Eighteen years ago Yoeri Severy started his own company as a student. Since then Yappa grew into a team of 28 ‘Yappanese’ who create, build and boost digital solutions for SMEs with a growth mindset. In this video, Yoeri explains how Yappa treats its personnel and how that affects both the company and its customers.
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Yoeri Severy
“I started Yappa as a student, that's why the growth of the company became organically. It was only in 2015 that we changed our outlook and started to think about growing. The moment when you state your ambition, you start making concrete plans. In 2020 we want to have tripled our turnover with double the amount of employees.”
“Transparency is very important to us. Our motto is: ‘We do what we say, and we say what we do’. This applies both for our customers as for Yappa internally. You don’t have to be best friends in a team, but you do have to be able to work together. We have a few tools for that. We use Insights Discovery, where we state what personal style of communication we prefer. How do I want people to communicate and how do I like to communicate? The use of this tool helps us to collaborate better.”
“I am CEO, which stands for Chief Enabler Officer. My most important role in the company is to help people grow. If we can help people grow and develop their talents, the customer will profit. Over the years I’ve learned that it’s not always a good idea to hire people with similar personalities. You need to find the right balance.”
“Our onboarding starts when you sign up, you'll get e-mails from us in the preceding weeks to get you acquainted with our Yappa culture, our habits, our meetings, but also with how to order sandwiches. When you show up on your first day, you are already familiar with our organisation. Every new employee gets a mentor and a bingo card, which features all of the concepts you’ll encounter here. When your bingo card is full, you're a fully-fledged ‘Yappanese’.”
“To folluw up how our employees feel we send out a biweekly survey. The way in which we deal with our employees has helped us to manage our growth over the last years. Even during the proces of change we’ve managed to put people in the right mindset and that has helped us to achieve our growth.”
“My advice to other companies: make your mission and your values explicit. As company director or employee you know them, but they aren’t made explicit. When you make them more outspoken it becomes easier to live by them because everyone is on the same wavelength.”
This video was produced by De Machine.
