Grow2Win towards an annual revenue of 2 billion euros and achieve 0 incidents within the next 3 years: is it all that hard?
When starting my internship at DEM, the engineering cluster of the multinational sustainability company DSM, specialized in health, nutrition and materials – as a communications intern, I thought it was just a slogan enforced to promote a positive mindset for their stakeholders and employees, like any other large corporations. Only after they had announced that they have nearly achieved 2 billion within a year and acquired nearly 0 incidents, it had me wondering what measures have been taken to acquire such success.
What does my day look like?
Officially, I clock in at 9am and out at 17:00pm. However, we all know this is highly unrealistic given the nature and freedom of working from home. Fortunately, my supervisor trusts me fully with my execution and did not expect me to stay online till the end of the day as long as I deliver the results. I really liked this because it gave me the flexibility to work at my own pace and not feel like someone was looking over my shoulder. It also allowed me to work on my internship research throughout the day. My supervisor and I would plan weekly catch-up meetings to update each other and evaluate the week. It was incredibly useful and an additional bonus for my research because he was able to remind the employees to help me take the survey so I can get the required sample size that I need. Additionally, my usual working day involves coordinating the newsflash by sourcing inputs from account managers and stakeholders, or editing vlogs from our Global Transformation Leaders.
Every now and then, I would also help with creating surveys to measure employee appreciation and awareness related to their Grow2Win strategy – then make a conclusion for strategic steps forward. The majority of the day, I would source inputs and send them to our copywriting agency so that they can draft a story. Once I receive the drafted stories, I send it back to the original input sender and ask for their approval. This process is applied to every story input we wish to publish for the week’s newsflash. Once that is done, I compile the story in a word document and send it over to our external story-making company and ask them to send us a test mail. Once we approve the test mail, we send it on behalf of our global transformation leader. I do think that this is a lengthy process, but it made me realize a company at such a large scale cannot internalize this process because they might not have the time or money to get internal to write and develop the newsflash.
Interesting learning experiences
Having worked for them for a few months, I have come to experience the true results of transparency and empowerment. At first, I thought visions as such are always thrown around large corporations as a means to motivate people, but it never really works. Yet, DEM showed otherwise. In DEM, weekly newsflashes, interactive vlogs, and award nominations are distributed globally via emails, intranets and various communication channels to help employees stay informed. Even teams that did not win the award had their stories covered to showcase each team’s story. Also, it was fascinating to see how a large corporation continuously develops their channel and content with interactive games like ‘spin the wheel’ for upper management to speak about certain topics at events. This way, it effectively helps get rid of ‘the elephant in the room’. With the office restrictions from Corona, online coffee lunchrooms and ‘chat with friends’ chatrooms are also arranged to make employees’ day a little better working remotely from home. Though, this could never solve all problems, but what matters is people are willing to attend and experience new changes.
The last thing that I asked one of the directors before leaving my internship was “What is one thing you really appreciate about working at DEM?”. She responds “The open culture and flexibility in time makes me feel like I can work at my own pace and I do not need to make weekly reports,”. It was quite motivating to hear that this statement is congruent with my role as an intern because interns usually have more time flexibility compared to a normal employee; especially one with such a high position.