In my experience as an HR manager, Head of HR, and CPO, I have seen many approaches from CEOs. When I started my career in smaller organisations, I often found that the founder was away doing fundraising, which meant that I had the playing field within the organisation. I was the HR person, looking after the employees, and it was fantastic.

But then founders or the CEO came back, and all of a sudden there was a clash of cultures, a clash of expectations. Employees were like, what just happened? What are the expectations? How am I supposed to perform? It’s just not good for the organisation when there are parallel cultures or expectations set to our employees.

It's so important for a HR manager or CPO, when they interview with CEOs, to find out whether they’re on the same wavelength, and whether they have the same vision for how we treat employees.

What do they want to achieve? Because if it’s selling the company in four years, let’s be honest with our employees. Give them a lot of stock options, tell them we won’t have lots of unnecessary benefits, and let’s just do everything we can to sell the company and get rich.

Or are we trying to build a great culture? That was really important to me when I interviewed at Blacklane with our CEO, Dr. Jens Wohltorf.

The reason why I have a good relationship with my CEO is because we challenge each other daily. I learned that from past experiences. Let’s not be quiet for six months, and then the gloves are off from the moment your probation period is over. Especially in the probation period, I believe HR should be very open and clear about what it is that they stand for, what their values are. Then the CEO can decide whether the HR person is for them or not.

And then also remember that it’s not just about the CEO and Head of HR. The culture of a company is built by the people that are in it. A good way to find out what is meaningful to employees are employee resource groups, and this is what we actively introduced at Blacklane, because we are a company with more than 300 employees and almost 60 nationalities! The majority of our employees are in Germany, but we come from everywhere, we’re all foreigners.

For us as the HR team and for the CEO, we can then understand what is important to our people, and make sure all initiatives, benefits, and perks are aligned with the people that we have. But of course that’s not everything, because as a company you evolve. If a CEO shows that they are curious about a changing culture and open to new cultures and values coming in with new staff, that’s the most appreciative thing that an employee can feel. It's not ultimately about the money, but that appreciation that keeps people.