Flat hierarchies, flexibility and empowerment; the future of the working world
Is there a worse feeling at work than being stuck and not being encouraged and challenged? Hardly. That's why we at Varioprint are committed to empowerment, the development of young employees and an innovative leadership culture. And in doing so, we are strongly aligned with the values of New Work.
New Work is more than just a trend. It is a comprehensive change that affects all aspects of the working world. Companies and employees must adapt to a new way of working. This is characterized by flexibility, independence, value orientation and a modern leadership culture. In our blog series, we show how Varioprint is tackling these issues. This time, the focus is on leadership culture, empowerment and agile working.
You can find the first part of our blog series on New Work here: Work-Life Balance and Well-Being at Work: A New Perspective.
Flat hierarchies
The boss alone decides where things go. This attitude, which is still frequently encountered in the working world, does not exist at our company. We are increasingly moving away from a directive management style toward an inclusive management style. At Varioprint, hierarchies are flat and decision-making paths are short. On the one hand, this gives our employees a great deal of room for maneuver and a wide range of creative options. On the other hand, fast decision-making processes save us valuable time and allow us to focus on what we are really good at: expanding our technology leadership in printed circuit board manufacturing.
Flat hierarchies also mean that all employees are allowed and able to take on responsibility. Our team leaders are only too happy to hand over this responsibility, because they know that self-efficacy is crucial for satisfied employees. Through our modern management culture, we also prove that innovation and tradition are not mutually exclusive.
Empowerment
We've probably all heard the word empowerment. But do you know what it means? Empowerment means that an employer encourages and supports employees to discover their own strengths and develop as much independence as possible. Personal responsibility and the recognition of personal development potential are an integral part of our corporate culture.
To enable our employees to ideally unfold and develop their potential, we offer targeted support in the area of career development. This includes training beyond the employee's own job or support for external continuing education. In addition, targeted training and development is increasingly taking place on our in-house digital platform. In this way, we want to enable uncomplicated further development without barriers. And at the same time promote lifelong learning, also known as lifelong learning.
Promoting (young) talent
Young people are motivated, dynamic and often see the world through different eyes. A new perspective can bring a breath of fresh air into a company and help to overcome what is known as corporate blindness. Just think of the well-known phrase: "We've just always done it that way." That's why we specifically promote young talent through further training and interdisciplinary project tasks, among other things, and take their views seriously. Even the youngest employees are actively encouraged to contribute their ideas and suggestions for improvement. We listen to innovative ideas and implement them wherever possible.
Free Creativity
Creativity is increasingly regarded as a valuable commodity. And rightly so, because without creativity, we are often at a standstill. Our employees are allowed to submit suggestions for improvement and optimization on any topic in the sense of an ideas competition. A committee then decides on possible implementation. If an idea is implemented, the person involved receives compensation. Innovative ideas are worth a lot to us and creative employees are priceless anyway.
In addition, we recently renovated our attic to bring a bit of "home to the office"; a place where our employees can be inspired and give free rein to their creativity.
Flexible working hours
Our goal is to give our employees as much room as possible for creativity and individual life plans. Creativity and well-being are only possible if the work-life balance is right. It is important to us that our employees can plan their working day as flexibly as possible. Part of our team benefits from flexible working hours as well as flexitime. Thanks to the home office, these employees can better reconcile their private and work lives. Work and free time thus flow into each other in a very uncomplicated way, for example when our employees treat themselves to a short sports session during their lunch break.
Collaboration: The path to innovation
Does this sound familiar: two teams in a company that have never spoken to each other or, worse, even badmouth each other? At Varioprint, we want to prevent this at all costs. We are convinced that innovation is only possible when interdisciplinary work is done. Through our interdisciplinary teams, a valuable exchange of know-how and technical expertise takes place. We also secure the knowledge gained here with the help of our digital learning platform VarioWiki. VarioWiki is an internal knowledge database in the style of Wikipedia.
We greatly appreciate the fact that our employees have diverse backgrounds and different personalities. This makes it all the more important to benefit from precisely these differences and to combine the strengths of all teams. However, we also specifically promote collaborations with external partners and participate in technology transfers and development projects.
