Top employer thanks to people-friendly structures

Mobile working in agile sprints, workstreams, and networking with colleagues – which company comes to mind when you hear these terms? If it’s your health insurance company, then you’re probably either insured with pronova BKK or you’re one of the health insurance company’s nearly 1,500 employees. Because that’s exactly how they work: agile, interconnected, and completely transparent when it comes to internal processes and knowledge transfer within the company. This makes it one of the pioneers in an industry that operates at the intersection of administration, public services, and market competition. And not just since Corona. It is no coincidence that in 2021 pronova was again ranked among the top employers for the sixth year in a row in the FOCUS ranking. Flexibility, an open mindset, and work structures in which employees can contribute and take responsibility have been in place at the company for a long time.

Digitalization in concrete terms: networking with the Tandemploy People Cloud

Even during the Corona crisis, pronova quickly focused on the opportunities that presented themselves rather than staying in crisis mode for too long. The majority of their staff now works on a mobile basis, supported by smart software and an intense process of cultural transformation in the workforce. Since the end of 2020, the health insurance provider has been using the Tandemploy Talent Marketplace and People Cloud software, giving employees the opportunity to come together for sprints, share knowledge, and find relevant learning formats. The number of users by far exceeded expectations: Currently, more than 80 percent of employees actively use the software – on the one hand, because it noticeably benefits them, and on the other hand, because the team around Nicole Heering, HR developer at pronova, has put in a lot of effort to lower the hurdles even for employees who are not digital natives. “People want to be taken by the hand,” she says, even if that means going through hundreds of appointments explaining and demonstrating how to use the software. Once people have overcome their fear of the unknown, they can easily and intuitively find their way around and experience firsthand what digitization means and how it can positively influence their own work in a very concrete way.

Heading into the future even better connected with new modules

For pronova BKK, going the extra mile in internal communications has paid off many times over. Besides the initial three modules that the company started with – projects, expert exchange, and lunch dates – four new modules have already been added. These include generation exchange for networking older and younger colleagues and event matching. More applications are to follow. The fire has been sparked among employees; for many, it has become difficult to imagine working any other way. The future belongs to networked organizations – whether in the private sector or in (semi-)public companies, whether for general use or a niche.

In a video interview with Tandemploy CEO Jana, Nicole tells us how pronova BKK managed to get almost all employees on board to use the Tandemploy Talent Marketplace and People Cloud software, the impact of the new work structures, and how employees and managers plan to push networking and digitization further in the coming months.