Attractiveness on the labour market
Given the growth of Unica and the lack of labour available, retaining and attracting employees remains a priority in Unica’s strategy. By focusing on reliable, healthy and attractive employment practices, Unica has successfully limited the number of employees leaving the group and managed to retain new employees for a long time. This all starts with onboarding; new employees get to know Unica in detail on one of their first working days during a formal introduction day. During this day, they receive information about all company aspects, allowing them to find their way around the organisation more easily. Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, this introduction day could no longer take place physically at the head office in Hoevelaken from April. However, thanks to the efforts of the HRM team, it was possible to set up the introduction day completely digitally, and the onboarding of new employees could continue.
In view of future growth, Unica obviously has substantial recruitment needs. Despite the rise in general unemployment, the labour market for technical trained professionals remains very scarce. Nevertheless, Unica usually succeeds in filling vacant positions at its companies on time. Unica’s increasingly strong employer branding on the labour market ensures sufficient intake to match Unica’s growth. To maintain this position, a new ‘Careers’ website will be launched in 2021.
The wages under the collective labour agreement (CLA) in the sector in which Unica is mainly active have increased by more than 7% in the past two years, and an increase of 0.93% will follow in March 2021, in addition to a one-off payment. The higher wages make it more attractive to work in technology. A new CLA will be agreed upon in 2021, whereby industry association Techniek Nederland will conduct negotiations on behalf of all technical service providers, installation companies and the technical retail trade.
One topic given more attention at Unica is increasing diversity. In the autumn of 2020, an internal diversity platform called Unique was announced for this purpose. The aim of the platform is to build a more diverse workforce so that Unica continues to reflect social demographics and remains attractive on the labour market. Unica wants to further develop its diversity culture, step by step. The first step will be to raise the number of women within the organisation and to improve the gender balance. The ambition is to double female talent at Unica by 2025 and thereby increase the appeal of the organisation on the labour market as an employer for women. To get things moving, a mentoring programme was started in December 2020 for women at Unica who want to further develop their talents.
