Feeling at home in a growing organisation

‘The strength of our organisation is that we consistently succeed in attracting and retaining motivated and talented people,’ says HR Director Christine van Andel. In addition to dedicated efforts to recruit talent and efforts that make CHDR an attractive employer, such as CHDR Academy, cohesion and team spirit are important themes. CEO Prof Geert Jan Groeneveld: ‘Our staff have achieved much in recent years under less favourable circumstances, including the COVID pandemic and its aftermath. To keep everyone motivated, I think it is crucial that we give them a sense of the bigger picture and of our mission as an organisation.’

Attention to the shared mission and a sense of cohesion has become even more important as the organisation has grown in recent years. In Leiden, people work at two locations that are a 10-minute walk apart. In 2025, a new unit opened in Twente, which is at least two hours’ travel from Leiden. Van Andel: ‘Both in the onboarding process and in many other ways, we are working to ensure that our employees know what is going on in the organisation as a whole and feel involved in the bigger picture.’

‘When I joined CHDR a few years ago, I took part in the onboarding day for new employees,’ says Van Andel. ‘It struck me then that we were inundated with facts, which is understandable, as CHDR is a complex organisation. But I do think there is room for improvement, to make the onboarding more interactive and livelier.’ That is why, in 2025, a film was made that gives new employees a bird’s-eye view of the organisation. By filming with drones flying through different departments, interspersed with informative slides and explanations, a lively whole has been created that quickly gives new hires an impression of the unique organisation that is CHDR.

Additionally, the onboarding programme has also been shortened, allowing more room for interaction. Van Andel: ‘Every month, a great variety of professionals join our organisation. You can imagine that a nurse will have different questions than a bookkeeper, a young clinical scientist or an IT professional. By making the meeting more interactive, all those different questions can be addressed, and people also get an impression of their new colleagues.’

In order to involve people in the various CHDR teams in the bigger picture, meetings are organised several times a year where employees can meet each other and hear about the projects the organisation is working on. In addition to the traditional ‘pizza evenings’, where clinical scientists give a presentation about a project they have completed, a new concept was launched more recently, called ‘CHDR Stories’. Groeneveld: ‘During a lunch for everyone who wants to attend, we are given a presentation showing how our research contributes to a better quality of life for patients. In 2025, for example, we saw the impact of our work on the lives of pain patients. Another meeting focused on patients with Parkinson's disease. I know I feel proud of our organisation when I watch these presentations, and I hope everyone else feels the same. What we aim for is to show the impact of what we do to all our staff, including those who don’t deal directly with study participants or patients. Whatever your place in the organisation, your work contributes to the impact we are having on the lives of patients.’