Annual Report 2019

Human resources

To achieve strategic goals, now and in the future, the Group is in need of a performance-driven culture in all activities and countries. In order to develop and deliver this in a similar way across the Group HR has and is playing a facilitating but significant role. By focussing intensely on the development of a performance-driven culture people better develop in their current roles, the pipeline of talent is growing and it becomes easier to fill vacancies internally. This makes us grow as an employer of choice within the open market, where at the same time our current employees become more eager to continue working for Beter Bed Holding N.V.

In 2019 Beter Bed Holding N.V. has made some important steps to create an environment in which performance-driven culture could be further developed and mature.

A proactive, transparent, performance-driven culture is necessary to be able to successfully carry out the transformation. Management at different levels in the organisation devotes a great deal of energy to this and takes the lead in order to provide a good example. One major area of focus has been the development of local teams as they form the basis of the success of the Group.

The HR department has developed into an integral Business Partner for the organisation in order

to make you feel and perform at your best

Some of the major developments in 2019 have been:

Function House

Improving transparency across the organisation by implementing a new function house. We aspire an open communication about our organisation, departments & employee performance by developing the tools that employees can use to assess and manage their own performance within the Company. The tools facilitate individual ownership of achievements, assessments and developments. All job descriptions are clearly described on what should be done and how it should be done. This transparency will allow management to evaluate employees and have an open conversation about the performance of the individual. Separate to this function house a benchmark has been done to check if the remuneration of the different roles within the Group are still competitive and in line with the market so that we do not lose the war for talent already at hiring, or even worse, losing good employees where this could be avoided.

Performance cycle

To improve the quality of the performance we have critically looked at the one in use. We aim to have a transparent and fact-based performance evaluation that will ensure employees are assessed based on their performance and development. Transparent evaluations will enable employees to see how they can further influence their own progress within the organisation. We therefore defined clear KPIs, linked to the new job descriptions, which have been developed for every role in the organisation.

Training of management

Throughout every level within the organisation we developed, through training, more management capabilities for employees and managers. Examples are: (1) motivation of employees, (2) coaching, (3) delegating of tasks, (4) providing feedback.

We aim to create an EPIC (Empowering, Purpose-driven, Inspiring and Coaching) way of working. Management has been made much more aware and capable which enables them to coach and train the staff in their areas of responsibility.

Beter Bed Academy

A Beter Bed Academy has been launched. All employees can develop and learn about relevant elements of their own position. They can also use this when moving to a new position within Beter Bed Holding N.V. The Beter Bed Academy is a 100% digital platform. The Academy trains employees on broad managerial skills or allows employees to further specialise themselves in a particular area. At this point, there are almost 600 e-learnings available for our employees. In addition to the Beter Bed Academy there is a process of continuous learning due to learning from best practice by creating a community of sharing experiences and expertise (across departments).

Improving the on-boarding process, in line with the desired performance culture, through:

  • A uniform working mentality for new employees.
  • Ensuring that employees that join the organisation feel welcome and are immediately motivated to perform well within the organisation.
  • Movies that have been created to “onboard” new employees so that they experience the whole Company in a couple of minutes.
  • A specific onboarding program for new employees.

Employee engagement

A communication app (an information tool, which is contemporary and fast) has been introduced to increase the engagement of our employees. In this way, it is possible to communicate at all times and bring information about work and the organisation to our employees.

Absence

The Company aims to have a direct approach to absenteeism, which means a direct and rapid contact between managers and sick employees. HR, together with our occupational health and safety service, has supported the managers in reducing frequent absence and sustainable employability. This is increasing the employee satisfaction and engagement, which will have a positive effect on the inflow and outflow.

Apart from the above different manuals have been developed and released, Smartdoc and Topdesk have been implemented in order to digitalise all the files within HR, HR Analytics have been activated and dashboards have been created to ensure that HR targets can be included in the objectives for managers and the satisfaction of our employees can be measured.

At 31 December 2019 the Group had 1,095 employees and 914.6 FTE, compared to 3,377 employees (2,738 FTE) at 31 December 2018. The decrease was mainly caused by the divestment of Matratzen Concord.

The development of the number of employees and FTE for the continuing operations is as follows:

31-12-2019

31-12-2018

Number
of staff

FTE

Number
of staff

FTE

Beter Bed Holding N.V.

5

4.7

6

5.7

Netherlands

915

774.1

894

737.2

Belgium

38

32.0

27

22.0

DBC

17

15.8

13

12.3

Sweden

120

88.0

156

110.0

Total

1,095

914.6

1,096

887.2