Whoever you are - people want to belong somewhere and be able to make a difference. Big or small.
That is one of the most important findings from the more than ten years of experience of HR pioneer Karin Van Roy. Because in those ten years, that whole HR landscape did change considerably.  

Before we dive deep into the subject matter, I'd like to get to know you, Karin, a little better. Everything will be about your professional life, but how might we describe you if we are not allowed to refer to your work?

For 61 years I have been fighting not to be called "Karinneke" or "Karine. I am a lawyer by training. People would describe me as someone with a bit of an angle off. I like to laugh, I like to see the positive things in life. And in our society, there are a lot of those. But I do have a few anomalies. In love with my husband for years. A very loyal person - except to brands of cars. I am a very social person. Me-time for me is doing things with people. We have an apartment by the sea so for me every weekend is like a vacation.

People may not know Arvesta yet - can you explain again very briefly what exactly you do here?

We do everything agricultural. I never wondered before I worked here where wheat or grass seed comes from. Well, that comes from with us. About everything around crop protection, how to handle plantings - to make them grow faster and more nutritious. Also everything around tractor business like John Deere, for example. Also greenhouses: Hortiplan and Van der Hoeven. Neon, a big city in Saudi Arabia, completely self-sustainable, uses our greenhouses. That's everything from agriculture and horticulture. On top of that there is everything from fertilizers, animal feed and then our retail, which is well known: Aveve and Eurotuin.

We are currently 2200 in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany. European player, but mainly Benelux.

If we really start looking at your professional career then. AB InBev, Pelican Rouge and now seven years of Arvesta. How do you look back on that? You didn't start in HR by any means, did you?

I first started as a lawyer at the Brussels Bar. I was really convinced that I could eliminate some of the injustice in Flanders. I really had the idea of a romantic weekend movie. But that quickly turned out not to be the case. Then I started thinking about what I wanted. Corporate counsel seemed like something and that's how I got a job at the then Artois.

That was a super cool environment. I immediately got a mastodon of a PC there. It was on wheels. You got it for four hours and the next four hours it went to a colleague. At Artois, I got to know a whole new world during the merge with Piedboeuf. **At Artois I was able to do legal, work in the contract department, do marketing, trade marketing and sales. Then I went to HR because it was a company where you get to try a lot of things. Then I immediately thought 'This is it' and I haven't missed a day since.

I made two particularly good choices in my career and that is to start at Artois and to leave Ab InBev on time.

And how long did it take you to get to HR?

Still about ten to eleven years. I came from sales and then became HR business partner for sales. I knew the people so they didn't have to tell me anything that couldn't be done for the business. Meanwhile, I am still a strong believer that HR people come from the business. I very much like that people from the business go to HR and people from HR go to the business. If you do HR for HR you will be outsourced in no time because then you can do it anywhere, anyhow, anyway. You have to sense what the business needs and you have to align your HR policy with that and vice versa.

I also worked for several countries. My last role vwas People Director of Europe. That was from Wales to Omsk. That is very instructive, I found it a strange sensation that a human being is a human being. Whether in Siberia or in Wales. A human being likes to go to work, likes to be recognized, likes to get a pat on the back. A human being wants to belong to something or someone and be able to make a difference. No matter how small or how big. I learned that at Pelican Rouge, too. Whether you're roasting coffee or brewing beer.

Ownership comes back often doesn't it, letting people make their own choices?

It is. That's not the sky is the limit, that's a closed box. I always say that's a tunnel. Actually, in those tunnels, people are allowed to drive and try as much as they want, but you have to stay in the tunnel. Trying to be a good employer, there is also an opportunistic side to that. If the business is not doing well, it's not good for the people either. People for growth, growth for people. If you grow as a company, you can invest in people. They are going to get better and your business will get better as a result.

Did you also sometimes have moments when things went in the opposite direction? Now you say that when things are going well in a company that you can give people more space.

Sure. InBev is known to restructure more than regularly. Now even there, if you do it with the respect of people, it's actually often not even bad. Here I also have to lay someone off sometimes. You always have to make sure that people remember their previous company as one that didn't roll their eyes. And people should also remember that you tried to help them in their next chapter. You should never be in a job and live from weekend to weekend or vacation to vacation.

Then it's actually too late?

Absolutely. Do something about that. Start talking about that. And if nothing can be done about that internally. Externally. The world is a big place.

That's also one of the questions I had for you. That's something that I think has changed. That people have become a little more self-assured and that employees believe more in their own position. Or do you not notice that?

You cannot underestimate what your environment has as an effect. Sometimes inhibiting, sometimes motivating. Private or work. I very much like to believe that da is not so here, but I would be lying. I'm sure in many areas it really still is.

That continious listening is super important in that. So that we can talk to people a lot, especially listen to them. Not everybody feels like saying it. If you don't build processes underneath that, then you actually only hear the employees who would say it anyway. It's those silent employees that you don't hear otherwise, you have to get in there.

Now you are CHRO at Arvesta. You talk about satisfaction, polls. What does an average day at your place look like today?

I don't like getting up, but I like the quiet of the beginning of the day. Then I do my mails, I can make myself feel a little organized. I have a fair amount of meetings. A lot of working with my team and with the business. Once a year we set up a plan for next year. That's also a budget file. That's kind of my bible for the whole year. Of course, sometimes that's unpredictable. The plan mostly works around employee experience and about how HR can help with customer centricity. Benchmarking, what are other companies doing? We also work around our employer brand. A lot of talking, a lot of engaging with people.

We are now in the Arvesta headquarters, but there are lots of different hubs?

A seventy, eighty. At least. Because we actually have to be very close to the customer because of the logistics cost and the short chain. If something happens at a farmer's, you can't afford to be far away from it. Our headquarters here used to be two floors, now one. We used that money to dress up those hubs. To give them the look and feel of Arvesta.

I hate it when people say "ow people don't go to the office anymore, what about your culture? If the only thing that makes your culture sustainable is your office then you actually have a real problem. A culture that is the behavior, by what you deliver and your mindset. We really try to support that through communication campaigns, among other things. Engagement we think is important. We have a Fit At Arvesta program. With that we do all kinds of initiation to padel, training for a half marathon, you name it. That creates a community. That's what we're working on.

So that's independent of where you work. You want that culture to transcend place?

Absolutely. And that shouldn't be everything. If they have a nice publication locally, who am I to say it shouldn't be.

"If the only thing that makes your culture sustainable is your agency then you actually have a real problem. A culture that is the behavior, by what you deliver and your mindset."

Employees also have a lot of freedom to choose where they work from. They may work from a hub but also work from home if they want to?

The only thing we cannot yet offer is working from abroad. That has to do with regulations. We don't register where you are. People do have to declare their desk because we have to have enough space. We assume you come to the office an average of two days a week over a whole year. So that could be that you don't come for three weeks and then one week you do come for example. But we don't measure it. The important thing is that you agree as a team. For example payroll, that's agreed, they work in the office every Wednesday.

When Covid broke out, we were afraid we wouldn't see people anymore. Then I thought: you may step into our Arvesta way of working. As a boss, you get leadership training, how to do remote leadership. And the people who step in, the employees, have to take a little course in ergonomics. They then get home, garden and kitchen tips. I don't want everybody to come back to the office with backaches and headaches. There is also a program that people can purchase their equipment, such as an office chair, at a discount.