How it started
When two friends from Waalwijk had been studying Economics in Rotterdam in 1986, they had no idea that 6 years later they will set up a company for hospitality projects. Like most other students they had a loan and they had to work to earn some extra money. So, Casper Verwiel & Rob Wijngaard ended up working in the warehouse of Ahoy. Right there, they started building up the basis for the company, which is now known as Verwiel & Wijngaard. A company, which by now employs around eight hundred people…
Soon, we took it upon ourselves to recruit more people to work at Ahoy”, Casper Verwiel remembers well. “We succeeded pretty well, we had a good network in the student world of Rotterdam. But after a year or 2, Ahoy said they wanted to change their staff policy. They told us: ‘You can move to a different pool with another agency’. And I thought: ‘What they can do, we can do.’ So I asked: ‘Why not let us take care of it?’ And that’s the beginning of Verwiel & Wijngaard.”
From paper agenda to Poolmanager
The agenda started to be filled up. “That was a problem in the sense that we worked with a paper A4-format agenda. We carried it where ever we went, and it was left in some places sometimes.
“Or it was half-eaten by Casper’s dog”, Wijngaard adds smilingly. “That was inconvenient, try to buy an agenda for that same year by the end of October! Another disadvantage was that it was only possible for one person at a time to plan because you couldn’t simultaneously note appointments. I went looking for a solution in IT. It turned out there wasn’t one, so I developed it myself. That’s the start of Poolmanager.”
Although Verwiel wanted to stay loyal to the old agenda initially, he eventually gets swept away by the new tool. “That was because Rob kept developing the program. When we sat together on Friday afternoon, and I told him: ‘I’m wondering how many times James has worked for client X’, then Rob came up to him after the weekend and said: ‘Come check this out.’ And you could pull the information from Poolmanager!”
Innovation prize and expansion
Due to the fact, that Poolmanger was growing organically, other parties started being interested in the program as well, Wijngaard decides to rebuild the program from scratch based on a clear structure. “That came with a new web interface as well. Due to that, employees could fill out their availability online and check their work appointments. Clients on the other side could see which employees would come, how many times they have worked with them before and what their qualities were. That was a breakthrough in the Netherlands, and not only on a technical level!”
In 2003 they won the Personeel Information Innovation Prize at the conference ‘Salarisverwerking en Personeelsinformatie’. That same year they opened an office in Utrecht, and later on, an office in Amsterdam. Verwiel: “Even so we have never had people working on marketing. We are thankful for the most of our growth to the spoken word advertisement about our services. Everything we do, we do with care and integrity. New developments in the program should never be negative improvements for our clients. The success is because we rarely lose a client. And also, our employees tend to stick with us.”
Core values and philosophy
With this, Verwiel & Wijngaard reaches its core values. The word ‘quality’ is often widely used. But you can only identify quality by maintaining it for a long time. In practice, that means: stay true to your promises.”
“We have been succeeding in over 20 years to tie students to our agency”, Wijngaard adds. “All companies regarding the staff of hospitality sector are direct competitors, however, we tend to keep our employees longer. The results are a stronger bond and improved teamwork. If you have fun at your work, it reflects on the way you treat the guests. When people have been working together before, it improves the process and teamwork. That encourages them to grow together and improve permanently and our clients can see this process.”
“Focus is important aspect within our sector, which helps with keeping our employees with us.”, Verwiel explains. We focus on providing our students with the knowledge, skills and creating a commitment.” Wijngaard: “That also means: guiding yourself ( personal growth), maintain a grip on the roles. Because if somebody knows this, it’s us. The moment you give the guidance away to the hands of others, who don’t know your people, the process stagnates. What it’s all about in the end, is that the client sees a functioning team. We lead each team to function and cooperate on the highest level. Our mission statement is focused exactly on that: “Engaging People, Engaging Teams”.
