also need to acknowledge when they fail or do something wrong”. This is leading by example and giving the space for the employees to do the same.
Are you inspired to become a Best Workplace yourself and win a Special Award?
Join one of our information sessions and start your journey HERE!