Mark van Bijsterveld is the Chief HR Officer at Signify, he’s been with the company for over 14 years. His answer on the role as the Chief HR Officer can depend on a day to day or a responsibility question. But overall, Mark’s responsible for the people at Signify making sure that there’s a right infrastructure for employees to bring their best qualities to work, excel in what they do, be recognized, rewarded, have a strong sense of belonging. The HR team has a great responsibility, taking care of around 37,000 employees worldwide, with a team of around 400-450 HR people.

One of Signify’s 5 frontier strategy is to be a great place to work and when talking about this we focus on three key priorities; excelling at building talent, creating a diverse workforce and an inclusive workplace and finally ensuring that we have the right skills for the future, both in terms of the commercial excellence, and as well as in terms of our digital excellence.

The world is digital nowadays and that was one of the core drivers behind the growth strategy, looking at digitizing our production services, our customer interfaces, and our internal processes. The HR function should have the right skills for now, and for the future in terms of driving data transformation. So, all in all, that makes the pillar of being a great place to work.

The lighting industry is going through a huge transformation going from conventional lighting, into digital lighting, and now into connected lighting. And as the global market leader in lighting, we're driving and shaping the markets, we're answering the needs of our customers. By showing what you can do with light beyond illumination.

According to Mark a company that drives and has an impact in the lives of people and in the society is very energizing. The other elements that keep Mark and his team energized is to make sure that all our employees are unique individuals, they have unique personalities, unique skills, unique backgrounds, and to blend that together and make sure that everybody actually can bring their best self to work.

From the beginning of the pandemic, the health and safety of our employees and their families has been priority number one, whether they work from home, or whether they work in our distribution centers, or R&D laboratories, or in our factories, we're taking all the possible measures to make sure that people are safe and stay safe. The HR team is putting a lot of effort in making sure that employees stay connected in teams along with the leadership team, and colleagues across the world, but also from a commercial side with our customers.

It's not always easy, it's tough. It's from a mental health perspective, we hear that people find it difficult to be a bit more in isolation. And we talk about a great place to work. Of course, belonging is an important element of that right? feeling that you belong somewhere that you belong at a company that you have a deeper relationship with a company than only a contract. But as your relationship with the company is also about the values and the purpose that you share. And of course, being isolated at home makes it more difficult.

Mark van Bijsterveld’s concluding statement covered that it’s the employees who have created an amazing company. That's something that we do together. When we talk about Signify being a great place to work, to grow together, it’s really creating a workplace where people belong, have impact, and where you enjoy having impact. We take pride together in a company that we're building and the results that we're delivering. And pride is for me always a collective feeling. It's not something individualistic, but I think we take we take even more enjoyment when we do things together.