n a society where "to stand still is to go backwards" is often the motto, burnouts lurk. This is what Hidde de Vries has also felt and seen. After his media company almost went bankrupt due to the crisis in 2010 and the bottom was in sight, he became fascinated about how to turn the growing workload and associated stress into something positive. For inspiration, he watched Google for several years as they dealt with vitality. Eventually, he started his own vitality programs and training agency. We talked to him about his company, what impact corona has had on him and what makes The Recharge Company unique in its kind.
Introducing
"Research by Oxford University and others shows that employees who are comfortable in their own skin perform on average about 10% better," begins Hidde de Vries enthusiastically. "We focus on the vitality and personal development of employees in business, especially in the tech sector. There are generally highly educated and curious people there. The workload is often high and so is turnover, so you want to keep employees motivated and energized. To make that happen, I came up with the #Recharge program 10 years ago during a trip around the world," Hidde said.
"We are getting busier and busier, there are higher and higher expectations, the workload is getting higher and higher, and we are coping with it worse and worse. This has fascinated me for some time, because ten years ago I myself was facing burnout. How do you get people out of that? How do you take off those blinders? That's what we address with the #Recharge programs."
What makes The Recharge Company unique?
"Vitality is growing tremendously and more and more parties are focusing on it. A great development. What makes us unique in this is that with the program we put everyone to work right away. How often do you walk out of a workshop thinking, "I'm really going to work on that!" and then nothing happens? With us, you immediately start experiencing the impact of certain habits and how you can use them differently. There is a competitive element in our programs, which ensures higher participation and our coaches are ready to help participants further. This makes our approach unique and effective."
There is a lot going on within the e-commerce market. What are you watching mainly?
"All the developments regarding the AVG and privacy are very important to us. We collect special personal data (namely about people's health). So we pay a lot of attention to how we store them and to whom they can be viewed. Much is still vague and unknown in this area. We make a difference by getting it right. It is essential for us that we are and stay abreast of developments within this legislation."
What are you proud of?
"We have already had the opportunity to serve many wonderful clients, such as Rituals, defense and adidas. These companies also come back every year. Thanks to corona, the importance of vitality has penetrated the business world more. For us, of course, this is generally a positive development. But the corona crisis also affected us, because companies didn't know at all if they could retain staff and our training courses are partly face-to-face. We then looked at what we could do: use our #Recharge programs for healthcare. Healthcare staff could participate at no cost in a specific Recharge program for healthcare that we developed within a month. We saw real positive impact with participants: care staff found renewed energy, started sleeping better and found a listening ear with our coaches. So we really see that it works. That we could do that as a relatively small company at a crucial time makes me apethetic."
What does the future of The Recharge Company look like?
"We will continue on the same path in the coming period. Things are going well and we are growing. We are taking the first steps internationally with clients who have offices in multiple countries. In the future I would like to expand that to a full international vitality program. In September there will be a new platform with a new app. That will not only be very cool, but will really make us the forerunner in online vitality programs."
You can read the original interview here.
