Welcome to the newest edition of Lever Limelight. In this edition, we spoke with Laura Hoogendoorn. Laura is the Director of Human Resources at TABS Inc., which helps international businesses start a United States-based entity. They aim to serve as a one-stop shop for these organizations to set up their entity, apply for the tax ID, and set up a bank account while assisting with continued back office administration and consulting around payroll, human resources, bookkeeping, corporate governance, and mail handling.
What does success look like for you and TABS?
We just celebrated our 15-year anniversary and as I prepared for the presentation I planned to give during our corporate retreat, this question came to mind for me.
As I created my presentation and analyzed the data available to me, I realized that we've always had this steady-paced growth path, where in the last couple of years, I do feel like we've grown faster, but it still has been steady-pace. It's always been linear growth going up, which is great. And a big second reason for the success is the fact that our employees tend to stay with us longer than what the norm is nowadays.
So we have quite a few people that have been here for ten plus years, five plus years, and almost everyone has been here already two plus years. So yeah, I think our tenure is really great at TABS.
Comparing your work to where you started, what has been that main thing that has allowed you to expand and grow?
I would say investing in our people for sure. And building a stronger management communication system, where we're really trying to make sure that the communication between every department and then up towards management is stronger. That's still a work in progress. I feel like that's always the case. But where it was everyone kind of working for themselves for some time, as we grew, that became even more apparent because, you know, there's more people, less time to have clear communication.
But really investing in the people, making sure that they all have a way to continue to develop, grow, and learn, and investing in our communications and the Mission, Vision, and Values... It's a stronger vision for the company.
What inspired you to pursue a leadership role in your company?
I feel like it kind of happened naturally, as it usually happens. I've been with TABS for over 10 years. So it's been a long time coming. And a lot of the people that started with us stay, of course, and wanted to continue to grow, which kind of meant that I wanted to make space for them and move up myself, but I actually really enjoy it as well, just coaching people through it, teaching them what I've learned, and making sure that I am a part of the company's overall success and the employee's success, because no matter whether employees stay with us longer or short term, in most cases they stay longer term, we do want to have them be set up for success, whether they move on at some point and go to other companies.
We really care about our people. Our people are the company.
As someone in a leadership role, what were some of the biggest challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them?
Yeah, I think that's really the growth path. Although it was initially pretty slow and steady, it's still something that you're not really prepared for until you're in the middle of it and then beyond it, where we went from one office to three offices, with one of them being in Europe.
So it's the time difference. People, again, working in different departments. So there's not a lot of communication unless they are working on the same client, for example. I think that's where revamping our Mission, Vision, and Values late last year came in because we got some survey results from our employee engagement surveys. And although everyone seemed happy at TABS and in their positions and all of that, the main things that kept coming up over and over again were I don't fully understand where we're going, what my role is within that, what's the growth path, and what management really wants.
And that's it's a little hard to hear, of course, as someone in management, but it is it was kind of an eye opener for us to figure out how can we make sure that the next time that we send a survey out, it's not as much. So we spent several hours just working, reworking our values. Putting them on paper, first of all, because that's good. That's an important one as well. Our vision has changed over time. I mean, we are not the same company as we were 10 plus years ago. And our mission, just making it more as it is today. I mean, the mission has always been similar, but we are expanding, so that the mission also has to expand with it.
We care about our people. Our people are the company. - Laura Hoogendoorn, Director of Human Resources at TABS Inc.
Since adopting these programs, have you seen measurable growth or improvements such as revenue increase, efficiency, or employee engagement?
Yeah, definitely employee engagement. We do feel like people are more actively speaking out on what they want and more actively responding to things that are not working. So if we ask them a question on, like, what's really bothering you in your day-to-day work, before they wouldn't really feel comfortable speaking out.
But I feel like just showing that we are one team and that we are here to listen, I feel like now they have, number one, have a better understanding of what we're actually doing and where we want to go. And on top of that, just feeling more confident that the leadership team is not a scary group of people that you can't talk to. We are here because of our employees, and we want to make sure that they feel comfortable enough speaking with us.
And, we invested pretty heavily in one-on-one coaching for our leaders as well, so the middle management level, just because we want to make sure that every team is led by someone who has the confidence, who feels like they are secure in their role. And I think the team leaders really appreciated that as well.
Is there anything else you'd like to share about your growth journey or lessons learned?
Yeah, I think it's just for me to become very apparent that I've been hearing a lot lately that employees share with HR, that they find it very refreshing - the way that we do things, which is very nice to hear, obviously, especially because we do still get a lot of constructive feedback, but I think that just shows that they are willing to share that feedback, which is great.
But I do think that investing in the things that we did invest in, so really the leadership development, coaching, rewriting our MVV, even having The Predictive Index, investing in that program just goes to show that we really want to know about those who work for the company and what they feel works well for them.
So it's not just like a division of just a management team having this thing going, and then the rest of the team just kind of following blindly, but not really understanding. Although we were there at some point. It wasn't necessarily because we wanted to be. It's just we couldn't figure out how.
And I think these programs really helped with that. So I'm very happy. We had someone from Lever Talent present to us during our company retreat, which was great. And the employees actually really appreciated that, too.
Our mission at Lever Talent is to help people feel that they are closer to achieving more than they could have imagined. Do you feel that you are closer to achieving that goal?
Yes, definitely.
Laura's insights underscore the profound impact of investing in people, fostering strong communication, and clearly defining a company's mission, vision, and values. TABS Inc.'s journey reflects a commitment to continuous improvement and a genuine dedication to employee well-being, paving the way for sustained growth and a highly engaged workforce. As Laura shared, she feels closer to achieving Lever Talent's mission of helping people feel they can achieve more than they ever imagined, demonstrating the powerful synergy between a company's internal culture and its external success.
To learn more about how your can empower your organization or explore working with Lever Talent book a call.