Human Resources

Van Leeuwen considers it very important for its people to do their work with motivation, pride and satisfaction, and that they continue to develop themselves. This is the essence of our People Strategy. We can only maintain our strong position on the market when we offer our employees opportunities to be the best they can be. In 2022, we therefore once again invested considerably in the development of our employees, at all levels. We will continue to do so over the coming years, because when our employees grow, Van Leeuwen continues to grow as well.

Our 2,458 employees are spread across 70 branches in 33 countries. Women comprise 30% of the total workforce, men comprise 70%. Our employees are of 58 different nationalities, and different cultural backgrounds, religions, customs and habits. In this Annual Book we give the floor to eight Van Leeuwen employees to speak about the culture in their country, the local business culture and the culture of the Van Leeuwen family business. They also speak about what these cultures mean in terms of the way of living and doing business. Regardless of the differences between cultures, colleagues always know how to find each other in our international network. As one employee put it: ‘At Van Leeuwen we easily bridge cultural differences; we work together as a single, large team.’

Van Leeuwen has a strong position in the market and an engaging ambition for the coming years. We can only achieve this when our people thrive. We do this by ensuring an open working culture with excellent colleagues and leaders. We create an environment in which the role and contribution of our people is clear, we share information and consider the input and opinion of our employees important. In addition, we encourage our people to constantly develop themselves further. We take our people seriously, consider it important to sketch out a clear future and seek an effective dialogue with respect, attention and support.

Performance management cycle

In 2021, we created a solid foundation for a new performance management cycle with which, together with our employees, we work on creating a more systematic and professional learning culture. In 2022, we began implementing this cycle. Open and motivating dialogues were held with all employees about their development. In these dialogues we addressed what they would like to learn, how they would like to continue to grow, their future plans and goals, and the specific steps they intend to take to achieve these goals. This new method of working stimulates talent development, and where necessary, we offer employees timely suitable coaching and training. We discuss progress with colleagues each year and this way, we help our people to further develop themselves and prepare our company for the future.

Recruiting new talent

In 2022, to recruit and retain new talent for our company, a lot of hard work went into developing a new Van Leeuwen recruitment website in the Netherlands. A large-scale recruitment campaign on various social media channels was also initiated. In 2023, Van Leeuwen will roll out the recruitment website internationally. This way we are globally working on our brand recognition among new generations of job seekers. A number of promising high potentials has already been hired through this campaign. In addition, a new trainee program for young talent was started up in 2022.

Van Leeuwen retains new employees through means of the more extensive onboarding process established in 2022. During the first few months they go through an intensive learning process in which they are exposed to all facets of the business. This way they are given the opportunity to get to know the business and colleagues, quickly become familiar with Van Leeuwen and are able to get off to a good start. In addition, we also immediately involve our new employees in the performance management cycle. This way we give them the opportunity of fully developing themselves within our company from the very beginning.