Better operating results thanks to focus on the soft side with TMA

About Dutch Quality Group: DQG is the umbrella organization comprising four distinct companies. These include design furniture brands Design on Stock and EYYE, furniture factory Dutch Quality – Made in Holland, and Studio Foorumi, a collaborative venture providing young talents with opportunities to pitch designs. DQG sells its furniture through retail channels in both the Netherlands (70) and Belgium (30) and employs 75 staff members.

Investing in the 'soft side'; many organizations are somewhat hesitant about it. Unjustly, knows Cees Scheurwater, Chief Operating Officer at Dutch Quality Group (DQG). By investing in the 'soft side' and working well-organized, the results of his organization have skyrocketed.

Professionalizing the company and placing more focus on the employee: that's what Cees Scheurwater wanted when he became co-owner of DQG, a company that develops and manufactures designer furniture, in 2015. "Organizational change is a slow process, it takes time and the right tools. I knew that the human aspect within this company was neglected. But I believed that with the right vision and a plan, we could turn this around." Just two days into the job, Scheurwater started looking for an HR manager. He found Marlon Stroosnijder, someone who, like him, is strongly focused on talent management. "We had to build everything within the organization from scratch, but at the same time, we were growing and you need the right people for that," says Stroosnijder. Together, they chose the TMA Method as the philosophy for talent management within DQG.

A good story

Initially, purely a selection tool. "Connecting with good people is an art, you shouldn't skimp on that," says Stroosnijder. "After all, employees are the most valuable asset of an organization. We can come up with all sorts of ideas, but it ultimately depends on the people who have to execute them. We need to give them attention, inspire them, make them feel included, ensure they participate in decision-making, and use their creativity. And to be able to do that, we need to have a good story, because a group of people without a story is not a group."

Stroosnijder and Scheurwater created that good story together with TMA.
"We are quite a unique company, so we wanted to use a tool that we could still shape a bit ourselves," says Scheurwater. "After all, the environment in which you work is constantly changing. With many tools, this option to influence wasn't there, but with TMA it was. We had our values integrated, making it even easier for us to find the people who fit with us."

Human knowledge is not enough

"I think I have sufficient experience and people skills, but it's nice to be able to be guided by factual information as well," says Stroosnijder, who is now the TMA Professional within the organization. "TMA is a great support for the work of an HRM professional; you quickly get a clear report that allows you to see if you have the right person at the table."

For Stroosnijder, it was also important that the tool could keep up within the growing organization. "You know which individual people are suitable for a role and that they fit with our core values, but does that person also fit in the team? We started to look at this much more because it turned out that sometimes we assigned tasks to the wrong person. For example, we had someone with a lower score on order and structure entering orders. Now that we respond to these kinds of things and adjust processes, we make far fewer mistakes."

Stroosnijder continues, "I strongly believe in: improving what you're already good at. We want to maximize the quality of an employee – where are his or her strengths, what does he/she enjoy – and we have made that visible now. Previously, we could see it, but it was so difficult to make it concrete. Being able to do this now makes conducting conversations easier. As a result, we work together more effectively and pay more attention to personal and team development. The great strength lies in how practical it all is applicable; you can see at a glance what someone gets energy from. We are going to create even more space for mutual evaluation, through the 360-degree feedback, so that colleagues also see how they come across to others and become even more engaged with each other. People really enjoy that. Nowadays, I even get asked by friends and partners of employees if they can do a TMA Talentenanalyse."

At top of Priority List

"It's a shame that investing in the softer side is not at the top of the priority list for all companies," says Scheurwater. "Yes, you're talking about insights and philosophies rather than hard numbers, but we see that our results are improving significantly. We perform better, there's less waste, we collaborate even more... So, that's some sound advice for other organizations: you can focus on the outcome, but if you don't pay attention to the rest, you can't grow any faster."

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