Family-oriented companies: a win-win situation!
Reinhard Stachl has been successfully running an experience marketing agency for more than 20 years and, together with his team, realizes more than 400 event and promotion projects in Austria, Germany and the surrounding countries every year. A new office and warehouse building was built at the Hartberg site in 2019 to create space for the team and the more than 400 experience modules.
The core team of 12 employees consists of 75% part-time staff – women and men who want to have more time available for their families and private interests. It goes without saying that the dads also take some parental leave. In some companies, the “family issue” is often still a stop/go criterion when selecting female candidates, especially when filling positions of responsibility.
In the following interview, Reinhard, married and himself a father of 4 children, explains how he manages the balancing act between professional and family challenges – also for his employees:
From your entrepreneurial point of view, why does it make sense to consciously choose “family people” in the team?
It is not so much a question of whether someone already has children, but rather who brings which qualities and skills to the company. We are constantly developing through this potential. My experience has shown that “family people” are better suited to us and our area of responsibility – but it is not a prerequisite.
After having children, women in particular are looking for an interesting part-time job close to home – and that’s what we can offer. Our “children’s crowd” of 35 children and young people of all ages is also practical for us: for example, if we develop a new presentation idea for one of our customers and are unsure whether the idea is really “cool”, we simply ask our kids and their friends or invite them to the office for a test run. In this way, we are close to the target group and therefore close to our customers.
We currently have 12 employees in the office and in logistics/warehouse and around 200 experience managers, mainly in Austria and Germany. How do you manage to stay in contact with these freelancers?
Our experience managers are our figureheads at the events. It’s important to me that they share our philosophy and have the same fun presenting at the event as we do developing in the office. We usually employ students who want to earn some extra money and, above all, enjoy working with small and, of course, large groups of people. We are often your first employer. This means a great deal of responsibility for us – which is why personal contact is particularly important.
The first contact takes place during employee training, where the future event managers get to know us and our company. After that, due to the physical distance, we are usually in contact by telephone and via our employee information system: an online calendar for coordinating event assignments – and an operational information platform.
We also meet up at our annual staff party and at the training courses in our Erlebnis.Akademie.
You have many part-time employees in the permanent team (75%) who have a family in the background. How do you deal with the challenges of having to leave the workplace at short notice with small children, for example?
In our industry, we thrive on being flexible. It is also important for me to be there for my family when they need me. I consciously make time for this – and the same applies to our employees. Our relationships are long-term and based on partnership, especially in the permanent team, and we all live from give and take.
Conversely, I know that I can count on each and every one of them when things get tough in the company and we can quickly get to grips with tricky situations together.
What does the organization behind it look like so that the collaboration works smoothly?
All of our office staff can also log into the system from home using their PC – this is the organizational prerequisite for completing urgent work quickly and easily, allowing them to better divide their time between family and work. I am less interested in when work is done than that it is done.
If several part-time employees work in one area, communication is an important point: we find regular, joint meeting times at which we define and, above all, clearly delimit work packages.
Of course, this model only works for people who like to work independently. Trust, appreciation and a good dose of willingness to compromise and talk are prerequisites.
And if there are conflicts?
As we work in a totally networked team in our day-to-day business, we have got to know each other well and have learned to deal with each other’s idiosyncrasies. The conflicts that arise in our small team are manageable and many things are usually discussed directly over lunch. Of course, open points are clarified in private and/or together. I prefer to deal with this sooner rather than later: I often actively address the sore points, which my employees don’t always appreciate straight away.
What motivated you to take part in the V-Factor project?
In day-to-day business, I certainly don’t have my eyes and ears open to the needs of my team everywhere, no matter how hard I try. However, a good and productive atmosphere is very important to me, because I would LOVE to go to my own workplace every day. The V-Factor project offers an opportunity to actively work on working together even better – apart from the tasks from the customer projects. We live in a dynamic industry, so it’s important that we can rely on each other at the core – and I’m doing everything I can to keep it that way!
Success factor: balancing work, family and private life
