People in tech: Kristian Randel, Fellowmind

Our 1,400 members range from small start-ups to large multinationals, and under the banner of "People in tech" we bring together their views on the tech industry and current issues. Kristian Randel, Chief HR Officer at Fellowmind in Sweden, works both strategically and operationally for a company where employees thrive.

Can you tell us about your role and how you work?

- Fellowmind has very clear strategic goals in the form of e.g. eNPS, staff turnover and growth and these permeate my and my team's operational work very much. Everything that the team and I work on can in some way be linked to our strategic goals, and this is a prerequisite for working rigorously and operationally in the HR area. In my work, I also support our management team and all our leaders in a lot of different areas such as engagement, leadership, employee development and so on, and it is an extremely stimulating part of my work," says Kristian Randel.

The recent report "The tech industry as an employer 2023" shows that the tech industry is among the most attractive in the Swedish labor market. Why do you think that is?

- I think there are a couple of different answers to that question. I've been working in the tech industry for almost 25 years, and I can see a clear transformation in terms of digitalization out in society. Initially, it was very large core processes at our customers that were streamlined, such as finance, production supply chain and warehousing. The processes were quite independent, but now we at Fellowmind work with all the customer's processes on Microsoft's business platform D365, which means that everything is connected and in the same place. In addition, digitization has now reached virtually everything in everyday life, not only in large companies but also in private individuals. I think this has had a big impact on the fact that so many people have opened their eyes to working in the tech industry in general. Another factor that we at Fellowmind have identified as important for our attraction is to create a better gender balance in the recruitment process. In 2023, 42% of our recruitments were women, and that was really only a result of the fact that we had such a large proportion of applicants for each position that we automatically got an even gender distribution with competence-based, objective recruitment methodology. We've done a lot of work to promote female role models in different ways, and there's a big difference in the attractiveness of the industry to women now compared to 10 years ago or so. 

Fellowmind has been awarded and recognized for creating an environment where employees thrive. What has been the key to your success here?

- Fellowmind has been working with the heart rate monitoring tool Winningtemp for a few years now. The research background of Winningtemp is based on weekly randomizing a number of questions in an app in our employees' mobile phones, where the questions touch on all the topics related to low staff turnover. In short, the rule of thumb is: the higher the employee engagement, the lower the staff turnover. We have developed a methodology based on our leaders analyzing the results of Winningtemp and, together with their team, selecting 1-2 focus issues, and then creating a number of "actions" to work on in the coming quarter to increase the results of the focus issues. The team checks once a month and sees if the result has improved, checks that all "actions" have been done, and creates more "actions" if necessary. It becomes an iterative improvement process where the whole team is involved and not just the leader. In my role, I work with performance analysis in Winningtemp basically every week, and help the leaders who need extra support. We implemented Winningtemp in connection with the integration of three Swedish companies into one in Sweden, and were able to follow in real time exactly how our employees felt during and after the integration, which was very fascinating. In terms of results, we can say that in about two years we at Fellowmind in Sweden have gone from an eNPS of 25 to 67, which is an incomparable improvement where the original 25 itself was actually already a bit higher than the industry average. During the same period, our staff turnover has fallen from around 18% to 11%, and we can also see that sick leave has fallen. 

What do you think makes a good leader in the tech industry?

- There are lots of things that make a good leader, but I usually boil it down to this: the first thing a leader should think about is being kind. It's easy to misinterpret kindness as being lame or not daring to make tough decisions, but that's not how I see it. Kindness is a hard approach and not a soft value. The second is that leaders should meet the basic psychological needs of their employees, and do so in a structured way. This is done by setting clear goals with the employee that are linked to the company's strategic, long-term goals and developing the actions that need to take place for the goals to be considered met.

- As a leader, you give clear feedback to your employees and you do it often. Our leaders meet with their employees once a month and go through what actions have been taken, what the results have been, if anything needs to be corrected and if the employee needs help with prioritization. 

- If you follow these principles as a manager, you also get three things in return: The first is that the employee gets clarity in their own development and career by working towards goals in a structured way. The second is that by fulfilling the basic psychological needs, you automatically counteract the risk of employees suffering from stress and exhaustion. The third is that as a leader, you develop a close and secure relationship with all your employees, which in my experience is in itself a key factor in becoming a good leader.