Healthy people are happy people!

We care for our team and understand that healthy people are happy and also productive. This is why we’ve engaged in various initiatives to support the physical and mental health of our team.

First and foremost, our office is in the center of Amsterdam — the city of bikes. As a result unless they live outside the city, our people move around and come to the office by bike. In fact, we encourage them to hop on the bike and explain the many advantages of it. We are also currently looking into introducing bike leases as benefit for our people, something that even our remote colleagues will enjoy when they visit us in Amsterdam.

Coffee to go?

Another healthy habit that we started a long time ago are the coffee walks. Every day after lunch, we rush for a coffee at a nearby coffee shop while we enjoy a walk on the beautiful canals of Amsterdam. Because hey, some movement after lunch is good for both your digestion and mental health!

Do the walk, do the talk

We don’t just walk to get coffee, but we also transformed our 1:1 from formal sit downs in the office to walking 1:1 touring around Amsterdam. Oz (our CEO) is the biggest fan of outdoor 1:1s and his are definitely the most famous (or feared?!?) as he takes team members for kilometres long walk. One thing is sure — although you might end up with sore feet like many colleagues who forgot their sneakers home for their 1:1s (our recruitment lead Alethea still remembers), the energy recharge you get and the good feeling of spending more time outdoors makes it worth it!

One goal for the team

When I said we encourage physical activity, I was not kidding! If it’s Tuesday, you know that our men are closing the laptops at 17.30 sharp and head to the football field. I tried putting myself between the door and one of the engineers once to ask him a work related question…bad idea. You can never go in between a guy and his football.

If it’s summer time, it’s volleyball time. This summer we were blessed with over 30 degrees days in a row, which meant that we cut some of our days short to go to the park and play volleyball. Our people really enjoy the get togethers and they are especially important for new colleagues who recently landed in Amsterdam as it makes their adaptation period more enjoyable and it gives them a boost of energy.

A little competition never hurt nobody

In February this year we organised a fitness challenge where everyone could participate. With so many cross fitters, cyclists, runners it was impossible not to. This is how Alethea (our recruiter lead) came up with the idea of FitFeb, a competition that would last throughout the entire month. All we had to do was spend as much time as possible being physically active; from a simple walk in the park to a hike in the French Alps, this challenge was a real success and we even had 3 winners!

Another important step into the healthy workforce direction was the home office budget. This was created during the pandemic and was and is meant to support everyone to equip themselves with the adequate equipment that allows them to work from home in proper ergonomic conditions.

All about good food

We’re in love with food! It must come from the team being so international and bringing so many tastes on board. Every day we get diverse catered lunch. Every a new dish fills our bellies with joy. We do our best to consume healthy food and we never miss having fresh fruit in the office. Even so, sometimes it’s hard to resist and afternoon piece of chocolate so we have a tablet (or two?) hidden in the snack drawer alongside other tasty goodies.

A healthy body and a healthy mind

While for a long time we have been preaching about and practicing all sorts activities to encourage physical health, our focus went then towards the mental health. There are many people in our team who start discussions around mental health and encourage others to become curious on the topic. With that in mind but also following feedback from our team who felt the effects of the pandemic in one way or another, we signed OpenUp to be our mental health support provider and made it available for every single team member, remote or on-site.

With OpenUp, everyone in the team can not only educate themselves on mental health, but also do regular self check ins to see how their overall mental state is, schedule mindfulness sessions or 1:1s with a psychologist and attend masterclasses on various topics (how to disconnect from work, how to improve relationships, etc)

Mental health support in practice

The health of our team is constantly on our mind and we continuously evaluate how they are doing and what we could do to improve even more how we enable them to stay healthy. The latest wellness score we got in OfficeVibe is 8.2 and it makes us happy to understand from our people that they are doing well and they feel that we value their wellness. At the same time we know that although some things are there and working well, there is still more to do in this regard.

When asked what are some things we do that show them how important their mental health is, the most common responses we received were the following:

• Company remote events and weekly meetings to connect with everyone
• Care displayed to each single employee
• Great support from pretty much everyone in the organization in low moments
• Safe space to share anything that they might experience; open discussions about personal topics as well as professional
• Supportive managers who are constructive in finding solutions when the cognitive load becomes too high
• People being active listeners
• Flexibility in working hours and flexible time off.

At the end of the day, healthy people are happy people and we’re committed to support them in any way we can!