UK 
United StatesSandrien Boogaard
HR Director, GoodHabitz
The ‘Roast’ of the work colleagues is just one of the many learning opportunities that Boogaard has catapulted onto the agenda...
Sandrien Boogaard
HR Director, GoodHabitz
The ‘Roast’ of the work colleagues is just one of the many learning opportunities that Boogaard has catapulted onto the agenda...
Risk-taking and laughing at failures is key at GoodHabitz, an employer of 398. Sandrien Boogaard, the HR Director at the learning platform, which operates in 15 countries says the light-hearted event is inspired by a Dutch tradition which creates a safe space to share and laugh about work-related and personal blunders. The goal, she says is not to shame or ridicule but to celebrate shared experiences and encourage a culture of openness and trust.
It may not be for everyone, but the ‘Roast’ is just one of the many learning opportunities that Boogaard has catapulted onto the agenda. Development is what this HR Director is all about. She herself is all about continuous professional development – when you delve deeper it’s apparent from her ‘to do list’ which encompasses running a half marathon each year and undertaking a Masters in her own time that she doesn’t rest on her laurels easily.
This HR Director has worked in the industry for some 20 years. Past roles include HR Director at Virtuagym, Stars and Stories – a marketing agency, Bever a retail business and HR Officer at T-Mobile. She is a self-confessed fan of entrepreneurial businesses and says she has a fascination with new companies and founders, “I was always reading books about how Steve Jobs came up with that amazing idea and guts to really make it happen.” This coupled with a fascination for people landed her in HR.
Boogaard says, “I started studying psychology and realised that maybe it was a bit soft for me but felt that if I combined the two passions for entrepreneurship and people that would work, and it gave me the ‘sweet spot’ of HR.” She adds that in her 20s she wrote her thesis with the slogan, ‘Only people can make it’ and she says that is still what she lives by today.
The HR bubble at GoodHabitz needed roots
As with all good moves, Boogaard wasn’t really looking for a new job when a headhunter called her, but she is reputation driven and knew of GoodHabitz. It was going to be a challenge because there were 398 employees that were geographically dispersed and it was as she says, already, ‘super complex’. She began by focusing on the ‘HR bubble’ and knew that it was time to ‘walk the talk’ on what they as a business were preaching.
“It was time to shift our HR focus to really create a business impact,” says Boogaard who explains that the first thing she focused upon was transitioning her focus of HR from being part of the CFO’s remit to being part of the CEO’s. The tenacious Boogaard is part of the executive leadership team now which she says is so important in the journey she is on, ‘to really have a seat at the table.’
We are very ready, and the business is too in terms of having HR as a more centralised strategic business partner
She refers to it as a bridge between business objectives and translating that into HR practices. “You need a foundation before you can build a nest and that’s the same for HR.” Boogaard recognises that a mindset shift for the whole team is required for success.
“We are very ready, and the business is too in terms of having HR as a more centralised strategic business partner,” she comments.
Practice what you preach
‘Unified’ learners is how Boogaard describes the employees at GoodHabitz. The mission is to make learning accessible for everyone and to ensure that everyone in the business is part of that mission. With a service that delivers employee learning engagement, the aim is to ‘practice what it preaches’ and use its own content to deliver learning and development to its own staff.
“We use an onboarding programme via our GoodHabitz platform which resonates with the templates that we use for our own platform,” she says. There is a focus on developing a real learning culture. There is an emphasis on creating a ‘safe environment’ for learning to occur within the business – where asking for feedback is encouraged and not deterred. This is how the ‘Roast of the Colleagues’ comes into play.
She refers to it as ‘really fun’ and something that all the employees really love. Slips, trips, and disasters are posted via email – the failures of ‘others’. It sounds a little bit Shakespearean, and you may expect some tragedy to befall the hapless victim but Boogaard says it’s not like that at all. “The show is entertaining and very funny!” she explains.
I ask whether there is a pinch of reticence on this comedic whistleblowing, but Boogaard says that in practice it’s all about role modelling and accepting that whoever we are, we all fail at one time or another. “It’s a journey of learning,” she adds.
