Our people
At TAUW, almost 1,300 proud professionals in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain and Italy work towards a clean, safe and sustainable living environment. Driven by intrinsic motivation, our ambassadors choose TAUW as a way to contribute to a more beautiful world. As part of our company’s distinct work culture, employees are given considerable autonomy and plenty of opportunity for personal development.
Employee-owned company
The success of TAUW is the result of the joint efforts, talents and participation of our employees. In this philosophy it is fair that our employees get a share of the financial results and as co-owners they are stimulated to participate in decision making. We also highly value our independency and want to keep the profits within the company. Therefore, we introduced our Participation scheme for all employees in 2017 and with that started as a fully employee-owned company.
Anyone with a permanent contract receives five (5) certificates and can voluntarily purchase additional ones. Every year some participants leave the participation scheme – particularly those who leave TAUW – and new participants join. By the end of 2020 634 employees bought additional certificates. This is 58% of the 1,100 employees with an indefinite contract. Our goal is that at least 70% of our employees owns additional certificates.
% employees owning TAUW certificates
2017
2020
2021
Ambition
At TAUW the employees are the company
Maria Schmidt has grown from Junior Consultant Soil and Groundwater to Team Leader of the TRIS team in Moers (Germany) in a seven-year time period. She notes that in transactions and investments, sustainability demands from shareholders, governments and other stakeholders continue to increase rapidly. Not only in Germany, but worldwide.
Employee development
Personal development is a focal point of TAUW’s personnel policy and TAUW offers many opportunities for employees to increase knowledge and skills. Most of these professional development opportunities are supported by TAUW University, where employees can participate in a variety of trainings and work on diverse projects.
In 2021, 38 internal training courses (physical and online) were organised at least once. Each employee followed an average of almost three training courses.
TAUW Soil Seminar brings knowledge together
Soil is directly and indirectly the largest area of expertise within TAUW and closely connects with other work we do for our clients. We regularly bring this wealth of soil knowledge and projects together at the TAUW Soil Seminar (TSS). The TSS is an internal two-day event focusing on sharing knowledge and networking across the TAUW Group. In September 2021 it was time again for this important seminar.
Around fifty soil colleagues, from junior to senior, from all TAUW countries came to the city of Groningen (north-east Netherlands) where TAUW is closely involved in some major developments. “It’s a part of the Netherlands that is not always known to our colleagues, but where we carry out many interesting projects in soil survey, remediation, permitting and redevelopment of brownfields- in the city of Groningen, but particularly at Groningen Seaports”, says Emile Marnette from the Soil Core Team, who was involved in the seminar’s organization. The Soil Core Team includes delegates from all the TAUW countries. They monitor the TAUW Group for strategic work in the soil field and organise knowledge exchange through, among other things, online webinars and the physical TAUW Soil Seminar. “Despite the corona constraints, we opted for a physical gathering which allows you get to know your international colleagues much better. Future projects will definitely benefit from that interaction, because it means that the right expertise will be matched to the client’s needs even better. It will also help us in our ambition to be a leading European environmental consultancy firm.”
In Groningen, this face-to-face connection with several presentations, excursions and pitches on soil- related subjects again ensured a successful event full of knowledge exchange and interesting discussions. The theme of the two-day event was soil in relation to the SDGs. The introduction was given by Dr. Saskia Keesstra of Wageningen University. “Challenges in the field of digitalisation, soil as natural capital and unconventional substances such as PFAS and mercury are closely related. We fully embraced these challenges during our Soil Seminar. I am already looking forward to the next one!”
TAUW is unique in organising these kinds of meetings. No other consultancy firm has visited us in this capacity
– Hendré Sijbring, board member Groningen Seaports.
Young@TAUW
TAUW is an international firm with proud professionals who use their knowledge and willpower to create sustainable solutions for a better environment. Therefore, we want to increase cooperation between countries, bringing further professionalisation and alignment in our work. TAUW is also working to remain an attractive employer for young people.
To contribute to these goals, we launched ‘Young@TAUW International’; an internal international network with the mission to connect passionate young TAUWees across countries and facilitate international cooperation, knowledge exchange and (shared) personal growth.
Apart from the Young@TAUW challenge, Young@TAUW organised webinars and also facilitated a Flexperience in 2021. In 2022, we will be able to see each other again during the third ‘annual event’, this time in Köln.
How Young TAUWees look behind the international scenes
Connect, inspire and meet. That is the goal of Young@TAUW. The internal international network for young and motivated professionals below the age of 36, regularly organises exchange and inspirational events.
Innovation
We understand that implementing new technologies into business depends on many aspects; the technology itself, timing, creating real added value, embedding it into protocols, changing behaviour of colleagues and a stroke of luck. With the Digital Transformation programme, we create movement for digital innovations. A good example of this is the TAUW Open Innovation Hub where we created a platform to discover and develop new digital ideas and concepts with our stakeholders.
Sensing the Future with Jasper Schmeits
Every team or organisation needs critical thinkers who challenge prevailing conventions; sometimes known as lateral thinkers or as they are sometimes referred to in Dutch: cross-thinkers.
Wellbeing and safety
TAUW is committed to the wellbeing and vitality of its employees. At TAUW we want our staff to be fit and healthy, to have a good work/life balance, as this contributes to the sustainable employability of our staff. We want them to be healthy, happy and productive at all stages of their careers. And that, of course, leads to a more resilient and successful organisation.
Another remarkable year
Although the number of COVID affected employees was reasonably low among TAUW Group, we all have experienced and recognised the social and wellbeing barriers of working at home and the impact among our colleagues and their families. As soon as it was reasonably possible, offices were partially (re)opened and colleagues were invited to come to the offices. Fortunately, our colleagues in the field created safe and convenient work practices to proceed with their field surveys throughout the year. Overall, it was a challenging year with regards to the wellbeing and health of our colleagues.
Vitality
The subject of vitality has a prominent place in our organisation. In addition to our partnership with the KNZB, we also actively focus on it internally. In 2021, for instance, we organised two webinars specifically on this theme: ‘Vital working at home’ and ‘Get into your flow’. Because the corona crisisforced us to start working at home in large numbers, and because we will continue to do so for at least part of the working week even after the crisis, we focused on the challenges in the work-life balance and in the physical and mental condition that this brings with it. The Get into the flow webinar helps employees to experience flow in their work more often, so that they are productive and solution-focused on a daily basis, and so that they are energetic even after work.
TAUW sportswear and challenges
To encourage staff to take up exercise, both TAUW Netherlands and TAUW Germany offered their staff TAUW sportswear in the spring. Nearly 140 employees purchased TAUW sportswear, which was a great success. A number of sport competitions were also organised via Strava. Almost 80 employees participated in these events.
Employee satisfaction
We care about our employees’ opinions. To (further) improve our personnel policy, TAUW Netherlands conducts an employee survey twice a year to gain insight into the work experience of our employees and takes action, where necessary.
The survey from 2021 shows that satisfaction scores have remained stable. In general, employees are still (very) satisfied with their work; the score remains high. The vast majority of employees would also recommend TAUW to friends and acquaintances.
Safety
TAUW is committed to safe working conditions. We have made safety an integral part of our services. We also actively work to provide a safe working environment for our employees and others, from protecting our employees from exposure to hazardous substances to creating a culture in which everyone is encouraged to report incidents, signals and threats. In doing so, our employees are well aware of potential risks and actively contribute to risk reduction in our work.
Safety highlights
In 2021 TAUW Italy successfully implemented the ISO 45001 certificate and TAUW Germany successfully renewed their ISO 45001 certificate as well. In the Netherlands, Syntraal was awarded a level 3 safety Culture Ladder (SCL) certificate just like a dedicated project team of TAUW Netherlands was rewarded.
In the autumn we published the renewed TAUW Group traffic rules. These were aligned with our new way of working, considering the use of TEAMS more frequently and emphasising the risks of being distracted while participating in traffic. Finally there was an increase of colleagues who were granted a safety award or recognition for their safety leadership and commitment, a trend we hope to continue
Safety statistics 2021
Our people carefully comply with the TAUW safety rules and regulations and instructions concerning workplace safety to ensure that their work is carried out safely. Unsafe situations and (near) accidents are immediately and directly reported. Our Safety Incident Tool facilitates reporting and monitoring incidents. Compared with the previous year, the number of incident reports was significantly higher in 2021, mainly due to improved reporting. It is a direct result of the fact that we take safety seriously and actively work on it. The statistics are displayed below in the figure. Compared with previous years, the number of incidents with absence and medical treatments decreased slightly again, consequently the frequency rates decreased as well. Our occupational safety focus areas are traffic, exposure to dangerous substances and slipping and tripping as in previous years. Aside from our main focus areas we will concentrate on our subcontractors in 2022 and celebrate those colleagues who are leading by example.
Diversity and Inclusion
Our power is the differences in knowledge, interests and skills of our employees. We are able to join our different visions to grow as people and as a company. In the diversity of our group we have all different kinds of people; colleagues from different market segments, different ages and sexes and different countries. As a knowledge-driven organisation, we depend on the talents and collective brainpower of all TAUWees. We strongly believe that ‘diversity of thought’ is essential to provide innovative solutions for every question and to be a sparring partner for every client.
Therefore Diversity and Inclusion is an important topic within TAUW. TAUW Netherlands has set a concrete objective: a proportional representation of women at all levels of the organisation by 2025. The percentage of women working at TAUW has been stable at 30% percent in recent years. However, the higher the position, the lower the percentage of women (in 2021, 72.1% of management was male). That has to change and we are consciously working towards that. And Diversity and Inclusion is more than gender equality. Every TAUWee with his / her various qualities should feel free and welcome and given the opportunity to develop. It must lead to an inclusive culture in which differences in characteristics are highlighted and positively valued. In 2021 we took the next steps.
Dare to be yourself, that’s what it’s all about
Yacintha Mulder is the vibrant helmswoman of Diversity and Inclusion within TAUW. “I am very committed to this work. From the beginning I have been in an internal working group which gives many webinars and workshops to raise awareness.”
Male / female division TAUW 2021
Male / female division TAUW 2020
Male / female division in country management teams 2021
Male / female division in country management teams 2020