in today's episode of a Visionaries we talk to ebom Mets from lot camp we talk about how to coach leaders to become better leaders stay tuned welcome to H of Visionaries where we unlock the secrets of modern HR I'm Benjamin your host join us as we shed live on today's HR Universe with HR leaders and innovators from across the globe whether you an AG or Pro a business leader or just curious about the future of work this is your shortcut to the Forefront of HR Innovation brought to you by hire the AI Talent attraction platform welcome to the latest episode of age of Visionaries I'm very much looking forward to my guest today Evo it's great to have you thank you more welcome Evo can you tell us a bit about yourself who are you yes uh well EO mitz is my name I'm from the Netherlands uh a Dutch HR uh professional uh I gained my experience in uh different Industries such as Telco Tech uh fintech and financial services um uh if you look at my experience I build a lot lot of knowledge in building a t Talent pipeline uh transforming the business uh but also a good signature on the total reward strategies privately I'm a longdistance runner so for your information I completed the Berlin Marathon last year so uh that was a big success I was very proud of it uh and I'm also a big uh inclusion and diversity supporter uh also privately so together with my partner Eloy also well known in in Germany it's famous singer we are the proud fathers of a 13-year-old daughter so uh we're a front runner from A diversity point of view as well cool we have so many things to talk about um but first of all I would be super curious to understand um your um well your journey in in different Industries um so you mentioned you had been in in in Tech now you work in the financial Financial Services industry um can you tell us a bit about that yes yes of course yeah so in the early phase of my career I started to work in the utility area and that was from uh uh and basically in the Netherlands the whole utility business went commercial so from a priv from a state-owned company became private so that whole transformation was super interesting uh after a couple of years I stepped into uh a tech TomTom well known so the whole navigation business was booming TomTom just went listed uh a huge growth and basically you know um the HR agenda was managing the growing paints so that's to summarize three T years uh after that I stepped into the Telco so kpn uh who also owned some German Belgium and some other uh companies in other countries um Telco business was also booming a lot of new technology developments at that point it was also scaling down so selling a lot of uh companies and reinvesting in our organization um uh and after kpn I joined fintech so andico now known as World line one of the biggest fintech companies of the world a lot of Acquisitions Integrations also a new technology that was launched U and finally ended up at Fon kampa difficult to pronounce for a lot of non-dutch people so vanon Kea it's a family name and and now I'm currently Chief hro uh of this organization it's a listed company uh uh a boutique a wealth management company and uh I'm pleased to work here already for five years now yeah right so I I hope you apologize if if if I pronounce it incorrectly um so it's it's indeed for for nonou people it's it's very hard to pronounce um it what you just just metion sounds like a very interesting career so you when you arrived somewhere there was already a lot of transformation well on the horizon kind of visible and and obviously when um utilities go public um um there's a lot of change when uh when you work in the tech industry there's a lot of change when you have to well at at at in the Telco industry you have to scale down scale up sell business that it means there is a lot of uncertainty amongst employees how do you deal with that how do you deal with the communication um or communicating how do you deal with communicating difficult decisions to people or well sometimes they not difficult but they're just lifechanging yeah yeah true yeah I think you know the red threat in my career is indeed change so a lot of transformation could either be growth acquisition and integration or the or scale down or a full uh turnaround and for me it's always crucial you know HR and communication should be like a partnership that's that's my first belief and secondly you know it's always important to be very transparent to people and to speak their language so audence thinking audience thinking so what's the audience what's their language and make sure you will engage and involve them as soon as you can and sometimes you cannot involve them immediately because you know it's confidential you know it's related to takeover there's an NDA related but as soon as you can be very transparent about it involve leaders and uh make sure you have a dry run you have a script and a dry one people are trained they will broadcast the same message so there's no gray area yeah that will be introduced somewhere and people will start misinterpreting uh the storyline so that for me is crucial to do it every any time uh and in parallel uh I'm a strong believer to co-create with works councils works Council betri also in Germany um so very important to involve and engage them as soon as you can already with an NDA and to make sure they're fully involved they can provide input so the message will be uh understood and accepted can you perhaps walk us a bit through a through a timeline there so um I I I imagine it it all starts with well very confidential uh conversations you have with some other sea level offices um like hey you know some something is going to happen we need to prepare we need to prepare for the impact and um is that how how how things kick off yeah well the good thing is uh all the companies that I used to work for are also listed and that also helps you know when you're listed company you know things are already pre-written in some kind of protocol legislation or you know uh policy that you agreed with unions or Works Council so that tends to help so that helps the discussion with sea level uh and you know SE level needs to be convinced that you know uh involving people as soon as you can will always help uh just to give you an example if there's an idea of an acquisition HR is always involved uh as of day two perhaps not day one day two very soon and why because you will do a due diligence right so you will do look at the organization does it make sense from the HR perspective from labor conditions from a Personnel setup and soever will you know the cost related to Personnel uh so you're involved as soon as you can um and then uh there will be a certain point that you also need to involve The Works Council and departments itself to see okay could it be a fit who to introduce who to do some further investigation uh you know is a good fit culturally from a process point of view from a competency point of view and then you have to make sure that people are engaging uh and providing Insight if it will work or not just to give you an idea uh sometimes you know the business case can be perfect but if there we also did an acquisition where the cultural fit was not good creates a lot of hassle a lot of work you know I did it in my career so those insights are crucial so I tend to do a due diligence on hard matters but as soon as you can and you've got data available also that explains you a lot of leadership of the culture of the organization you need to incorporate it as well because there it can derail and then it can really undermine your strategy yeah um well similar to scaling down so sorry yeah scaling down as well so as soon as you would like to let go Etc uh be very clear about it uh you know uh uh the pit is that you tend to think that it people will not accept you know a bad message and I think people are more than willing to accept that message as soon as it makes sense as long as it makes sense right so if you can relate it to a strategy if it's non-core and it will be sold or you know it it will be divested people will understand it's important that the way you do it is respectful you know so also an exit of a department and entity should be handled in a respectful way as well yeah well I think you mentioned very important point there given well even something that might be overall be very positive to the company can on an individual level perhaps be negative in terms of like hey we we're buying a very we're buying very very productive company that it fits very well into our company strategy however it it may annoy some people that have been working on something similar and now face um competition within the within the same organization so therefore it's not always black and white right so even positive message overall positive can be quite difficult to communicate to uh to to to to some to some employees and and don't underestimate also the cultural differences right so if you if multiple countries are involved you know it's very good to understand you know the corporate cultures in each and every country uh and even within a country it can be a challenge we did want to do two takeovers in India and then you think okay two Indian companies that will go well but they have a CLA system that's their way of cultural thinking and that yeah also led to a lot of challenges to frame it positively well I I I can I can imagine and um well um you you mentioned several times it's it's important to be to be transparent and to communicate well um how did you first approach this so when you when you ran into the first situation when you had to communicate really significant and I wouldn't wouldn't classify this as good or bad but quite significant change to to employees how did you first approach this so first of all you know the message should be very clear so from from a strategic point of view it should be spoton why are we changing something why are we stopping something and why are we accelerating something right so that's the first message then secondly multiple departments are involved so it should be outlined clearly how each and every department will be impacted so where will there be a reduction where will there be layoffs where will there be additional budget to grow and because quite often you're reallocating a budget to to do something different and then uh it's important and then you know the communication Department steps in that you will script it perfectly and that's super interesting uh Benjamin because as soon as you invite senior leaders to already prepare you know their Town Hall presentation to their staff there you see where the gray uh areas could pop up right so it's very good to coach and train them also what will be the messaging what are the q&as you know make sure that the the material be will be distributed afterwards so will be Q&A sessions that you script and as soon as you manage that perfectly well it will uh people will tend to accept it when you don't do it sometimes you're bit in a rush you tend to to forget those important steps and then the aftermath and the work related to the aftermath will be tremendous and so I'm always pushing on you know the dry runs and the scripting and and the communication yeah well you you you just mentioned well it's important that well managers have their script have their presentation ready um I I picture situations when you have probably leaders who are quite good in in in their fields however may not be created for a situation where you have to communicate very difficult messages um well does make them bad people right but but for for them it's it's more difficult than for others how do you approach these situations in coaching leaders that in a particular situation every word counts and every facial expression counts that people who are directly impacted and who don't have all the information sea level has that they know well they're in good hands they're taken care of and um well that that man the management is is in control yeah basically two things that implemented so uh I used a few examples uh up to now from my whole career and now I will use an example also that's relates to Fon Scot camper um so at Fon Scot camper we did two things uh first uh we invested a lot in management skills so the observation I had five years ago that you know uh everything that was related to financial services was well covered trainings wise so uh people should be trained Etc otherwise you can you're not allowed to do your job and we went above and beyond so uh if you look at a private banking Academy we've got the best private banking Academy of the Netherlands for sure so well equipped and on the other hand if you have to work with people as a manager there was no training at all and that just did not feel balanced so sometimes you had you know amazing talents that just did it exactly what you said facial expressions right words but also a lot of occasions it it just didn't work out so what we started to do uh for new managers but also managers that were already in in their position for a couple of years we uh developed u a management training which is just a toolbox right so how to run a meeting how to have a tough courageous conversation how to deal with u uh uh illness uh Performance Management meeting how to conduct a presentation as well the the toolbox that we think as a manager is important and people had to go through it and we did did a bottom up so it was on their request and people just liked it because they were only our own Managers from different regions from different departments so the side effect is they got to know a lot of other managers and they also learned from each other right so in some business lines they were just better at some things you know so so transferable insights uh uh were very useful so that's what we did um and then it became also the norm so it it was a bottomup approach and then we're with like okay everyone should be doing it so that's one secondly what we also introduce is more like a formalized uh uh strategic plan approach so every year you know we ask you know senior leaders to redraft a strategic plan to look at you know the people and skills you need the budget you need and also how it will be cascaded into kpis throughout the business so that's also the starting point for our Performance Management and and and and kpi Cascade approach and then the two things come together and then you see some improvement it's not perfect everywhere Benjamin but I'm pretty happy with where we are right now yeah that's cool indeed and I'm wondering um when you train management and and and and Coach people who have been leaders for years sometimes decades um how do you convince convince them it is it's worth spending the time because that I think what we can all agree on time is probably the most precious resource that that managers have and they of course don't want it to to to go to go to waste um so how do you do that how do you convince um managers to well accept coaches accept trainings and I think you know the training as such we're using a supplier which provides high quality on one hand but also very practical you can apply it as as of the next day so it's not something uh very business school high level theoretical it's something that you can apply the next day and that's how also what people experience and we also see if there's a particular topic that was not covered by the training that will be an extra class for the group they love it because it's like a reunion There's an opportunity you know to come together again and you will get some extra content that you know obviously they're they're struggling with because that it's their request right so and then we provide them uh and and just give you an Insight what we uh introduced recently is also you know how to deal with all the different Generations that you have in your team from gen Z up until the Baby Boomers you've got own personnel and you've got external Personnel uh indd you know we've got people from multin nationalities um ages gender you know all kind of different flavors and how to deal with it because every one has different these that was a real struggle we noticed it and we organized an additional training how to deal with that you know and how to do a sufficient taken with your staff and um so the answer is if it adds value straight away people will make time for it and that's how I think the financial industry works if you know the the the return on investment is not uh perceived like that people will just not step in and coaching is also something that we renewed so also uh We've got we cleaned uh our coaching spool we also aligned the coaches with our strategy but also the struggles that managers have so the coaching Community understands what our needs are and then we know you know who's good at what and we will link them to the right managers and we even provide coaches who are you know perhaps end of career that can help you know managers also okay should I progress my career inside or out outside the organization so that's an important and perhaps if they are already a bit older you know perhaps it's also time to give space to a new talent and to remote or demote remote whatever you would like to call it I would like to frame it as positive as possible so remotion sounds a bit better than demotion but also to accept because that's also a bit of mning you know a new position that you can do for the next 10 years but the next gen needs to step up um well going through that an entire cycle of communicating um and executing transformation um you you probably when the transformation starts already have something in mind how the ideal end point should look like um and that well those people who are on board then um how they should be engaged what kind of information they they should have to to exercise that their jobs most successfully um how do you how do you plan for this in the very beginning yeah well the funny thing is uh quite often you don't have the precise end goal in mind so I think that's that's where it starts so you have the idea what kind of Direction it should go into so it should be left that's clear not right uh as an example uh but the exact Endo that's I think also you know part of the process and the journey and that's how we tend to approach it so you know if you if you look at Fon camper we're a a small company so we're large enough to cope with all the regulations and all the changes uh uh uh uh but we all uh we're also very small so 2,000 FTE so personal relationships with each other and our clients is key yeah so that's key so if you translate that in any transformation it means that we will you know involve our clients you know uh our our staff Etc in the journey itself and that also helps because then you see their interest what they value and then it also helps you how it should be communicated afterwards because then you know exactly you know what are the triggers of you know key stakeholders and how to address that in the in the communication so what I learned you know the journey itself and engaging with all stakeholders in you know defining the end state is crucial yeah indeed given well when you have then reached certain milestones and I real put you to said of course well one can't really say okay well the um transformation begins here and ends then it never ends right so if it if it ends somewhere it's probably in insolvency but but other than that it's it's ongoing um but um so that that well all employees throughout the process and throughout well the the probably though those um climaxes of of transformation that that everyone is is engaged and that um one kind of feels the pulse of the organization as well yeah true yeah so that's key you know and we did also what we did I think four years back in time we renewed our full uh labor condition package for everyone so we uh you know when I joined we still have uh uh uh you know still label conditions in for all from all acquisitions that we did and therefore people did not change any job because you had the perfect pension scheme I had the perfect lease car the other one had more holidays whatever reason you would not move right where if you would like to introduce a new operating model it's good to have some movement and to build some new teams and and and to ask people to collaborate so then we introduced one pension scheme you know one works Council we had also multiple Works Council one social plan and we also so upgraded our labor conditions to be let's say the most interesting employer in the in the financial service in the Netherlands so we completely renewed it um and that's difficult because you need to let go something that you really valued so you you don't have that wonderful pension scheme anymore I don't have the golden lease car and uh your neighbor doesn't have the extra holidays so all becoming equal but that did eventually help because you know everyone perceived we had a Fair pay practice where in the beginning it felt like you could negotiate whatever you wanted to have or I want to have or my neighbor wants to have right so that's a major change So eventually accepting a fair pay practice where it was transparent visible we had a job job and career framework in place you know the labor conditions were clear they were available for everyone so and that gave a tremendous boost uh also from the outside Market you know so people also knew what they could get in our organization we were suddenly a modern transparent organization that people uh really wanted to to work uh at yeah okay Kate turning a private bank into suddenly an organiz a modern organization that sounds bit contradicting no but it it is needed because uh you know you cannot run a wealth management organization without you know uh an amazing enabling Workforce and on one hand you have to have your compliance Department HR legal right but you know we're also a tech firm so if you look at the Investments we do in technology it's tremendous you know how can you compete with you know look at the we're based in Amsterdam right so uh booking almost our neighbor that's our labor market competition so you need to be very distinctive and what we are as an organization the culture we have but also you know you have to have competitive labor conditions to you know to attract uh those those digital talents so we've got aen and booking as our neighbors can you imagine and we still are well staffed from a from a data and and and from a data point of view from data and and programming point of view yeah you I'm wondering um so well all all that in mind um well being an organization that serves um well well highet with individuals um and that is also very very Tech focused um so how do you how do you picture the future of um of of you as an organization um in in in terms of what what kind of talents um should work for you um how do how do you engage people um well in a in a world that that's turning more and more um to technology but in in your business probably also the personal relationship is Absol abolutely key with with clients absolutely yeah so a few a few things I would like to highlight if you look at the trends in the future of our organization uh technology is crucial so AI uh will be part of our business and the good thing is looking at our company size that we are very agile so we can include those practices immediately so it's not something that we uh put aside of our operating model it's embedded in our operating model and if you look at our investor Day presentation that was launched I think two months ago there you see it's already embedded in our day-to-day work highly appreciate people are really looking at us as a best practice so the size allows you to do some things and to to Really accelerate some some new digital skills so that's one um and if you look at the trends in our industry there will be a a wealth Handover from a generation perspective so that's very crucial to see and what goes along with the wealth transition is that you know the Next Generation would like to have more impact impact from a sustainability point of view so that's crucial and philanthropy is also becoming more and more important that's also what you sometimes read in in in the magazines and in the newspapers so that's something that we should also be prepared of so how to support the the wealth uh from one generation to the next in the best best possible way because that's a challenge as such if you have for children how to deal with it and what are their needs and also knowing that the impact and the philanthropy is is crucial um if you translate that into people uh from a people point of view we're a small flat organization so we assess people uh on two things is there a cultural fit so for us crucial so beside being very good in what you do we also believe that you have to be personal either towards your clients or also internally because depth is really distinctive compared to other wealth managers um and we also believe in transferable skills so not the traditional resume tick boox you know if you're also good in chemistry for instance you probably can also be a corporate finance specialist you know it's just a matter of how you're framed in your brains and then you can also learn other stuff so then the cultural fit prevails I would say yeah absolutely and um so the um testing for cultra fit or finding out about someone's cultra fit how how do you think will this evolve in the next next few years given um well there will be uh of course new generations um um entering the the workforce well the we now um have the generation that well the iPhone generation entering the the workforce um in a few years we will have the AI generation entering the workforce where where basically knowledge was always well absolutely available and um and and it's it's it's much more about how how to how to apply your knowledge yeah yeah true yeah what we already do for starters uh up until let's say five six years of working experience we start with an online test um uh uh just to assess a few things what's your your personality your cultural fit and your generic skills level and we do that on purpose um uh because we would like to have an unbiased recruitment process right so recruitment by default is biased you cannot have but the starting point point should be as neutral and unbiased as possible um and that's an important starting point so not looking in a traditional way at resumes and also not looking okay you're male female uh uh Dutch non-dutch uh you know whatever it doesn't matter you know really doesn't matter but we all all biased right so so I I we would always love to hire a clone of ourselves yeah and that's you know especially when Personnel is one of your key values that's an amazing Pitfall so our culture you know one of our cultural values created our our Pitfall So to avoid the pittiful the starting point so if you imagine you're are a manager so by this first step in the process you will for 100% you have different resumes in your inbox compared to if you would would have done it yourself yeah but that's the starting point then the next step is still then you're a manager you will look at it at the buice way so we said no no no you not decide yourself as a manager uh there's a hiring pool and the hiring pool is trained to assess one of the four important areas of that job and they will just rank rank it the ranking will be combined and there will be an end evaluation per candidate that obviously will be discussed with the manager so it will never be fully unbiased but then you you for the process forces that you will analyze the candidate in the best possible way from skills and uh uh hard skill soft skills and a cultural perspective so that's something we do and that helped us tremendously you know if you look at you know the the transformation we went through as an organization we've got uh you know over uh I believe 40 nationalities working in our organization every Department also our enabling staff has International people working you know from an age gender nationality whatever uh kind of flavor you would like to imagine we have it I can present it which makes us proud you know because Society is also changing our customer base is changing so we have a strong belief that you know you have to transform in line with society and future client base yeah um well um what do you think will be the top three skills for the next five years yeah so I think the top three skills are you know for us uh it is uh um uh the CX so the customer experience uh skill set uh because if you are in wealth management and the personal relationship are key you have to think in a customer journey in a customer experience full stop so that's crucial that's number one um uh secondly it's also about uh uh uh collaboration because we have a boutique uh so doing only what you're good at 40 hours a week will not make a difference so you have to collaborate within the value chain right so that's super crucial so that makes us distinctive I think to our competition and thirdly it's adopting you know the the digital skills uh so those three will make a difference in our organization yeah my last question for you is um when you a c um who has worked in many different Industries um now in in finance how do you picture HR in 3 to five is how will HR work which areas will be most relevant what will be what will people in Talent acquisition in in payroll and in and and how will their life change well I think HR you know basically the answer will be related to my previous answer but I think you know an HR department will change from an employee experience point of view so if you will not look at the competency itself is HR competency but you will look at the area from an employee experience and what are the steps that an employee will go through you know uh being still on the labor market you know applying joining and the whole journey throughout you know retirement or exiting the company for that should be our scope and when you look at it from that perspective then you see that communication will be crucial facilities will be crucial housing will be crucial what about hybrid working you know things like that so the whole you know uh U competency area could be you know extended by other departments and I think that will be eventually where HR will be leading to and if you had that as an Chief hro whatever Chief people officer of Chief employee experience officer whatever you would like to name it I think that will be the ultimate goal of an true HR professional and I really would like if if young talents are listening to it think from an employee Journey point of view and make uh uh make it a better place for people to work yeah yeah I love it evil thank you so much was amazing talking to you um um employee experience employee Focus um I really love that thank you so much was very inspiring thank you for the invitation and have a wonderful day same to you and thanks to you all listening in and speak next time [Music] d