“The realisation that team work is everything on all levels, for everybody – that’s crucial,” says Janna Claesson.
Janna is Head of HR at 3C Online, but she knows what it’s like to join the team as a new and relatively inexperienced sales person. “I’ve worked directly in production with sales, I’ve trained new staff, and I know what the day-to-day looks like for our employees. I think there are huge benefits to that.”
Among her first realisations, Janna reflects, was that if the organisation wanted to invest in HR, it had to be considered as truly important. “We have to like people, and we have to be interested in getting to know them,” she says. “Sure, I’m Head of HR, but I can’t do the work if we’re not all doing it together at the end of the day.”
Her philosophy is reflected in a lot of the work 3C Online does, which is characterised by a great emphasis on camaraderie and the chance to have fun at work. In an industry where a lot of workers often have relatively monotonous tasks, 3C Online is still the leader when it comes to employee retention. That’s a lot to do with the team spirit, believes Janna.
“We’re a fun organisation to be a part of. We’ve got a youthful mindset, the managers are cool, we celebrate Halloween, we share photos of things we bake – there’s this really nice spirit, despite the fact that many of us are currently working remotely, often from home, and in some cases there are countries between us,” she says. “We’ve managed to create an internal platform that means not just that we can reach each other, but that we can also have fun together.”
The importance of influence and feeling like part of something bigger
But camaraderie in a place of work is about much more than Halloween parties and photos of buns, of course. Most important to the majority of staff, according to Janna, is the feeling of getting to be a part of building the business brick by brick, every day. “The feedback we get is that you get to feel involved, that you actually get to make an impact,” she explains.
“A colleague once told me that she felt that this job is as close to self-employment as you can get while at the same time having the security and being looked after the way you are when you’re an employee, because here you get to feel that you can genuinely make a difference at work. When that experience spreads across the organisation, we can make great strides together.”
Security and continuity of employment are crucial and, says Janna, a given – but there’s still something else that makes the 3C Online camaraderie that little bit special. “We’re not messing around. We’re passionate about what we do, and we do everything we can to make our staff happy.”
