Perfetti Van Melle began its sweet journey 120 years ago and now employs more than 17,000 people working across 38 operating companies. Its headquarters are in the Netherlands.

When it comes to redesigning work, perhaps no one is as agile as HR pros who have weathered a global pandemic, a sea change to worker’s rights like we haven’t seen since the Industrial Revolution, tremendous instability in the nation’s ‘leadership team’, a war in Europe, a fuel shortage and a cost-of-living crisis (or three). To say that HRDs are exhausted is to understate the case tremendously.
While 2023 is looking to be perhaps slightly more stable than the past few years, there is still a recession on the horizon and a talent shortage to tackle. To remain agile, light on one’s feet and flexible in approach are all important features of a good HR leader. Change management skills, after all, aren’t just honed at business school, nor based on financial calculations and forecasts. They’re primarily about people, both managing them and understanding them.
Emma Locke and her team at Perfetti Van Melle, redesigning work means lots of different things: from summer hours to allow the team to enjoy more of the fine British weather, to helping employees make cross-department moves and helping to smooth that journey for them.