Ellen De Cock (HR Manager): “Building and sharing knowledge is essential in our industry”
“You will only achieve the best customer service if your employees feel good about their company and are well trained. This is more necessary than ever and it’s our team’s job to make sure of that,” says Ellen De Cock, HR Manager at Transuniverse. Together with her colleagues Carine Mussche and Elfi Van Goethem, she forms part of the Human Resources team.
Carine is responsible for the administrative follow-up and payroll management of mainly the blue-collar workers. Other duties include arranging educational leave, managing the company fleet and organising the SME portfolio. Carine has worked at Transuniverse for more than 35 years.
Elfi, for her part, joined the HR team about two years ago and is also the person of trust within Transuniverse. She focuses on welcome and onboarding, recruitment, training follow-up and administrative payroll support for the white-collar workers. She also manages social media.
Policy and strategy
“My duties are very varied and diverse: I am responsible for drawing up the HR policies, the HR budget, inflow, throughflow and outflow and the labour regulations, and I take the initiative for all kinds of HR projects. I also advise the executive committee on employee-related issues. But practical aspects are also covered, such as recruitment, managing white-collar payroll, internal communication and ‘difficult’ interviews,” Ellen explains.
“Knowledge is essential in our industry. That is why we attach great importance to building and sharing. We build by organising internal and external training.”
Onboarding and new profiles
In this tight labour market, successful onboarding is key. “That is a concern for us, as is attracting people with – preferably – industry knowledge. I mention ‘preferably’ here because when that know-how is lacking but the ‘desire’ to work is present, we provide appropriate training,” Ellen stresses.
Her focus is also on retention. “Although at Transuniverse, the outflow is not too bad. Employees tend to remain very loyal to the company. But that also brings challenges: several people are approaching retirement age. Attracting new, motivated people is therefore a necessity. Are you interested in working at Transuniverse? Call or write to me,” she says, tongue in cheek.
