Like almost everyone, we as owners of Cortexia want to be treated with respect and, above all, have all the freedom to be able to work the way we want. The latter was partly the reason for becoming an entrepreneur. Many employees, especially the more educated ones, also thrive on a lot of freedom, but by no means all choose the entrepreneurial path. How do you solve that? Quite simply: by giving them the space to undertake in your company.
Participation in project allocation
That ‘internal entrepreneurship’ is expressed in many ways at Cortexia. For example, our technical colleagues are always closely involved in the sales process and nothing is sold that we cannot deliver. Furthermore, we do not unilaterally assign engineers to customers and projects. Before we make an offer to the customer, we first submit the assignment to available engineers to arrive at the best match. This also means that if two requests with different hourly rates come in almost simultaneously, we do not automatically choose the higher rate if the other project suits the engineer in question better. In addition, our engineers are also allowed to make their own investments, especially in themselves. This mainly takes the form of training and career planning.
Long tenure
Given that our engineers are engaged in their development throughout the year, full use is made of this. In this context, everyone has a personal development plan (PDP) in which the employee sets their own goals and takes ownership of their CV and career development. This kind of freedom yields not only happy (and therefore productive) employees, but colleagues who stay and enjoy themselves. This prevents you from being left empty-handed in times of labour shortage, such as we are currently experiencing. On average, our engineers have been with us for about eight years, with an exception of fourteen years. Every colleague is valuable and forms an important pillar of our club.
Retaining knowledge and experience
We prefer to invest the many recruitment euros we save in training and doing fun things together. For customers, this obviously has the advantage that they do not have to face a different face every time. Moreover, because knowledge and specific client experience remain in-house, they also benefit from noticeably better results. To test all our good intentions, we conducted a satisfaction survey among our engineers some time ago. This produced the following responses, among others:
‘For me as an employee, Cortexia means a lot of freedom and not being bound by many employers’ rules. And with choice in your assignments.’
‘Cosy, compact (not a number), open, honest, driven. That’s the strength and a nice reward according to performance.’
‘For me, working at Cortexia means freedom and space to think and help with the company’s vision and strategy.’
‘A friendly club of no-nonsense techies.’
‘I work at Cortexia because of its flat organisational structure. The company culture is very open and when faced with challenges, both business and personal, people think with you and make time for you.’
‘Compact club with short lines of communication and fun outings.’
These responses reflect exactly what Cortexia has been trying to be as a company from day one. And that, of course, makes us very happy. If you want the same in your own organisation, you now know at least (partly) what to do.
Nordin Dkiyech, managing director
Rob Monseurs, co-founder
