3 Work City Guides

Where to Work 3 Work City Guides

Eindhoven is located in the Dutch province of North Brabant, situated in the south of the country. Eindhoven grew from a little town in the 1200s to one of the most important cities in the Netherlands. Much of its growth is due to Philips, among others. Because Eindhoven is where

Philips based itself it is also known

as the city of light. Eindhoven’s economy is largely founded on technology and innovation. Brainport Eindhoven Region is a top technology breeding ground for innovation and home to world-class businesses, knowledge institutes and research institutions. Shenzhen is a coastal city in South China, located in southern Guangdong on the eastern bank of the Pearl River. At present, Shenzhen

tops all the municipalities in mainland China in per capita GDP as one of the municipalities with the best

economic returns nationwide. As the outpost of the Pearl River Delta Area, Shenzhen is the bridge connecting mainland China and Hong Kong and is an important transport hub in the coastal area of South China. The Hong Kong-Shenzhen Western Corridor will bring about closer mutual links upon completion. Hi-tech, modern logistics, financial services and cultural industry are the four economic pillars that Shenzhen is striving to develop.

Quebec City is the

capital of the Canadian province of Quebec. The walls surrounding Old Quebec were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985 because they are the only fortified walls in the Americas north of Mexico. Most jobs

in Quebec City are concentrated in public administration, defense, services, commerce, transport and

tourism. As the provincial capital, the city benefits from being a regional administrative and services center: apropos, the provincial government is the largest employer in the city. Around 10 percent of jobs are in manufacturing. Principal products include pulp and paper, processed food, metal/wood items, chemicals, electronics and electrical equipment, and printed materials

Following in 2014: Tel Aviv, Libreville, Medellin.

• Tel Aviv is the second most populous city in Israel. It was built on dunes and is unsuitable for farming. Instead it developed as a hub of business and scientific research. • Libreville is the capital and largest city of Gabon. The city is home to a shipbuilding industry, brewing industry and sawmills. • Medellin is the second-largest city in Colombia. Medellín's main economic products are steel, textiles, confections, food and beverage, agriculture (from its rural area), public services, chemical products, pharmaceuticals, refined oil, and flowers. Fashion is a major part of the economy and culture of the city.

100 Work Cities The top 100 cities for workers over the next decade are profiled in a project put together by GWH (SA) - Work Style.

Free consultation of the guides of: Brazil: São Paulo Chile: Valparaiso China: Shenzhen France: Marseille Germany: Düsseldorf Greece: Thessaloniki

Italy: Turin Japan: Kyoto Kazakhstan: Almaty Malawi: Blantyre Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur

Nigeria: Lagos Norway: Bergen Portugal: Oporto Russia: Ekaterinburg UK: Manchester

Ukraine: Mariupol USA: Denver, Albuquerque

Slovenia: Ljubljana The Netherlands: Eindhoven Turkey: Izmir Spain: Seville Lebanon: Beirut Venezuela: Caracas

Canada Quebec City

Colombia

Medellin

The Netherlands

Eindhoven

Israel Tel Aviv

Gabon Libreville

China Shenzhen

Where to Work Country Guide Belgium

that indeed shows itself in the familiarity of the relations in the workplace, resetting any obstruction from the CEO to all of the employees. To listen also means a “people session”, where twice a year 8 employees are chosen at random and gathered together to discuss the state of the art with the CEO with total freedom to ask about any issue, to make proposals, to raise topics or to table suggestions, because enthusiasm and being willing matter more than diplomas and certificates. Unfortunately, once again there is a risk that the entrepreneurial spirit will not be adequately rewarded because, “If 9 in 10 cases are successful, the attention probably woud be paid to the one that struggled and didn't meet the required standards.” In the meantime, new ways of thinking about work fight forward, moving in the direction of balancing time working and personal time better. “Regarding this, we are equipping ourselves with a series of 'anti-stress' programs, maybe made up of little things but those that have an influence on everyday life. From occasions to stay together in a social environment to nutrition advice on eating the most healthy diets.” Belgian national legislation seems to be offering new opportunities to reprogram timetables and working schedules. So what's on the horizon for Gouden Gids: to stimulate training, aiming for elearning and self-learning (leaving a wide margin of choice in the type of training preferred by employees) and an overall office reshaping to adapt the space to new criteria of flexibility, promoting active forms of collaboration and combining the employees according to departments and divisions of provenance – taking into consideration that workers come from 10 different nationalities: Canadians, English, Portuguese, South Africans, Brazilians and Dutch combine with Belgians. “Personal development” is one of the cornerstones at Decathlon, which gives its employees ultimate freedom in how any position inside the company functions, in a way that allows the greatest possible flexibility in addition to being the responsibility of all. Overall well-being is furthermore the beacon of a company that specializes in all that revolves around sport and leisure, because the objective is helping to build “self-confidence”, giving all employees all the means and the opportunity to practise well-being. The perfect representative of the athletic spirit that permeates the company, Carole Jenssens speaks more like a “coach”, a personal trainer, rather than an HR manager. “We have a monthly meeting to open a discussion among employees and managers,” the expression of a totally horizontal approach which supports and encourages the concreteness of Belgian people. “We encourage the ‘doers’, we believe in the culture of action and for this reason we try to make the development of ideas and new projects as easy as possible.” United by the inclination not to take oneself too seriously – and to be able to enjoy themselves – the method clearly gives results, considering the employment plan in full expansion, with 100 open positions in a development plan that by 2020 aims at doubling the company's presence in Belgium! •

Karen Corrigan is CEO, strategic director and co-founder of the agency Happiness, a communications company managed by 4 partners and 2 generations combining female intuition and flair with male creativity and power. The agency employs people of more than 15 nationalities and from many different backgrounds. In April 2014 Happiness was awarded a golden Brand Impact Award for a TV campaign with the highest impact in Belgium. This campaign started in September 2013 and has led to 700,000 daily visitors to the site who have shared a total of 4 million articles. [W happiness-brussels.com] Work Style — #13.14

Social responsibility mixed with start-up

entrepreneurs: this is the cocktail you can find at La Lustrerie, a solidarity-oriented business center, closely involved in the life and revitalization of Schaerbeek’s district in Brussels. Appreciated by companies in creative fields, it today houses architects, silkscreen printers, photographers and web designers, and occasionally organizes or takes part in cultural events. Its team strives to make the center a place of conviviality under the “umbrella” of creativity, while its small size gives it a “family” character.

[W lalustrerie.be]

01 The backstage of a performance at la Lustrerie 02 Artwork 03 - 04 A group of artists working at La Lustrerie in Schaerbeek's district

All photos were taken by Luca Fenderico

Working in Belgium

means trust in management, sharing the company vision and comradeship, moderated and filtered by a Flemish modesty.

By Aagje Pauwels and Jolien Nulens, project coordinators at Great Place to Work Belgium

We don’t talk about successes, there's almost a certain fear of saying “how good we are” when we obtain important results. It’s a real pity because many companies do a lot, but they communicate much less. Taking into consideration the weight and the importance of job data in Belgium, real social status to which is transferred the power of defining personal identity, is a pretty paradoxical situation. For this reason, it's also not so easy to find the right trade-off between working life and the private and familial dimension. They are developing, they explain, new fronts of scientific research aimed at exploring the behavior of those people who work from home. JOLIEN NULENS

AAGJE PAUWELS

Complex situations occur in this area of work due to a misplaced sense of total availability, which becomes an everlasting lack out of fear that if the home-worker doesn't immediately answer an email or phone call people will think they are not working at all. Even if the GPTW's research form has been the same for 10 years, the ingredients that make the difference (in the formulation of companies' ranking) are always the same: confidence, trade-off with private life, and communication. This last one includes important dimensions such as transparency, which has characterized objectives and evaluation criteria, inefficiently if not communicated. Actually, recently there has been a change of pace, first of all in the perception of “the world of work”, put to the test by these years of crisis, which has contributed to the rise of even more core values, beginning with the resistance of the level of confidence recognized in those who lead the company. The real match is played on the process, on the way of researching elements that can make an ideal company a place to spend one’s own working life. It’s in this way that GPTW wants to assist companies, helping them to improve.

2014 Best Workplaces in Belgium

Fewer than 500 employees

• AE • Microsoft • SAS Institute • Ormit N.V. • Easi • Diageo • Mars Belgium • Handson&Partners • CTG Belgium N.V. • Protime

More than 500 employees

• Torfs • McDonald’s Belgium • Accent Jobs • Adecco • FedEx • KBC • Monsanto • Elia • Goudengids.be/pagesdor.be • Decathlon

Great Place to Work Institute Belgium

Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Reep 1, 9000 Gent Belgium T 0032 9 210 97 54 [W greatplacetowork.be]