Clémence Jacqueri is the CHRO People & Culture at Lynk & Co in Amsterdam. Clémence started her career as a Clinical Psychologist, then transitioned into HR while serving as a commissioned officer in the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

Clémence alternated between management consulting, executive Human Resources roles and board appointments for over 15 years, before becoming Senior Director Talent – Global Functions & Emerging Markets at Adidas.

How do you feel leaders can create diverse teams?

Fundamentally, it’s about owning and role modelling behaviours. It’s not something one leader can do on their own; there are very few instances where one individual creates something amazing. It is always about collective ownership.

It is really important to remember that it’s a team effort – often, the structure of companies is such that you employ this one person with a great title, but that’s not how EDI [Equity, Diversity & Inclusion] works. It stems from the whole leadership team and each person in a leadership position in the company.

Of course, you can focus on hiring diverse people, but if you don’t have a culture that values diversity, then all the hiring in the world is not going to help you. They will just leave.

This is where I come back to the behaviours - your whole leadership needs to understand the richness and the value that EDI brings. If everyone truly understands that, then their behaviours will reflect it. If all your policies, your processes - not only within HR, but across the whole company - are fully imbedded from a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion perspective, then you can build your leadership behaviours, your managerial behaviours, your organisational culture… but you do need the underlying strength of the policies and the processes to imbed EDI convictions.

I look at what Lynk & Co does in terms of the EDI space. There are a lot of fundamental things, like the rethinking of traditions. A really basic personal example - I am ex-military, right? I am the first one to say, “Hey guys”, and then I think, doh, I didn’t just say that. So, I’ve changed that to, “Hey team” - changing your personal behaviours slightly does make an impact.

From an organisation-wide perspective, I have worked for a lot of companies who give Christmas gifts as a tradition, but many of our employees do not celebrate Christmas, so changing that to end-of-year gift or a company success celebration has inclusivity impact. It doesn’t change the intent or the flavour of it, but it makes it accessible for everybody.

What do you see as the biggest challenges for your business and your own role over the next 12 months?

Just to give you context - for Lynk & Co, at the end of 2020, we had 150 employees. At the end of 2021, we had 500. At the end of this year, we will have over 1,000. So, for us as a company, our biggest challenge now is how we maintain our culture, our feel, our values, in such rapid growth.

At Lynk & Co, we talk about ourselves as an industry disruptor; I think that the way we see ourselves as a company is that we are trying to rethink how we do mobility. The car statistics are horrific - the average car stands still 96% of the time. The collective environmental impact is enormous. Our business model works towards ensuring that people have the car they need when they need it, but when they don’t need it, somebody else uses that car. That’s what we mean by industry disruptor. There is a move away from the car as a status symbol - which in many cultures it still is - and movement towards the car being something that you just use when needed.

Within my team, we are also taking a disruptive approach to traditional HR thinking, creating a more flexible, humanistic way of looking at our people. Again, at a time of rapid growth, I think the biggest challenge is how we can ensure that all our people get what we’re here to do and are enabled to achieve it.

How do you see the Dutch economy evolving in the next five years?

I think the last few years - with COVID and now the war in Europe - have taught me more than anything that life is unpredictable. When I look at a five-year time span, I couldn’t hand on heart say, “This is where I think we’re heading”, because the world suddenly stops on its axis and changes.

When I think about the Dutch economy, overarchingly, I believe the Netherlands is well advanced from a renewable resource perspective, being more sustainable and having a stronger focus on better utilisation of existing resources and assets. This is reflected in the fact that the Netherlands is currently Lynk & Co’s biggest market - we have 35,000 members here in the Netherlands.

The fact that we are a bit of an industry disruptor, the fact that we are looking at car utilisation from a more sustainable perspective, I think resonates with the Dutch population. From a mobility perspective, the Dutch economy seems to be more open and ready to exchange old school car ownership thinking for a more flexible ownership model, for the shared mobility.  

What are the biggest challenges for a leader overseeing a remote team?

My two-word answer - and I will expand on this – is, being human.

We all know about conscious and unconscious bias. Proximity bias is one of the big ones for remote teams. As human beings, we bond more strongly with people we see every day than people who are more distant to us physically. The first thing that we as leaders need to do is be conscious of that. Be aware and put in place equal time for our people, no matter where they are.

The second thing, which comes back to my two-word answer, is being human. To really connect with our people everywhere, leaders need to be human - COVID taught us that, as well. The importance of making those interpersonal connections, the importance of not just listening, but also hearing, is critical in leading any team.

At a team level, the absolute best meeting of the week that I have with my complete team is called the Friyay meeting. This is a meeting where we just say what the best of the week has been for us. It can be in our private life, at work, whatever, but each of us has the opportunity to say, “My best of the week was…”. Again, it’s simple – but I learn a lot about my people from listening to what touches them in a week.

On a macro level, at Lynk & Co, we have a weekly mega jam. Other companies may call this a town hall. Super high energy, our CEO opens each session and, essentially, they are all staff virtual meetings where the whole company updates on where we are at and some of the week’s highlights, Lynk & Co style; it is informal and conversational. It’s a mixture of commercial performance, fun facts and spotlights on individual achievements.

It is the combination of micro and macro behaviours that drive both collective ownership and belonging.

If you could go back and give your younger self some career advice, what would it be?

Careers don’t have to be linear.

Early on in my career, it was like, you must do this job, then this job, then this job, and it was all very linear. In reality, life happens and it is important to go with that. For example, I had time off being a mum, which I wouldn’t change for the world; it was really important to me and I learnt so much more about being a human being through being a parent.

When I lived in India, I took a year off as a street photographer. I literally roamed the streets with a camera and at the end had a solo exhibition - it was fantastic. Not at all related to HR, but my word, I learnt so much! About myself, about different cultures, about humility and generosity from the people on the streets in India.

Early on in my career, I was like, “Oh no, you can’t do that, as you’ll never achieve what you want to achieve if you indulge yourself in these things”. But actually, this would be the one thing that I would say to myself: there are other things that you can do to grow and learn.

Similarly, as a parent and globe trotter, I got into governance. I’ve had multiple board appointments in various countries over the last 20 years. Again, it’s a sideways move – not linear, but has added tremendous value to my commercial focus and understanding of strategic HR.

I would also go back and tell myself that no one is an island. I think there is a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves; yet there are very few things that one individual has achieved completely on their own. When you look at your career, it is about the relationships you build and what you learn from the people in your team who you have watched grow and develop. The people below, above and beside me - the richness that comes from that.

Who did you most admire when you were a child and why?

I wouldn’t choose an individual. For me, what I’ve always admired are character traits.

There are three character traits that I most admire. The first is curiosity. I really admire people who have high levels of curiosity - they don’t bring any judgment with it, but are just curious.

Second is optimism. This is one that I personally struggle with from time-to-time; at times I can feel a bit glass half-empty. I have huge admiration for people who can see the positive straight away.

The final trait would be resilience. I look around me through COVID, with friends and family in war-torn places, and I think, “Wow, people are truly resilient - much more resilient than we think we are.”

How have you seen your approach to HR evolve since the COVID-19 pandemic?

I have seen HR evolve over the last 20-plus years from an administrative function through to the strategic partner that HR is today.

I think COVID enabled not just HR, but the whole business, to be more strategic and humanistic in decision-making. I believe companies today better understand a more holistic perspective, that there has got to be purpose, there has to be meaning in what we do.

You look at the great resignation, the fluidity of today’s workforce, and I believe that a lot of it is based on a search for meaning. There must be a broader purpose for our people, there has to be something that makes a difference based on vision and values, and I think that COVID has taught us that.

The mindset of companies, big and small, has changed to be more people-focused, to be more balanced and humanistic in our approach.

Thank you to Clémence for speaking to our HR recruitment team in the Netherlands, led by Katie Insley.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.