OPINION! Ladenzeile.de boss Robert Maier: “Employee loyalty is crucial in the startup scene”

The War for Talents has also arrived in the Berlin start-up scene. Robert M Maier, Founders and CEO of Visual Meta, the Companys behind the visual shopping platform Ladenzeile.de, speaks in an interview about the importance of employee loyalty.

Robert M. Maier graduated from WHU in 2005 with a degree in business administration. Before founding Visual Meta he worked for a venture capital Company and active in investment banking. In January 2009 he founded Visual Meta with Johannes Schaback in a back room in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin. The virtual shopping center LadenZeile has been accessible since April 2009. The Idea was created in discussions with the brothers Oliver, Marc and Alexander Samwer. rocket Internet was the main investor until December 2011. In December 2011, Visual Meta was taken over by the Axel Springer publishing group.

Mr. Maier, how many employees has Visual Meta?

Due to the growing success and expansion, we are constantly looking for new employees. We currently operate portals in Europe, Asia and South America and employ 213 Employees. We are currently looking for over 40 new employees in Berlin.

Where is the age average?

We are a young, dynamic company. The average age is about 28 years.

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What are your measures for employee retention?

The cohesion of our employees is very important to us, which is why we already have a wide range of offers for our employees and strive to expand this in Future continue to expand. We promote team spirit through various company sports groups. Our football and volleyball teams meet regularly to stay fit.

We have recently made rooms available for our yoga group. We are open to new suggestions and try to implement them within the scope of our possibilities. The Team spirit, but also the sporting competition, generally play a big role for us.

We take part in various company sporting events every year. Among other things at the KrassFit Challenge in Berlin, on Team- Relay run by Berliner Wasserbetriebe and at the Axel Springer beach volleyball tournament, which is held annually. Every time we are delighted with the lively participation of our employees.

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The big IT companies like Google, Facebook and Apple score points with healthy eating - what about you?

Healthy nutrition is also an important issue for us: We have fresh fruit and vegetables delivered twice a week, which we make available to our employees free of charge. Muesli and cornflakes are available free of charge all day. Our large communal kitchen is fully equipped and offers our employees the opportunity to freshly prepare their favorite dishes themselves.

In the breaks, employees can take time out in one of our rest rooms, or kick off in the large lounge with colleagues, play a game of FIFA on PlayStation, or play table tennis. The monthly movie evenings with pizza and popcorn are always well received.

Furthermore, we organize our so-called company breakfast every 4-5 weeks, where our employees have the opportunity to exchange ideas over a large buffet. And we promote the social Commitment our employees.

This sounds unusual. What exactly do you do?

Once a month we organize a “Charity Day”, which our employees organize, in which our employees collect money for charitable purposes and which the company supports financially and organizationally.

How much can your employees contribute?

To find out what moves our employees, we have provided a feedback box in which requests and suggestions can be sent to us, anonymously if you like. During our weekly all-hands meeting, our management commented on this Feedback. Another point of our feedback culture is the regular feedback talks between superiors and employees.

In particular, the annual development talks ensure mutual exchange. We celebrate the length of service of our employees and let them in for their anniversary depending on how long they have been with us awareness such as chocolates, champagne or vouchers.

Our employees also receive various employee discounts at various partner companies. We also like to celebrate with our employees, for example at the big summer party and Christmas party, last December, when we were the solar bar in the 15 for the entire team. Floor in Berlin.

That sounds like a lot of “fun” - are there any structural measures?

Yes, flexible working hours for example. For us, employee retention means ensuring that the problem-free agreement of Job and Family or free time is made possible. That is why we offer flexible working hours and part-time models as well as the possibility of working from home to a limited extent.

Our employees are free to choose their breaks. Many of our team members used to enjoy the break or lunch in the sun on one of our two roof terraces in the middle of Berlin.

What further development opportunities do you offer your employees?

We attach great importance to the fact that our employees constantly develop both professionally and personally and therefore offer individual training courses and seminars.

However, we do not only book external training courses, but to organize events for the internal exchange of knowledge, so that our employees can exchange their experiences across departments.

We are open to suggestions from our employees and try to respond individually to the respective training needs. We also promote language classes and offer the opportunity to take part in them once a week. Our international employees in particular are making increasing use of this opportunity, so that we will continue to expand the range in the future.

Do you cooperate with universities in any way?

In the area of ​​personnel marketing, we have already attended career fairs for universities successfully took part. At the moment we are evaluating which further cooperations with universities useful and to what extent suitable activities will be implemented in the future.

Keyword professionals find: How fast can you just fill in the IT field again?

The average duration of the Application until employment with our developers is 1,5 to 2 months. In doing so, we continue to try to improve and optimize the processes in order to find suitable talent even faster.

What is the fluctuation rate among employees?

With our Measures we are already very successful in employee retention. We have celebrated many 4th and 5th anniversary anniversaries for our employees which we consider a distinction for a XNUMX year old company. But we always want to get better.

We are still a young company and recruit in a wide variety of countries. As a result, we are the first employer for some employees or represent the first career step in their professional development, so it is inevitable that some employees will find their way around again over time. For example decide some after a period of time her Study continue or return to their home country. But we are also proud in such cases Boy To have promoted talents and to have contributed important professional experience and impulses!

Do you involve employees in the search for new employees so far?

We established the involvement of our employees via a classic employee recommendation program very early on in our recruiting processes, as we see our employees as brand ambassadors for our company.

Our employees have the opportunity to influence themselves, who is applying for Visual Meta, and at the same time to receive attractive bonuses. At the end of 2014 we transformed our classic into a digital recommendation program by introducing a professional application management system.

Employees now also have the option of adding our jobs to their personal accounts via various social media channels networks to share. On the one hand, we hope that this will result in even more recommendations from our employees and, on the other hand, we will make the recommendation process easier for them.

To what extent are your measures influenced by the corporate culture?

All measures are shaped by our corporate culture, which is characterized by flat hierarchies, regular feedback and the weekly get-together of all our employees (all-handsMeeting) awarded.

We would like to involve all our employees in the company's development and react promptly to the suggestions and wishes of our employees and to continuously optimize the individual measures.

Do you have anything else to do with employee retention?

From a personnel recruitment perspective, the topic of employee retention is special Significance. We are in a typical workers' market where the Candidate find out very precisely what employers can offer their future employees.

Especially in the course of the so-called "War for Talents" this topic is especially in the Berliner Startups-Scene very crucial. In the future, we want to focus more on the topics of employer branding and personnel development in order to continue to stand out from the high competition as an attractive employer.

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