A truly diverse tech company
Those who know us know that diversity and inclusion are what drives Clusity. That's why the company Go4Logistics immediately noticed. They develop Transportation Management Software (TMS) for managing and planning transportation by road, water, rail and air. What makes them stand out? Their super-diverse team, and female leader! They manage to embrace not only cultural diversity, but also gender and age diversity. Since we were still curious about their secret recipe, we went to talk to Veerle Goossens, CEO at Go4Logistics.🚆🚚🛬
During our conversation, Veerle Goossens, CEO at Go4Logistics, shared what their contribution is to diversity & inclusion and how they manage to build a diverse team.
Are you doing anything special to bring attention to the issue of diversity? With a team of 31% women, ethnic diversity and different ages, isn't there something that makes you different from other tech companies?
As management, we feel it is important that our Go4Logistics team is a reflection of society, and diversity is part of that. Go4Logistics creates software solutions for transportation & logistics companies. The transportation industry is very international and therefore diverse, so in that way we may have an easier time than other tech companies that work more locally. We believe that diversity makes people "richer" and that it makes for better business results and thus happy customers.
The Go4Logistics team consists of consultants, project managers, support desk staff & programmers. Because of the specific technical knowledge we expect from our programmers, we have in the past focused a lot on international recruitment. The developer profile we are looking for is not abundant in the Belgian labor market. We have been working with AISIEC for years and through this channel we have attracted a lot of young international talent in recent years. For example, we have offered traineeships to people from Morocco, Poland, Tunisia, Pakistan, India, etc.
Rahul Mathur, with Go4Logistics for 12 years & Technical Product Lead.
Some of them stayed in Belgium even after their traineeship and were able to further develop their experience and career path in the Go4Logistics team. One of them is Rahul Mathur (India), who started with us 12 years ago as a trainee and has since become Technical Product lead, a key position in our organization. Because of our diverse and multicultural team, it is becoming easier and easier to attract new people. The positive word-of-mouth advertising not only works with customers, it also works with employees who are happy in their jobs.
Have you yourself contributed to the "feminization" of Go4Logistics?
When I entered the transportation industry 25 years ago as a young consultant, I was really an exception, but liked to be around clients. Also at Go4Logistics I was the only woman outside our then operations manager. Well, IT was often still a man's world back then, just like the transport world, for that matter.
"Diversity is a start. An inclusive work culture is what makes people feel at home."
At one point, I told our CTO and Co-Founder Joeri Lyssens, that I wanted to recruit a woman within each team. Not as a goal in itself, but from the conviction and experience that this makes a team even stronger.
So today we have Joyce on our support desk, Meriem within our development team, Inge as a consultant and Els taking care of our marketing & communications. So a lot of 'Go4 girl power'. Diversity is a start. An inclusive work culture is what makes people feel at home.
What do you do to make your diverse team work together inclusively?
At Go4Logistics, the language on the floor is English. That way everyone is involved and we avoid miscommunication. We also organize regular team meetings. These always consist of a formal part, so the noses are always pointed in the same direction. But another important part of our team meeting is the food & fun part. Not only do we provide good food, but we always choose a fun group activity. We have already gone bowling, played darts and an escape room. We once did a FIFA Playstation tournament and during our last team meeting we also noticed that we have singing and showbiz talent in our group. And because experiencing 'FUN' at work is so important, we recently chose to add some fun elements to our office. Because we moved to a new office anyway, we suddenly took this opportunity to install a pool table, kicker table and darts. The informal communication during "the game" ensures better cooperation and communication during the execution of our projects.
How do you make sure everyone is really heard?
This is a challenge every day because you have to take into account the different personalities on the team. The more introverted people need to be addressed enough, and sometimes they need a push to share their opinions. I hope I play a crucial role in that for them. By putting my feelers out every day, I catch a lot. Sometimes I don't need to intervene and the team itself makes sure everyone is heard, but if that doesn't happen I try to help them in that. Fortunately, taking care of each other is really ingrained in our corporate culture!
Nice is also always getting responses like Usama Bin Aamir's :
"People from all over the world work at Go4Logistics. I really appreciate the respect I get for my culture."
Do you have a personal tip for other Managing Partners?
As a managing partner, set a good example yourself. Make it clear what values you consider important in your company. At Go4Logistics, the values of passion, respect, teamwork and professionalism are ingrained in our corporate culture. You shouldn't just put these values on your company website. No, you must also effectively communicate these values every day!
