Harnessing company culture for strategic growth and high-volume hiring with Barbara Imm

Thomas Kohler:
Today’s guest, Barbara Imm, Director People & Culture from roadsurfer.

Barbara Imm:
We always wanted to track quality of hires. And in the past, our quality of hire was mainly early fluctuation to say, hey, how many of the people we hire are leaving us within the probation period? What we do now through Ashby is really that when it comes to the culture part, do a qualitative assessment of our new hires after four, and then after four weeks, and then after three months, based on our culture.

Thomas Kohler:
And how is this looking like? So what questions do you ask and how do you then make sure to get a certain score that maybe can represent the quality of a higher? Because it can be very diverse. Right. On how you interpret it and how you measure it.

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, that can be very diverse. And actually, that’s only possible to do it because we have in place an entire company and have worked a lot on that. A system for self review and evaluation of our cultural fit. It’s not about character or anything. It’s really just about. We have a very clearly defined culture with very clearly defined value. So what we do very regularly is a review based on those values for the entire existing team. And now we use it also for our new hires.

But to be honest, you need to work a lot of that, as you said, because it’s very, I mean, not a very objective scale. So you have to work a lot on calibration together with the HR vps and the team leads till you, like, get to a point where you can say, hey, we all do it at least almost the same way. I mean, it’s always gone. It’s never going to be 100% objective, but at least, like, at a point where you can say, we are confident that this system is working for us.

Thomas Kohler:
And what attributes are the main attributes you look at?

Barbara Imm:
When it comes to Culture, you mean?

Thomas Kohler:
And the quality of higher, more or less. And if it’s then representing the culture, then the culture.

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, it is mainly about the culture. We do have one question, which is in general about the work performance, how it’s going. But the main part is really, we have defined our five values and really just an evaluation of the behavior based on those five values. That’s the same system we use for every existing employees. So employees do a very regular self review. We do 360 feedbacks on that calibration, talent reviews with people, partners, but also cross functional.

Thomas Kohler:
Barbara and I talked about the role of the culture in a business, plus also how to leverage and make use of the cultural frameworks in a data driven way so that the business has a competitive advantage over other players in the market through their culture. And also how to ramp up blue collar hiring volume hiring to go from zero to 500 hires in a season, what needs to be in place to achieve that, and how they do it all in this episode.

Today’s guest, Barbara from Roadsurfer and I think we met each other through the hv capital portfolio days or connections. Then we always stayed in touch. And now we are doing a podcast here. You’re sitting in. I’m in Tyrol at the moment. I’m looking forward to this episode. And we were talking about how to be data driven without losing the focus on culture and some blue collar hiring. But maybe we start first with a short introduction about yourself.

Barbara Imm:
Thanks for having me, Thomas. It’s a pleasure to be here. As you said, I’m Barbara and I’m working at road service, director of people and culture. Actually never planned to end up in HR or in people and culture. Studied political science with a very clear vision to get into the NGO sector after my studies. And then actually I wanted to do an internship and that got canceled very last moment in South America. And then just really very last minute. Looked for something different and started an internship in a Munich startup in 2011 as an HR intern.

And I think it took me about two or three weeks to completely change all the plans I have had for the past six years and just know that’s where I am and where I want to be throughout my whole career.

Thomas Kohler:
Was it a good decision now in the hindsight?

Barbara Imm:
It was a great decision with a lot of ups and downs, of course. I mean, being in people is amazing, is also very challenging at moments. A lot of…

Thomas Kohler:
Especially in the past few years, right. We went through a crazy demand on talent and then on kind of a shock moment.

Barbara Imm:
Totally. It’s been quite a ride over the last four years, but never regretted that position. Been in HR in start and scale up since then and would not want to do anything else right now.

Thomas Kohler:
Yeah, cool. And I also met your founder, I guess, at events. Yeah, I think Marcus. Yes. And when he talked about Roadsurfer and the ups and downs and also that you scaled really massively and always have to scale seasonally as well, I thought wow, really outstanding business. And I think you built something very great in terms of value proposition in a market that you are recognized well, especially in the field where you need to do a lot of volume hiring, so you build something sustainable there. And I think also the way you do things from a cultural perspective, I think is also quite, quite a strength when we could consider it from an outside view. So maybe you could talk us a bit first about your time at road surfer and how Roadsurfer crew from your start until now maybe and then we dive a bit deeper into what you built there.

Barbara Imm:
Happy, very happy to do so. I started at Roadsurfer five and a half years ago and actually back then with seven people in the Munich office. So very, very early stage, of course, first one in the HR team. We were just starting to plan the first internalization to France. So we had seven stations in Germany back then already. Still very classical. VW rental RV rental company back then. So from that point on, as you said, and that’s what we had, was crazy hypergrowth.

We did grow, we have now 70 stations all over Europe and also North America. And those seven people we had in the Munich office grew to around 300 people in the offices we have right now. We have offices in Barcelona, Munich and Frankfurt, and another 500 throughout our operations team. So a massive scaling throughout the last five years since I started and still going to hire another probably 200 people this year. So still quite a bit ahead of us. And of course that came with a lot of challenges in between. I mean, we had…

Thomas Kohler:
Maybe first, before we go into that, what’s exactly the business model of road surfer? So you are renting vans, right?

Barbara Imm:
Well, that’s how we started. As I said, it was at first, it was actually just a very classical bully. We rented out the first year with 25 bullies and then we started renting out different rv models, bigger ones, smaller ones, and then added a subscription model into our portfolio. So now you can do long term rents and then also started selling rvs. So we’re now one of the biggest players selling used rvs. And then our newest product is road surfer spot. So what we do now, we want to be really an outdoor travel expert where we can do everything that has to do with your outdoor travel road. So for spots, it’s kind of like a Airbnb for camping spots. So you can book your camping spot at a local vineyard or a surf school or a farmer’s ground or something like that.

Thomas Kohler:
Nice. And that also has some implications on the business, right. Because if you rent something, you have a start and end date and then you also need to maintain, I would say, the vehicles. And I think that’s also substantial for your job and your infrastructure. You built on how you can keep, I would say a footprint in a certain region that you have people main doing the maintenance and also making sure that there operations are running. So, yeah, but maybe first, before we go into that, you could talk us a bit about the challenges because you just wanted to start.

Barbara Imm:
Well, the challenges, I mean, biggest challenges, as we all knew, after really the hypergrowth phase, then we had, as everyone else, the COVID like Covid hitting us really hard as all the travel sector. So we went from really crazy hypergrowth into really closing down almost everything going on. Short work with most of our teams, really not knowing how it was gonna like, how things were gonna turn out afterwards. Really came out, to be very honest, very, very good out of the COVID phase because the outdoor travel was the first thing people were able to do again after Covid. So hit once again a hypergrowth phase after Covid and then ran right into the next problem, which was the supply crisis after the Ukraine war. So we had a huge demand, but then we were not getting new cars. So that was another quite challenging phase, to be honest. And now the last years back into growing very heavily, expanding to North America, exciting times again.

Thomas Kohler:
Wow. And did you also reach the profitability already or is it still something to achieve while growing?

Barbara Imm:
Actually roads surfer was profitable from the very beginning on. There was the time in between when I said during the COVID and the supply crisis, when we were struggling more with that. But on a general level, profitable from the beginning on.

Thomas Kohler:
That’s great, great, especially for now. And from an HR or people perspective, what were then the most, I would say important factors to get right that the type of business roadsurfer has can leverage the people function as an opportunity maybe, or advantage over competitors.

Barbara Imm:
I mean, challenges, there was a lot, I mean, we have a very mixed hiring profile. A lot of like classical startups have a lot of very classical business function. What we do have is a very, very mixed team, which is an amazing opportunity, but also quite challenging, of course. So we have a big number of blue collar employees within our team and also looking for a lot of blue collar employees. And we have like a very business, very seasonal part. So we do hire massively over the spring month and then build up a team, but always with the intention, always already communicated that part of the team only stays till November, December when we scale down a little bit. And then back up to scaling from march on. And of course, doing that in 13 different countries, two continents, has been a fun ride and still is a fun ride.

Thomas Kohler:
In case you like my show, please subscribe. I would really appreciate it. And what did you implement that you can scale this up and down?

Barbara Imm:
Well, to be honest, I get that question a lot. We do most of the hiring internally. What we have, and I think that is a huge advantage, is quite a strong brand. So a lot of the people that work with us, a lot of the people we have in our team are people who have already known the brand road surfer itself. So we have a lot of ex clients, we have a lot of people recommended by other employees. But when it really comes to the recruiting process itself, we have the seasonal people are being mostly recruited by our local station managers. So within the people team, what’s our part of the job is to fill the funnel to have enough applicants there to have the right quality of candidates. But a process itself is being handled by our station managers locally. That’s why really it is doable to do that with a rather small recruiting team, to be honest, at least for that size of hiring.

Thomas Kohler:
And how many people roughly do you need to ramp up in a season? Do you know?

Barbara Imm:
As we grow every year, it’s more every year. This year, we have already signed 350 people like this year and still another 200. So it’s going to be. But not all of this is seasonal. Part of like 200 of those people we are hiring now are permanent employees and the rest is seasonal also.

Thomas Kohler:
Blue collar permanent or to the headquarters?

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, a lot of blue collar permanent. Actually. We have quite a big mechanics team, for example. I mean, we have a huge fleet. We have more than 5000 rvs. So we need a lot of people to take care of those rvs. We have mechanics, what we call fleet care managers. Really, people taking care of our cars. We have a lot of also customer focused blue color at the station. So, yeah, a lot of permanent blue color also.

Thomas Kohler:
And do you then do a mix of social media campaigns and maybe even regular chopboards, maybe some sourcing even?

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, we do sourcing. It is quite challenging for blue color, at least we find it challenging because it’s much more difficult to find where to do sourcing for blue color. What we do is a mix. Yes, of course, we do social media campaigns internal, but also have tried some external partners for social media campaigns. As I said, try to work a lot with the people we already have on board. So a lot of the mechanics we have are friends of another mechanic we already hired at another moment. We do use classical job boards, but also things like Abeitzagentur were actually having quite good results with them. EBay, Kleinenzer and we try to talk to schools where mechanics for example, if we stay with that example, finish their studies and then we try to recruit them directly from there. So you have to get a little creative to really find the right people.

Thomas Kohler:
And your process is then also designed quite simple, right. That you have somebody showing interest, then you pre qualify through maybe even a short call. And then it’s more like also scheduling for when can you come on site and talk to the station manager and then they have one meeting and then maybe do some negotiation and make an offer and sign and start the next Monday, roughly?

Barbara Imm:
It kind of depends if it’s the permanent blue color or seasonal blue color. For the seasonal blue color, the process is really, really short. It’s not one short call, as you said, pre screening, one short call and then just to come on side for like an hour or something for permanent blue color. Actually we do a little longer process and a lot of time even like trying to do, depending on local legislation, doing trial work, really having them at the station, working with them.

Thomas Kohler:
Ah great, that’s smart. If you can afford it from time. I think that’s one of the best indicators. Right? Because I think no hiring process can really represent collaborating or working together.

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, definitely. And especially for jobs at the station. We also found out for the people to know if it’s the right thing for them, it’s worth investing that like day or half day of working together also for them to know not to start and then say, hey, sorry, that was not the right thing for me.

Thomas Kohler:
Did you also see in data that this is maybe reducing or preventing early attrition? Because I think this is often with this profile as a problem, right. That some maybe then get an offer, they sign it. But then first of all, some don’t even come and some come but leave very early because it’s not for me.

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, definitely. That’s actually why we implemented it or why we tried it first. We saw that we did have a lot of like three or four years ago. A lot of cases of people like signing contracts very fast and then resigning again after like two or three weeks because they just realized it’s not. Not for them. That’s when we had some stations implemented the trial days to see and that improved the numbers quite massively. That’s why we do it now whenever possible, of course. I mean, recruiting is as it is and it’s not always possible, but when possible, we do the trial days and.

Thomas Kohler:
What applicant tracking system or tech setup you have. Because I think for high volume types of hiring, some use also very different system for doing the regular headquarter hiring. What is your system there? And I think you also switched ATS, right?

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, we just switched three months ago to Ashby, looking for a long time what the right tool might be. Not also when it comes to. Not only when it comes to applicants, but also when it comes to data. We really very much centered on finding a tool that would help us to improve our recruiting process by tracking a lot, or at least not a lot, but the right data. Because when you hire so many people, data is really key to improve your processes on the line.

Thomas Kohler:
And what can you do now with ASHP, what you could not do before. What did you use previously?

Barbara Imm:
Previously we used Personio and still use Personio as an HRM and happy with that. But it does offer now Ashby a lot more when it comes to setting up different processes with different stakeholders, making that part much more easy, not having one recruiting process for the entire company, which is just not possible if you have so different positions and tracking a lot of data. What we do now, and I love that, is we always wanted to track quality of hires. And in the past, our quality of hire was mainly early fluctuation to see, hey, how many of the people we hire are leaving us within the probation period. What we do now through Ashby is really, that’s what comes to the culture part. Do a qualitative assessment of our new hires after four, and then after four weeks and then after three months based on our culture.

Thomas Kohler:
And how is this looking like? So what questions do you ask and how do you then make sure to get a certain score that maybe can represent the quality of a hierarchy? Because it can be very diverse. Right. On how you interpret it and how you measure it.

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, that can be very diverse. And actually that’s only possible to do it because we have in place an entire company and have worked a lot on that. A system for self review and evaluation of our cultural fit. It’s not about character or anything. It’s really just about. We have a very clearly defined culture with very clearly defined values. So what we do very regularly is a review based on those values for the entire existing team. And now we use it also for our new hires.

But to be honest, you need to work a lot of that, as you said, because it’s very, I mean, not a very objective scale. So you have to work a lot on calibration together with the HRBPs and the team leads till you like get to a point where you can say, hey, we all do it at least almost the same way. I mean, it’s always gone. It’s never going to be 100% objective, but at least like at a point where you can say, we are confident that this system is working for us.

Thomas Kohler:
And what attributes are the main attributes you look at?

Barbara Imm:
When it comes to culture, you mean?

Thomas Kohler:
And the quality of hire, more or less. And if it’s representing the culture, then the culture.

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, it is mainly about the culture. We do have one question, which is in general about the work performance, how it’s going. But the main part is really we have defined our five values and really just an evaluation of the behavior based on those five values. That’s the same system we use for every existing employees. So employees do a very regular self review. We do 360 feedbacks on that. We do calibration, talent reviews with people, partners, but also cross functional.

Thomas Kohler:
How often is the cadence? Is it every six months or every three months or annually?

Barbara Imm:
We do a self review like employee and their lead on a monthly basis. We do on a bimonthly basis, team lead and HRBP twice a year, 360. So you get all the different perspectives. And then once a year we do a very extended talent review before deciding on promotions, on salary raises, including all stakeholders together to really get a good calibration on that.

Thomas Kohler:
In case you have any feedback or anything you want to share with me, please send me an email on thomas@pplwise.com or hit me up on LinkedIn. And in case you really enjoy the show, please subscribe. I would really appreciate it.

And how do you then make sure that this is also not too much overhead created? Because I think if you do a lot of reviews, people need to take the time and they also need to document somehow or prepare. How did you solve that issue?

Barbara Imm:
Yeah, we had a lot of discussions on that. That only works, at least for us, if you have a tool where you can optimize all those processes, where you always do the same thing. And I mean, what we did say, hey, it cannot be an overhead for a team lead and an employee to sit together at least once a month and talk about, hey, how’s the performance going and how is the general company culture fit going? So you said, hey, that needs to be possible at least once a month. We take that 1 hour. I mean, that’s the core of our business success, to take that 1 hour and then of course, they said, hey, we need to make that as easy, as fast, as non manual as possible. So we’re looking for a tool where we can just implement that. So people get their reminders, they fill it out, they prepare it beforehand, the employees, and then they have 1 hour every month with their team lead on that. And the same for 360 feedbacks, it’s all implemented.

Thomas Kohler:
And what tool you use there. Cool. And when you now think about an approach where culture sometimes can be fluffy or seen fluffy, right. The whole topic and what we also talked about is that how can you be data driven without losing the focus on culture? What is your take on that or how do you internally see this?

Barbara Imm:
In the end, it’s just what I already described, what you try to. We have a very, very clear, and we’ve had that actually from the very beginning on, a very clear definition of what our culture is. So what you first need to do, you need to know what your culture, what your values are in order to be able to have any grip on that, any data. And we actually do take a lot of time during onboardings. We just had a culture week a couple of weeks ago. We just took an entire week to get back on focusing. Hey, what does it really mean? What does it mean? And I don’t mean in a fluffy way really, when it comes to behavior. So we have really clear definitions of what you do or what you don’t when it comes to those values.

Thomas Kohler:
Can you give an example for one value and one example?

Barbara Imm:
We have, for example, free hugs, which of course, when it comes first, it sounds fluffy. It’s like, what’s that? Free hugs for us is the definition of being open, positive and optimistic. Not in a toxic positivity way, but really just to face new challenges, to be open, to meet new and different people. So then when it comes to free hawks, we try to say, hey, what is really free hugs? And be as precise as possible and say, hey, free hugs is I just had one of my colleagues coming to me with a huge problem saying, hey, I don’t know how to solve this situation. It’s all going wrong. And everyone is just bothering me about and really being with them, saying, hey, what’s the solution? What can we do? Maybe we find a positive angle to that situation. Sorry, I was not very specific. If I had just been in an onboarding and I was the one bringing up that example which said, hey, that’s not specific enough.

And that’s what we try to do with everyone really educating on what does it mean and what does it not mean? And then it gets you into the situation where it can actually do a self review saying, hey, last month, if I look back, was I very free hacks in my behavior or not? And really trying always to focus on what to improve when it comes to that. And then of course, if you track all that in a system bringing together the peer and the upward and downward perspective, you get amazing data on where we are at.

Thomas Kohler:
Yeah. And I think if you can really manage that, everybody is calibrated, that everybody takes it serious. And I would say you need to believe in it. And for believing in it, you need to see a value in it. Right. Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense. So I think it also is a big of a communication piece. So how did you start prioritizing or emphasizing this in the whole company, that this is also being lived so well? Because sometimes it’s just, okay, you talk about it once and then everybody forgets it, but once you talk about it.

Barbara Imm:
You write it on the walls and there it is.

Thomas Kohler:
Yeah.

Barbara Imm:
For instance, to be very honest, we had a very good business coach at the beginning of roadsurfer. So we defined those values very, very early on. And I have to really give big kudos to our founders. They, from the very beginning on, believed in the importance of culture and value. So I did not. And I know a lot of people are facing that topic. In my position, I did never have to convince our sea level of the importance of culture. But what we do, and what we do have to do constantly is reminding that we cannot just leave it there saying, hey, now we have a great culture.

Barbara Imm:
It is a constant commitment from everyone. And that’s the important part. Not the people and culture team, but every single person in the management, but every single person in the company in general to live this part, that they’re very, very clear. Always in the recruiting process, we present the values to every employee or every potential employee during the recruiting process. Hey, that is how we want to work together. If you are happy with that, we are happy to have you on board. If not, you’re just not going to be happy here with us.

Thomas Kohler:
That’s great. Any final words from your end?

Barbara Imm:
It was fun talking to you about this.

Thomas Kohler:
Yeah, thanks for our end. I hope to see you soon in Munich because we also do executive dinners there. Last time we couldn’t make it, but the next one, hopefully we can make it. And it was always great having chats with you. Great that we did this podcast. Thank you so much.

Barbara Imm:
Thank you for having me, Thomas.