The management team, led by Lenny Benaïcha along with Bart Van Loon and Jelle Mattelaer, brings decades of experience in HR consulting and technology. They replace founding CEO Nikolaas Bellens, who returns to consultancy and teaching. The new team will integrate their expertise in monitoring and improving international and multicultural teams into Kazi’s technology.

Kazi’s mission is to align employee work expectations with their daily workplace activities, leading to enhanced job engagement, happiness and productivity. The company’s methodology, complex yet essential for technological facilitation, is focused on optimizing employee well-being. The company looks forward to meeting its future challenges and spearheading new innovations, and is committed to leading organizations to where every employee is heard and valued; to where their jobs align with their respective, individual expectations.

As a Belgian HR Tech company, Kazi helps identify professional job expectations and soft skills of both people and jobs. It thus offers the world’s first two-sided (talent & job) work expectations assessment tool, academically validated, providing insights for better hiring matches, engagement, job rotation, performance reviews and retention.

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What does this mean for Kazi customers?

For existing customers, in essence, everything stays the same. The licenses, subscriptions, access to the SaaS portals and API remain unchanged. That means no scheduled downtime, and from that point of view, it means “business as usual”. On the other hand, what does change is that the support before, during, and after using Kazi technology will look fundamentally different. With over 85 of the best HR consultants, Kazi’s services offering will now scale in a major way. The existing HR expertise is expanded, but the customer-centric approach, aiming to build sustainable partnerships, remains the same.

What does this mean for Kazi?

Our mission is unaltered: it is to eliminate labor market(s) mismatches. The product roadmap is still aimed at supporting the “humans” in “human resources” with effective, purposeful technology. Kazi can now fully emerge by offering (consultancy) services next the technology to better support customers. Within Cronos, Kazi is situated in a HR cluster. Next to several renowned companies, such as HRMC, Humanistix and B-flow. The combined human resources expertise within the company now takes an enormous leap forward. Many experts with proven track records in disciplines and domains such as, among others, integrations, recruiting, staffing, process optimization, and more, can now support Kazi customers. By and large, it’s the ultimate environment for Kazi to be in.

Gratitude galore

A special thank you to all of our customers. We want to express our gratitude towards the companies and partners who’ve been with us since day one, characterized by the same ambition; to put talent first. Thanks to these pioneering companies, we’re able to keep working towards a future where talent and jobs find one another based on what they want. Taking their work values and team roles into consideration in the process.

Every day, we strive to eliminate labor market mismatches. The future of work isn’t only about what people can do. The future of work is about what people want to do.

About Cronos

The Cronos Group is an outstanding example of innovative entrepreneurship. Founded in 1991, the business evolved from a one-person show to a large group of companies with 7000 employees, a consolidated turnover of €768 million in 2019, and 5000 customers in the Benelux.

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Expect the unexpected

I vividly recall my high school history teacher saying: “reality trumps fiction, always.” He wasn’t wrong. Expect the unexpected is a mantra I try to live by, but this pandemic and its consequences proved extremely difficult to predict and navigate. We’ve seen customers having their (department’s) budgets cut dramatically. Honestly, my heart bleeds. More than ever, talents & jobs have to be aligned with one another based on preferred work values and ream roles. So many people are losing their jobs, looking for new jobs. Today, investing in employee engagement is a necessity.

Bigger and better

With Covid-19 vaccinations currently being rolled out, there is light at the end of the tunnel — a bright, warm spotlight. We can’t wait to help our customers shine in 2021. So many of us endured a feeling of helplessness throughout this year. Seeing infection numbers rise. Perhaps falling ill or having family members and friends catch the virus. Perish the thought, losing somebody dear to you.

It’s always darkest before the sunrise. The upcoming year is going to be stunningly phenomenal. We’re so ready to turn the feeling of powerlessness all the way around, together with our customers. 

2021 will see an increase in “boarding” initiatives. Re-onboarding employees who worked from home throughout the pandemic, making their way back to the workplace. Onboarding new employees and pre-boarding future employees.

We can’t wait to boost employee engagement in a major way, together with our cherished customers and partners.

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to all the people active in talent markets, making a difference by going the extra mile. During times where job disengagement is at an all time high, the efforts you are making to cater to people’s expectations are very much appreciated.

In name of the Kazi team: best wishes for the new year.

Kind regards,

Lenny Benaïcha

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If you, or somebody close to you is (already) affected by COVID-19, I would like to wish you, and everybody suffering from the virus, a fast recovery. I’m humbled to see how people on the front line are working for all our sakes. Medical and health care professionals, pharmacists, supermarket staff and cashiers, law enforcement… Just to name a few. Thank you all.

In an attempt to provide you with some reassurance, I want to let you know that we will do absolutely everything in our power to serve your needs during these strange times. We are now working entirely remote, but understand and acknowledge the unique position we’re in as a tech company, knowing that this isn’t evident for every type of company to achieve quickly.

We would like to, in our own way, support you as much as possible. Customers finding themselves in need of changing their recruiting and coaching processes as a result of the Corona virus, won’t be charged for overdraws on their subscriptions. Additionally, we will organize remote sessions for individuals or groups regarding hiring and coaching remotely.

I want to emphasize once more, we’re impressed to see your intelligence and creativity handling this crisis, if you think we can help you, or somebody you know, with Kazi, please reach out to: support@kazi.be 

To conclude, I would like to say, from one human to another: stay healthy, stay safe. Follow the guidelines of your government and agencies, and have trust in science. Limit your social contacts, keep physically active and if possible try to catch some sun rays.

Thank you. 

Kind regards,

Lenny Benaïcha | Kazi

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Keep Up Employee Engagement

Too often, the employee experience with HR happens when they onboard, if they leave, and if they have a problem with a coworker. This creates a diminished view of what HR can do to help employees succeed and thrive at your company, and misses out on opportunities to get a better understanding of what employees are thinking, feeling, and doing. Think of targeting quarterly, or even semi-annual “re-onboarding” processes, where HR can re-engage with employees and discuss how their experience is proceeding. Sometimes, if questioned in a formal way, employees can bring up issues and concerns that might not always be at the front of their minds in other situations, and you can gain valuable insight and keep them happy. Try to make Day One Thousand as important as Day One.

Maintain Ongoing Employee Information-Gathering

Everyone grows and changes over time. This is a pretty uncontroversial and widely-observed fact of life. But often times, companies don’t treat their employees as if this is the case. Even when companies are forward-looking enough and engage in the kind of onboarding Expectations Scan that we offer at Kazi, they will often just leave this information untouched after they’ve put it to use. But the scan can be put to use effectively again at a later date. From the experience of working at your company, your employees will develop new skills, new interests, and new professional partnerships with other employees. An employee at the beginning of year 2 is not the same person she was when she started – maybe she’ll work better in a different way now? Don’t let your employee information be frozen in amber! Keep asking the right questions, and you’ll learn surprising things!

Walk the Walk on Professional Development

So many companies talk about how it’s important for them to see their employees grow and learn and thrive. But relatively few actually do something about it, and this is one of the most commonly-cited reasons employees leave their jobs: no space for professional growth. And the fact of the matter is that it’s not hard to create space and opportunities for employees to grow. Most people enjoy a challenging task, or new project that develops skills. But in order to know what to give to whom and when, you need to be asking the right questions. In the wrong circumstances, or for the wrong person, professional development opportunities can feel like “just some more shit to do.” And no one likes that. With employee Expectation Scans like we’ve developed at Kazi, you can get the insight and information you need to know to make the right assignments and create the right opportunities for your employees to grow and shine!

Cultivate Internal Brand Integrity

Any good founder or CEO knows the importance of managing your brand for your customers. But few put as much effort into maintaining the brand for their employees. This is a big oversight. In the same way that customers are often willing to pay more for a “brand premium” for your products, employees are willing to go out on a limb in more ways for a company with a great brand reputation as a good place to work. The right workplace environment, useful perks, supportive managers, and much more all go into creating and maintaining this for employees. But just like a brand for customers, you need to build it carefully. And what do you need to do that? Information! Get your employees involved in thinking about how to raise the brand of your company as a great place to work!It’s always easier and cheaper to hold on to the talent you have than it is to try to acquire more talent later. Turnover in your headcount will take more out of you and your growth than you may think. Spend some time and effort cultivating and retaining the talent you have, and the effort will pay for itself many times over! At Kazi, we’ve helped many companies with problems just like that. If you’re facing an HR challenge and want to see what we could do for you, drop us and line and we’ll talk!

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The Professional becomes Personal

At Kazi, we’ve always believed in the importance of designing HR solutions around the individual. Each employee is unique and the best way to get the most for everyone out of the relationship is to understand each person on an individual level, which is at the heart of our unique expectations scan.

In 2019, with the continued rise and expansion of data gathering and processing, Forbes confirmed that this approach is going to deepen and become more powerful. Newly-developed algorithms are going to be able to find stronger and more reliable personalized connections among HR data that will empower HR departments and employees to be better deployed than ever before!

AI Faces a Reality Check

All smart companies these days know that you can’t ignore AI if you want to stay on top of the game. But too many of them are rushing to deploy it and not prioritizing the more human dimensions of the application.

But as HR solutions get more personalized and refined, HR departments and companies are going to have to start thinking more creatively and deliberately about how to best feature their employees in their AI plans, and design the solutions with their people in mind, rather than contort their people to the solutions they’ve already imagined. According to Gartner, one thing is for sure: by the end of 2019, AI will be creating more jobs than it is taking!

Improved HR Prediction

In advertising, there’s the famous quote “I know half my budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half.” In HR, things might not be that bad, but there’s still a lot of  wasted time and money spent looking for potential employees in the wrong places, and not emphasizing the wrong traits for eventual success in the company.

Obviously, this doesn’t serve anyone’s interests well. But as data gathering and predictive algorithms improve, HR departments are going to be able to fine-tune the process of locating the best potential sources for employees, helping focus expenditure, and improve the odds of finding and retaining the right candidate. And employees will benefit from knowing that the companies that recruit them are more likely to be a good fit with their skills and professional goals.

Better Job Advertisements

Advertising a job is just as complicated and difficult as advertising anything else, and HR departments know this. You may understand some of what it is, but how to you present it to people in a way that makes sure they get it quickly, and that your ad is clicking with the right people. Well, just as web advertising is getting more advanced to promote products, the same technologies deployed by targeted advertising will be applied for tweaking your job ads to appeal to the right people. The process is streamlined, and the targets are better for everyone!

NLP comes to HR

The rise of Natural Language Processing over the last few years has been really impressive. Google translate, in particular, has advanced its ability to understand nuance and context and human dimensions through algorithmic processing. According to tamrecruiting.com, you’re going to start seeing NLP technologies put to use in HR recruiting work.

At Kazi, we know the importance of gathering really specific personal detail information about potential hires, which we do through our expectations scan.  But with Natural Language Interpretation technologies, HR firms will be able to collect new information about prospective hires from their essays, writing samples and other materials, with insights that we can only imagine right now. Get ready to add more dimensions to your spreadsheets!

Learning the Limits of Tech

One of the most important “trends” to come out of the increasing capabilities of tech is that we’re now finding the limits of what technology can legitimately improve, and what it can’t. At Kazi, we always emphasize the Human Dimension of work and HR. After all, work is still done by actual people in an actual human environment. In learning the extent of what we can plausibly hope to accomplish with technology, we will be able to focus other kinds of professional attention in other ways on the parts of the work and HR experience that can’t be improved by tech. This will create a more human, more real work environment for everyone.

The Year Ahead

Tech continues to change our lives for the better, and in 2019, HR departments will start to get a taste of some really transformative technologies, and put them to the test! At Kazi, we’re excited to deploy and improve upon these emerging technologies, and help you understand how to use them yourselves. Check out our ongoing work here, and get in touch with us if you have an HR challenge, or just want to hear how Kazi can help you.

Looking forward to working with you in a great 2019!

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