THE KYR? BABYBOOM AND WHY IT’S GOOD FOR THE COMPANY CULTURE

Babies, babies and babies. During the past ten months we have had the happy occasion of sending four future moms to their parental leaves. Two of them have been from our marketing team of five and two of them from our financial team of, well, two. Also, we’ve had one person leaving us marketers and communicators to pursue new challenges on their career, which was of course sad for us, but definitely the right thing to do for this talented and highly skilled person.

While new human beings are lovingly welcomed to our rye community, this obviously has brought a lot of new kind of challenges to our somewhat small teams. Because all of our roles are so called key roles.

So how do we attract the right kind of people when at first the position is usually fixed term? How do we find the exact match for the skills we need, when the soon-mom-to-be is eventually going to come back to their position? When thinking about continuity the exact same skill set for two roles is not something we want to have in the future.

ADJUST STRATEGICALLY

First of all, the most important key solution to all of this is the context in which we are as a company at this time: we plan to grow rapidly in the following in the years to come. So, when recruiting new people as substitutes for someone we are in fact growing our teams and the skillset of the teams according to our growth strategy. It really does not matter whether the situation emerges unplanned.

This means that we have sort of blown up the roles in the teams in pieces and then started to build them up again in order to see clearly, what the missing talent actually is at this moment and in the future. People in our small team might have skills that maybe have not been put into use because someone else has been on that particular task already. Someone leaving the team is the perfect time to review the skill set of the whole team.

Also, you can never underestimate the power of motivation. Someone in the team might be really interested in taking on new challenges within the team and motivated in learning new things. Why not consider this seriously? This person already has the knowledge, for example when talking about marketing, about the brand and the general way of working in the team as well as the set goals, tools and strategies. Why not give them the opportunity to grow for your mutual benefit? ?

FLEXIBILITY+?INNOVATION=?LEAN

For these major changes in a team it really is essential to listen to the people that actually do the work. They are the ones who know how to fill the gaps in between people’s talents the best. They also have the best insight in the need for future innovations: new tools, new ideas and new ways of working.

Once reviewing all the details on everyone’s motivations, hopes and dreams as well as skills, it is possible or even probable that what you initially thought would be your recruitment need and plan, is not really accurate. The new person does not have to be or preferably should not be the clone of the person originally holding the position but bring something new to the team. Something that has a place and worth in your organization also after the babies grow and their parents return to work.

Innovation flourishes on flexibility. One should think about team building not only a task that is based on data and knowledge but also on creativity. It requires using imagination on how things not only are or should be but how they could be. You need to let the process lead you to the best possible outcome.

WHY IS ALL THIS GOOD FOR THE COMPANY CULTURE?

First and foremost, babies are always good. They have the ability to teach us things about ourselves we never knew existed. This is also the case from the organizational perspective.

For us to thrive as a team and as a community we must make the most of changes and see them as opportunities to really have a deep look at our ways of doing things and the company culture in general.

Babies and parenting can also raise many important topics relevant to the company culture and equality into discussion: are our vacationing rules equal between parents and non-parents, and if not, is there a solid moral base to this particular outcome? In the times of distant work do we still appreciate the fact that tending to children sick in flu is a full time job, and should not be done in the midst of a series of Zoom-meetings? Should we sometimes do something together as a community that involves our children? Maybe a visit to the zoo?

With these thoughts we wish everyone, but in particular all the mothers in Kyr? community a very happy Mothers Day! What you do now is the most important task to be done.

Everything else is just booze.