There's no doubt that 2020 was an unusual year in many ways. In the professional sphere, one of the most significant has been 'The Great Work From Home Experiment’.

For many years, despite the tools and technologies being readily available, many corporate cultures viewed working from home as code for 'Netflix & Chill’. The past year has surely demonstrated that, for most office/computer-based workers, if anything, the opposite applies.

People consistently tell us that their working day has expanded to include their prior commuting time and that, for the majority, their days are longer - accommodating colleagues and video calls across multiple timezones.

Interestingly, people for whom it is an option have also told us how much they have enjoyed the social elements of the occasional day in the office - to the extent that they often feel as if they get less work done while they are there!

We have also identified a third group, who have optimised their use of technology by relocating their WFH to cabins in the mountains - or even entirely different countries!

For us, the big question is this - what happens next?

At some point this year, we hope to return to a situation where groups can congregate more safely and so we are curious to see how corporates respond - whether their suspicion of WFH returns, whether they close offices entirely or look for some sort of meeting-hub hybrid.

Equally, we are also seeing a distinct shift with candidates, who have a far greater expectation of location flexibility than ever before.

Finally, as always, there is the caveat of too much of a good thing - if teams demonstrate that they can collaborate effectively in a distributed manner anywhere in the world, then what is the benefit for a company to continue to employ those teams in a high-cost location?

EMEA Recruitment is proud to be working in collaboration with St. Gallen University’s Institute of Cognitive Automation to bridge the gap between humans and machines.

This research intervention is working with project leaders across Switzerland’s leading businesses, who want to help close the gap between automation and human augmentation.

We know that 70% of digital transformations within businesses fail, but the failure rate has actually increased with technology. St. Gallen University has found that 85% of Data Science projects add no value to a business.

We know that the Future of Work is not solved by one company. Therefore, St. Gallen University’s Cognitive Automation Institute has worked with us to find companies who want to optimise human augmentation.

Project leaders from these businesses are now participating in research to find out where and how they’re going wrong.

The project is broken down into two phases:

Phase 1: Structured Interviews

All participants will receive the critical human and machine teaming design criterion, using a method of inquiry to identify the design challenges in cognitive automation.

Phase 2: Empirical Study

For selected companies, a human and machine solution that addresses the criterion would be defined at a pragmatic level, e.g. process level or judgment level. To impact the company on the criterion identified.

We are delighted to be collaborating with St. Gallen University’s Dr. Chantelle Brandt Larsen on this research.

We look forward to supporting the Institute of Cognitive Automation and our partner businesses throughout this research project, and to working towards a human and machine solution to change the Future of Work.

You can read more about our ongoing partnerships here: https://www.emearecruitment.com/partnerships

If there is anything you’d like to discuss with us or for more information, please contact Mark Robinson in our Swiss recruitment team.

As we enter a new year, the team would like to wish everyone in our network a happy and healthy 2021, and celebrate growth at EMEA Recruitment.

We are pleased to start the New Year with some fantastic announcements!

EMEA is delighted to announce that Hannah Mallia in our Dutch Finance & Accountancy team has been promoted to Director.

Hannah has been with EMEA for just over six years, having joined our Founder, Paul Toms, in expanding our Netherlands operation. She has built an incredible network within the Dutch marketplace over the years; events at Stryker, Heineken, Microsoft and many more have been created through Hannah’s endeavours.

If you’ve worked with Hannah, you’ll know that she always provides passion, drive and humour to make successes happen.

Congratulations, Hannah – here’s to a very bright future with EMEA Recruitment!

In addition, we are pleased to welcome a new face to our Swiss team this year, marking further growth at EMEA Recruitment.

Mark Robinson joins us as an Associate Director, to manage our Finance & Accountancy division in Switzerland.**

Mark brings nearly 25 years’ recruitment experience with him, having led teams across a range of professional services.

With his experience in Financial recruitment, Mark is truly a specialist in this sector – we look forward to working with him moving forward.

Following the holiday season, we are now back at work to help you with your recruitment needs.

Whether you’re looking to hire top talent in the market or are open to a new opportunity yourself for 2021, then get in touch with our consultants.

You can contact our Dutch office on +31 20 808 1102 or the Swiss team on +41 41 508 7007.

We hope to speak to you soon and look forward to further growth at EMEA Recruitment in the year ahead!

**Mark Robinson has since changed roles and is now our Insight & Optimisation Director as of Mid-2023.

As we near the end of 2020, EMEA Recruitment would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

After what has been a strange and somewhat difficult year, we hope that you enjoy the festive season and look forward to whatever 2021 has to bring.

As we’ve been unable to see you (and each other!) in person this year, we thought we’d show you how our teams have been preparing for the holidays…

Although it’s been different, 2020 has still been a busy year for EMEA Recruitment.

We have been delighted to host many virtual events for our network during the year and have welcomed some fantastic guests to the podcast, albeit virtually. We were particularly proud to host indirect tax experts from eBay and Expedia for an EMEA Recruitment podcast special just this month. You can listen to the podcast episode by clicking here.

We are pleased to have some more virtual events already scheduled for 2021, with the hope that we will host some face-to-face meetings in the New Year as well.

During 2020, we were also delighted to partner with two brilliant organisations – Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and Operation Smile. IMA is our Finance career development partner, while Operation Smile, an international medical charity, has joined us as our podcast partner.

Within EMEA Recruitment, we have been fortunate enough to bring some more people into the business, as well as seeing some well-deserved promotions amongst our staff.

Thanks to the continued efforts of our teams, we were able to launch a Procurement & Supply Chain department in the Netherlands this year. Find out more about this new offering here: https://www.emearecruitment.com/procurement-and-supply-chain

We’d like to thank everyone for their support throughout 2020 and look forward to working with you in the future.

Wishing you a very Happy Holidays and good health for 2021, from all at EMEA Recruitment.

EMEA Recruitment is delighted to welcome Katie Insley to our Netherlands team. Katie joins us as an Associate Director to manage our Human Resources division for the Dutch market.

We are delighted to expand our HR offering in the Netherlands with Katie at the helm.

She joins our other specialist divisions in the Netherlands: Finance & Accountancy, Procurement & Supply Chain and Operations.

Michelle Ewing continues to lead our Netherlands department, as Country Director.**

Katie has worked within recruitment for 16 years, specialising in HR for the past 14 years. She has an in-depth understanding of the sector and how it has evolved as a critical function within businesses.

She has partnered with large international organisations, as well as SMEs, working with them to secure talent in a range of generalist and specialist HR roles.

Katie is proud to place the candidate journey and experience at the heart of her role, which enables her to build long-term, trusting relationships, supporting individuals to achieve their career goals.

She will be working with our clients on sourcing candidates for the following positions:

• Group HR Director
• HR Director
• Head/VP of HR
• HR Business Partner
• HR Manager
• HRIS Implementation Expert
• HR Executive
• Organisational Development
• ED&I Specialist
• Talent Management
• Compensation & Benefits
• Payroll
• HR Analysts
• HR Generalists

EMEA Recruitment is proud to proactively source top candidates for HR vacancies within multiple industries across the Dutch market.

If you are interested in moving forward in your HR career in the Netherlands, or if your business is searching for the best candidates available for any of these roles, contact Katie at: [email protected]

We wish Katie the best of luck as she enters her new role at EMEA Recruitment and look forward to her success in the HR sector.

Commendations of Katie's work can now be viewed on our candidate testimonials and client testimonials pages.

** Michelle's role has since changed. Please contact, Richard Bailey for any enquires in regards to recruitment in the Netherlands.

Many of us had to adapt to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, but what mix of home working and working in the office would we prefer?

Employees were advised to work from home where possible from March 2020 onwards in both Switzerland and the Netherlands, as the pandemic took hold in Europe.

Although flexible working was already quite common across Europe prior to COVID-19 restrictions, remote work has still been a new phenomenon for many office workers. But do we actually prefer working from home, or have we missed working from the office?

The pandemic will have given many employers and employees the opportunity to consider home working for the first time. Moving forwards, some workers may feel that they prefer working from home, and could try to split their working hours between the office and home. Some may never want to return to the office at all.

At EMEA Recruitment, we wanted to hear from our network across Switzerland and the Netherlands, to determine how many days people prefer working in the office versus working from home.

The results may be interesting to managers, particularly in the Human Resources sector, considering how to integrate remote working in the future.

On LinkedIn, we ran a poll for one week from 21^st -28^th October. We had a total of 1,364 votes on the survey, which asked respondents to vote for their ideal mix of office work/working from home.

The poll revealed a staggering preference for working one to two days from home, with the remaining days in the office. This option won 47% of the vote, with 642 professionals choosing this mix.

The second most popular choice highlighted a clear preference for remote working, with 38% of respondents (or 524 people) opting for working three to four days from home.

In fact, working from home five days per week was the preferred option for 10% of people (130), indicating that the days of full-time office work may be behind us. Just 5% of professionals (68) said they would like to work in the office five days a week.

Although many of us would like to be in the office most of the time, companies should be aware of how many professionals feel that working from home is beneficial to them in some way. Perhaps the changes brought about by the pandemic could enforce more flexible working conditions for office workers moving forwards, in line with their clear preferences.

We would be interested to hear from HR leaders who are navigating the changing world of work on your plans for the future. If you based in Switzerland, please contact Keely Straw or if you are in the Netherlands, contact Katie Insley.