How GIS consultancy Tensing builds a top employer culture

Hot on the heels of being named a top employer, we spoke with employee experience specialist Charelle Grootenboer about how the firm builds a culture that is so well appreciated by its consultants and staff.

Each year, the Great Place to Work Institute examines the workplaces of thousands of organisations around the world. Using a blended methodology of employee surveys and analysing HR policies, its researchers map out how organisations and managers nurture talent – highlighting best practices and celebrating top performers in the process.

Among the top employers in the Netherlands was Tensing, an international consultancy firm specialised in geographic information services (GIS). The company was named the country’s 10th best medium-sized employer (those with 50-249 staff), and notably, almost all of the firm’s 115 employees in the country participated in the Great Place to Work poll. Of which, 96% said they considered Tensing to be “a top employer”.

“I’ve been at Tensing for 10 months now, and my personal experience has been great,” says Charelle Grootenboer, who has experienced the firm’s welcoming environment first-hand. “It’s not only where I feel supported to grow and develop my own skills, but just as importantly, I feel it respects everyone within the company. I felt welcome from the very first day.”

That initial welcome includes receiving flowers on the first day – and a second onboarding day after two weeks at the firm, where new joiners are given further opportunities to meet people within the company. Beyond this, Tensing continues to celebrate its staff, giving them flowers when they graduate from their probation period to a permanent contract, and on their birthday. The company also buys them champagne when they win a promotion.

“As well as our individual celebrations, I’ve also enjoyed plenty of team-building events,” Charelle continues. “We go on trips, go bowling, do things like cooking courses – to have some fun outside of work, but also to get to know each other even better.”

Building ahead

As well as having experienced the firm’s offering to employees first-hand, however, Charelle is even better placed to tell us about the firm’s people-focused edge because she leads the employee experience proposition. When asked what that means, she says summing it up in a sentence would be “making sure people are happy in their job” – but there is a lot more too it than that suggests.

Notably, the Great Place to Work poll is only the final result in a long line of processes the firm deploys to continuously keep tabs on employee satisfaction.

Charelle expands, “The things we are looking at is how we can make sure everyone can develop within their current job, but also how the jobs are situated right now. Are there enough chances to get promoted? Are employee benefits aligned with future demands?

On the last Friday of each month, this sees her organise a knowledge-sharing event, where all the firm’s consultants meet up to exchange trends and new insights. “But we also do that to make sure that we stay connected, because our consultants are not always at the office – they also work with clients or from home. So by organising this I help to make sure we maintain this togetherness that makes our firm so special.”

Elaborating on that, she adds that “the biggest thing we have within this company is it feels like a family”. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter “if you’re with the firm for an hour, a year, or a decade,” every employee will be “accepted and supported.”

Having ranked as number 10 nationwide, Charelle did acknowledge that she faces a challenging task – how to improve on an already exceptional result? “Luckily everyone at Tensing loves a challenge, so we’re constantly talking about it – trying to get feedback from our population of staff, so we can continually look back on what we have done, and find ways to be even better. Communication on this front will be key to progress – it won’t be easy still, but we will find a way.”

“Tensing creates an inclusive environment build around the pillars of diversity & inclusion, credibility and respect.”
– Great Place to Work

The trust Tensing puts in its staff’s feedback to improve the way the company performs is also a core part of how its training and development function. When a junior member of staff joins, they are enrolled into the ‘Young Professional Programme’ which lasts for two years, supplying common knowledge, consultancy skills and certifications they will need in their line of specialism.

From associate level onwards, the firm supplies intermediate support – with certificates or personal goals set according to performance – and in some cases, purchases new courses according to what the consultant says they need to learn. “Our approach to knowledge management is highly tailored to the individual.”

Impactful consulting

In the Netherlands, and many other European economies, businesses have been coming under scrutiny for a perceived inaction to support diversity. For example, women still hold proportionally few management roles within the country’s professional services sector.

Tensing’s approach to create an inclusive environment seems to have helped it outperform many of its competitors on this front. Looking at the Great Places To Work survey in more detail, Charelle states that the firm performs especially well in terms of ‘credibility’ and ‘respect’. It is an environment where “people feel they can speak up and be included” at all times.

“We also scored highly in terms of ‘fairness’,” she goes on. “Fairness is a big point for us because people feel they can be themselves. In an environment where subjects like gender, culture or other social factors are a big talking point, everyone feels safe and included at Tensing, and that is important.”

She also explains that this commitment to fairness expands beyond the walls of the office. One of the factors which draws many professionals to the consulting sector is the opportunity to access socially impactful work – and Tensing is determined to live up to that.

“Impactful work is big in our company – especially because we work in geo-data, so we attract a lot of consultants who already want to make an impact. That is even more pronounced among our younger arrivals, who always ask what we do about sustainability during the recruitment process.”

This means that as part of its work, Tensing is often “looking for projects where the firm can help other companies with sustainability or social impact”. Often the company works with government organisations, helping to map assets such as utilities or key infrastructure – so Tensing’s bread and butter is naturally aligned to tangible impact that contributes to the lives of people.”

But beyond this, Tensing also has a number of inhouse projects aimed at making a difference in the world. One example of this is Missing Maps.

“The project is like a ‘mapathon’ that helps the Red Cross,” says Charelle. “The Red Cross has a problem that there are a lot of old pictures of remote areas, but not a lot of maps. This is often in Africa or Asia, and these are areas where there is a chance of natural disasters – storms, tsunamis, floods – so, often, they don’t know if there are roads, or if anyone lives in a certain area. And you need to know that in the response to a disaster. So, what we do is to make those pictures into maps, creating lines to depict roads and houses on existing maps of the terrain, so if something is wrong, they know where they need to look, and how to get there.”

The consulting firm also has a scheme to help raise individuals in the Global South out of poverty. When employees join Tensing, they are provided a device to work on – and after three years, the firm gives them an option to purchase it as a personal non-work device for €50. That money is then donated to Wakibi, an organisation which provides credit, for example, “to a woman who wants to buy a chicken to sell the eggs”.

Looking forward

All of this further contributes to a rich culture where the company’s staff feel they are supported to make an impact in each other’s lives, but also to have “a great impact on Planet Earth”.

Given her own role, Charelle emphasizes that the firm is determined not to rest on its laurels. Circling back to how the consultancy can build on its current status as a top employer, she highlights a few areas of focus for the period ahead. “We’re looking to provide our employees with more intrapreneurial opportunities, we’re investing in introducing new appealing ways of working, and we’re encouraging more personalised training.”

Fast forward twelve months, and that might well be something which will have propelled Tensing above the current top-10 of the nations’ top employers.