Dutch auctions
Over the past century, Royal FloraHolland has grown to become the largest floriculture market place in the world. With a unique full service offering, the cooperative brings growers and buyers together to build a sustainable success in the global floriculture market. And that’s quite a challenge. So today, with trade via the famous Dutch auctions in decline, Royal FloraHolland is developing a digital platform in which ordering, payment and delivery come together. It’s a huge transformation that demands a great deal from employees and managers because they, too, must digitise.
The new strategic positioning of Royal FloraHolland is 'Growing opportunities together' and the brand's pay off is 'Connect to grow'. The choice is intended to appeal not only to the company’s members and customers, but also internally, to its employees and managers. Growth begins with embracing change, which in this case involves a new way of working. Royal FloraHolland wants its employees and managers’ behaviours to focus on cooperation even more, along with being result-oriented, innovative and reliable. These are the core values of the organisation.
The question we were asked
As part of this, Royal FloraHolland asked PROOF to inform and inspire its employees and managers about what the company wanted to do, plus support staff in mastering the desired behaviour.
The ‘Connect to grow’ programme starts with an online event in which the management explains its strategic choices. A film shows the journey that Royal FloraHolland has made over the past century and the challenges the organisation faces today.
Forward
Next, employees and managers got to work on implementing the transformation in their teams, under the name 'Road to connection'. Teams discuss the future of Royal FloraHolland among themselves and with each other. Topics included whether they understood what needed to be done and why, whether they could translate the strategy to their own work, and how to give meaning to ‘Connect to grow’. A few people also began to learn to vlog and blog, so that they can report on the internal change process and motivate their colleagues.
Through the assignments, the blogs and the vlogs, everyone at Royal FloraHolland is already getting to know and appreciate each other more, and the commitment to ‘Connect to grow’ has become high in a just a short time.
