English
Head of HR
When it comes to Ignace’s career in HR, it’s easy to say that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Both Ignace’s parents had professions centred around connecting with people. Therefore the conversation at the dinner table influenced Ignace to take a similar path to that of his family’s.
Ignace followed this path at the University of Antwerp Management School where he studied Human Resource Management. Why he choose this course,
“I wanted to choose something that I would be interested in talking about. I knew philosophy and psychology were very interesting and appealing to me, therefore I continued down that road and aimed to do something professional or turn my learnings into a profession. This is how I chose human resources.”
Ignace went straight from university into a HR role, for a worldwide interbank financial telecommunications company. During his 10 year stint at the international company, he conducted all roles one can imagine within HR - from recruitment, to being a HR business partner, to learning and development.
When asked about his initial attraction to Unifiedpost Group, Ignace mentioned a combination of factors. However, two main reasons stood out:
“Firstly it was the business. At Unifiedpost Group, we are on a digitalisation journey, both for ourselves and especially for our customers. The journey is necessary, but not an easy one.” Ignace goes on to say that due to the ever-changing European and global tax compliance regulations, many businesses have a new journey to take, and it’s vital to partner with a company such as Unifiedpost Group - an early adopter in digitalisation.
The second reason for Ignace's attraction to Unifiedpost Group, was the influence of the specific role he was to undertake. As the Head of HR, Ignace knew he had work to do, to apply his expertise and experience to the company.
“Unifiedpost Group had been through an acquisitional period (acquiring over eight companies in a few years). There was a lot to do to gain some sense of HR solidarity within the various companies and new regions to the group. I was keen to accept the challenge, especially as I knew the company had a big appetite for the work to be done.”
“Making sure that my HR Regional Managers have everything they need in order to do what they need to do. Second is making sure the HR strategy is fully in line with the business strategy. If the business strategy shifts, the HR strategy needs to shift too.”
During Ignace’s time at Unifiedpost Group, he has set the foundations for global HR processes, ensuring a uniform process regardless of an employee’s location.
Ignace’s work doesn’t stop there. He has high ambitions for himself and his team to develop career path processes, learning and development objectives and also performance management procedures.
“Now we have the core HR in order, we can build on the soft HR, which allows us to focus on retention management, well-being, building a career path etc. This gives me energy and gives my team energy too.”
Ignace believes we have to be agile, and to be at the forefront of changing legislations - not just for tax compliance, but for the likes of payments and identity too.
Igance says that Unifiedpost Group will be the connector in the three domains,
“Businesses will need to be able to connect all their systems, financial data and identity in an even faster way, so that they can see trends, correlations and figures at their fingertips. Of course, there will be challenges to create and grow this model. The market is always changing and so is our competition too. But as long as we are adaptive and we’re able to create the balance between one solution for all and a personalised solution for each and every customer, we’re on the right track to success.”
Finally, when asking Ignace how his specific role and leadership contributes to the future of Unifiedpost Group,
"Now that we've provided the teams with the necessary tools, the HR team can dedicate time and attention to nurturing our employees, ensuring each of our experts reaches their fullest potential."
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