Discount Retail Chain Aldi Netherlands, has always been very selective about coming out in interviews in its fifty years in the Netherlands. In fact, this is the first time that the discounter's HR department has shared experiences with the media. There is every reason to do so, according to Carla van Lingen, Managing Director of People & Culture: "Enjoying our work is central to us."
Last year, ALDI celebrated its 50th anniversary in the Netherlands. The first employee was also honored for fifty years of service. This is an illustration of the staff's tenure, says Carla van Lingen at the head office in Culemborg.
"There is a large population that has been with us for many years. The family atmosphere and the personal touch have a certain appeal." This also applies to customers, she notes. For example, a regular customer recently opened a new store, with a fiery speech. "There was so much pride and commitment there, you don't need much marketing anymore."
She joined ALDI Netherlands in February 2019. A company with 500 stores and 10,000 employees. Of which an HR team with no fewer than five employees, who dealt with basic tasks such as payroll administration and legal obligations.
"We were very instrumentally oriented and focused on productivity. But nowadays, work is much more than work and an employment contract. Based on that vision, we started and formed policy in areas such as onboarding, talent management, training and also social support for employees."
Decentralised
The number of stores and employees is still the same more than five years later, but Van Lingen is now at the helm of a team of sixty HR professionals, forty people who work on strategic and tactical matters in Culemborg and twenty operational employees in the regional sales companies. Unlike other large supermarket chains, ALDI works decentrally, with regional sales companies throughout the country from which distribution is also provided to the stores.
So a lot has happened in the HR field in recent years. Van Lingen: "I started building HR and noticed that I could express my own vision. That got me excited. Soon there was a certain energy to take steps towards the future together. We have brought the HR business partnership into the organization."
Within a few months of taking office, she moved up to the boardroom table as Managing Director of People & Culture, due to a different organisational structure. There she received support for her vision. "Enjoying working in relation to business performance has always been my vision of HR. Working well involves many elements, and not just time on the shop floor. It is the entire context of work: recognition, training, perspective and cooperation. An employee should come home from work in a pleasant way."
An important key to that pleasant work is 'the good conversation'. "I focus on that, and you don't get it from a book. Keep it as simple as possible, and just do it. Sit down at the table with each other and listen, then you get a certain interaction. And do the same with your work environment. The supermarket is a special working environment, with a thin dividing line between employees and customers. The employees are your best ambassadors."
Doers
Its HR professionals are tasked with facilitating the good conversation between employees and managers. Van Lingen wants them to be physically present and sit 'on the axis' between the two, and not attend the conversation on the manager's side, as is often the case.
She has instilled 'just doing it' as a work ethic. New HR professionals therefore prefer to be 'doers'. Yet she often has to help them on their way. "They have learned what makes a good conversation, but how you do it is something else. I take them with me in that. And that's how I work myself: putting things into practice and solving them. That's what makes my work so enjoyable."
This is the first time that ALDI has been open about the way HR works in this way. The time is ripe for it, says Carla van Lingen. "We are receiving external confirmation from various quarters that the steps we are taking are bearing fruit. If you focus on pleasant work, employees will stay with you longer, customers will be positively influenced and you will have a clear proposition on the job market. We've made huge strides."
As an example of external confirmation, she mentions the recent certification of Top Employer, for the second year in a row. "In 2020, we did a baseline measurement in the HR department. That was inspiring, there was a lot of work to be done. Three years later, we went for certification and passed. This means that the recognition that we are benchmark-worthy with our HR policy and application in practice is a fact."
She has more external confirmations at the ready: a nice rise on the Randstad ladder for employers, in Manners.nl ALDI's employment conditions for part-time jobs were rated as the best and in the Intelligence Group's ranking for retail companies, ALDI rises from 31e to tenth place.
Blue blood
Another 'proof' that the chosen path is the right one, she sees among the employees, expressed in the employers' campaign 'MORE than you think'. "In it, blue-blooded employees who have been with ALDI for a long time answer the question of what ALDI means to them. They answer that ALDI does more than you think."
Going public is also in line with the current situation on the labour market. Talent is being pulled everywhere, including talents within ALDI. "The employees appreciate their job security, the working conditions, the team spirit and the opportunities to take steps. By going public with this, ALDI becomes more top of mind as an employer."
The development of HR went hand in hand with a major modernization drive. All manual work processes became automated workflows in areas such as onboarding, recruitment, time tracking and payroll. Communication with employees is now also done on a platform that is available via an app. "You slowly get your employees on board and it's now being used very well, the ALDI for you app has an 80 percent participation rate."
She enjoys working with the global head office in Germany. "Of course, we work within the framework of ALDI Nord, but I have always felt that there is a lot of room to develop initiatives, to gain support and to put it into practice with the HR managers," says Carla van Lingen.
"That means collaboration and communication, which in turn creates frameworks that are then reconsidered. Then the green light is not always necessary." This allowed her to carry out her transformation of the HR department. With the support of the other fifteen board members, she emphasizes. "We do it together, and it's my role to think ahead."
Best practice
She believes that other countries will adopt this model as a best practice is quite possible. "Because uniformity is part of our revenue model."
Moreover, the culture of 'working well and just doing it' is in line with ALDI's vision, she says. "Our organizational strategy is that customers can buy groceries with us as easily and cheaply as possible. Employees must therefore also understand that we set up the store as efficiently as possible based on this discount concept. Whether they want to participate in this has to do with the fine way of working. The fact that our work is multifaceted and employees are not in one department also contributes to this."
Employee lifecycle philosophy
The challenges in terms of personnel remain great, especially with the further ageing of the population on the way. Carla van Lingen is well aware of this. "That's why we do our best to retain employees, to optimize the pleasant way of working and to organize the work processes as efficiently as possible." Furthermore, it is a matter of 'staying alert'.
"We need to take the right steps for all generations. For example, more and more older employees want to continue working after retirement. And employees who come in now have very different demands on the employer. They look at leadership in a different way, want to work flexibly and pay a lot of attention to their personal development."
She also calls this integral view of employees the 'employee lifecycle philosophy'. "From the first to the last contact with the employee, we have to have an answer based on the vision of pleasant work. Taxation and taxability must go hand in hand. That's what you'll find out in those good conversations."
Corona
Work and private life are not strictly separated. This is a broad development in companies and organisations, but it mainly applies to the supermarket environment, Carla van Lingen notes. "Our environment is a representation of society. During corona, for example, everything was closed except for the supermarket.
"Everything ended up here, including enforcement. So we also had to make employees more resilient against aggression." The pandemic was also the time to accelerate in the field of technology. "That was already in the works, and then I got all the support for it."
Corona, inflation, housing shortage. These are social themes that end up in the workplace. "Employers have become social safety nets. We are asked to come up with solutions that affect not only the work, but more and more the emotional contact. How do we take care of each other?"
Read more: Director People & Culture Carla van Lingen puts HR on the map at ALDI: "We have made huge strides" - CHRO.nl
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