Things then took an interesting turn for Emilie at the deal’s closing dinner. As she talked to the client, he suggested she send in her résumé since there might be an opening for her in his company. This she did, and was surprised to be offered a position in the HR function, not the legal team. “I thought about it and realised that this would suit me well, because my talent was not purely in law.”
That company was the venerable Netherlands-based group SHV, which in 2022 celebrated its 125th anniversary. Emilie duly joined in 2010.
SHV is a company of about 60,000 people involved in a range of activities from cash and carry wholesale to exploration and production of oil and gas. Its motto is ‘Courage to care for generations to come’. During Emilie’s eight years with SHV, she gained a huge amount of experience and knowledge about people management. In particular, this time underlined for her the importance of an organisation’s values.
“What is interesting about SHV is that the company’s values were set down about 50 years ago and have applied ever since,” Emilie notes. “Values related to sustainability were added more recently.
“What struck me was that the values were incorporated into every communication within the company, and its people lived the values. It impressed on me that if you set the right values, those values become the glue that binds a company together. That’s exactly the message I convey to the companies I now advise.”
After SHV, Emilie joined WeTransfer, the Netherlands-based internet computer file transfer service company, as Head of HR and Legal. From there, she became People and Culture Director at GoSpooky, a fast-growing company that helps brands make relevant content on social media.
Going solo
Emilie switched to working for herself as a freelance HR professional in 2019 to better balance work and home life with her husband and their three children, now aged 11, nine and five.
In early 2022, she teamed up with a collective of freelance HR professionals called People masterminds, again based in the Netherlands, which provides people and culture advice and strategies to start-ups and scale-ups.
As Emilie notes, in new and growing companies there is an inevitable primary focus on the business side – making and selling innovative products – without giving enough emphasis to managing the people. “We help these businesses to structure their systems for people management, helping them to define and institutionalise their values, producing a culture manifesto and advising on everything associated with HR, including, for example, salary structures and performance management. We can also help companies translate their values into practical steps as part of the organisation’s culture.
“What we don’t do is make the decisions for them – that is up to the companies themselves.”