From competency language to commercial values at de Bijenkor

Employees with shared values create a stronger brand

Department store chain de Bijenkorf is the most familiar store to Dutch people. And PiCompany is familiar to de Bijenkorf: PiCompany and de Bijenkorf have been working together for over ten years now on all sorts of talent development projects for de Bijenkorf employees. A recent project is the development of a specific competency language which conveys the values of de Bijenkorf. “Our competency language is based on the competency language of PiCompany. We have been working with them for many years now, both on talent development and on recruitment and selection. Recently, we took a step further with this competency language: To embed de Bijenkorf’s values in the organization, we adapted the competency language in such a way that the competencies could also be converted into values for each function. We also linked example behavior to each function.”

“”An assessment by PiCompany is a normal part of recruitment and selection at de Bijenkorf.” Geert de Vries, HR Manager Service Desk and Central Bakery at de Bijenkorf

Example behavior for colleagues 
If someone is in the right position, they demonstrate specific example behavior for their colleagues. So they all know what they do well and what steps they must take to develop further in their role. We have also recently begun to use the values in the performance and appraisal cycle. It was evident from a recent employee commitment survey that the familiarity of de Bijenkorf values among employees had strongly increased. They are very active in this process. This reinforces mutual affiliation and de Bijenkorf as a brand.


Talent management
“We also use PiCompany’s HR tools in the Self Service Portal for talent management. With consistent use of the digital tools, your people’s qualities become visible and you can investigate why one employee scores better than another. Our HR managers and recruiters are able to interpret assessments and to give feedback to participants—they are certified to do so by PiCompany. All line managers at de Bijenkorf have now become accustomed to the fact that assessments by PiCompany are a normal part of the selection of new employees.

Why we opted for PiCompany:

• Linking of competency language to business values
• Assessments for optimum recruitment and selection
• Career development with online HR tools