Recognition from Top Employers helps us to attract the best talent from outside the organisation.
How do you use the Top Employers Community?
People are the cornerstone of Materialise, so creating an environment in which they can thrive is key to the continued success of our company. By creating and implementing best practices we can make our people happier, help them to grow, recognise their achievements and positively impact their careers and their lives.
Their careers and lives contribute to creating a better and healthier world – our company’s mission – and so our people are encouraged to always improve.
A constant desire to improve also applies to HR, and a benefit of the Top Employers award is the chance to learn from peers in the HR departments of other organisations. We connect with other Top Employers to learn best practices and find out what we can implement at Materialise.
What is the power of the seal for you?
While the award is a wonderful recognition of our company, its value lies as much in the learning process of the Top Employers audit as it does with the end result. For us, the award’s true value is that it benchmarks Materialise against other top employers. We learn where we are stronger and in which domains we can grow.
The Top Employers audit process also gives the HR department a tool with which to measure progress from one year to the next. Compared to last year, Materialise’s 2021 overall score increased. We knew where we were scoring well and where we could still improve. In some areas we improved on last year’s scores by a lot. It gives us something to strive for which ultimately benefits our employees.
How does Top Employers help to strengthen your employer brand?
As an HR team, we use the scores to align our objectives for the following year. Last year, we scored well for the way in which our HR strategy is embedded in our business strategy and leadership, but needed to improve in areas like digital HR, learning and wellbeing. As a result, within HR we are now busy working on an HRIS project which will have an impact on
our efficiency and fits with our “hate waste” philosophy. Because “growing our people” is currently our main focus, we had to improve the availability of training as well!
How does Top Employers help attract the best talent and grow as an employer of choice?
In addition to the benefits for people already working for Materialise, recognition from Top Employers helps us to attract the best talent from outside the organisation. The Top Employers award is a strong element of our employer branding and attracts candidates. The validation from Top Employers means that Materialise has additional credibility. After all, though every organisation will tell potential employees that their company is a great place to work during the recruitment process, not every organisation can point to benchmarked scores showing continuous improvements.
It gives us a lot of satisfaction to be recognized by Top Employers and by our HR peers. However, we want to be among the Top Employers so that we can continue to do better and develop. It’s vital to our mission of sustainable employment that we learn and apply best practices to retain our people, keep them happy and help them to develop.
