Collaboration in focus at the workplace of the future

Nova's HR manager Ingrid Kjöllerström has a master's in didactics and learning organization from the University of Oslo, with a semester at the University of California, Berkeley, and thirteen years of experience in HR work, most of which is from the IT industry.

When asked why she chose to start working at Nova, she says she was inspired by Nova's history, where the four founders early on decided to build a company with the goal of becoming the world's best workplace.

“Even though Nova has grown significantly since its start in 2007, with several niche companies in digitalization, I got the impression that they managed to maintain the culture all the way,” she says. “The employees thrive, cheer for, and help each other. Everyone feels that they are part of something bigger, while Nova has managed to maintain the small expert environments.”

“It is also a fantastic journey to be a part of as we are now going to grow even more. When I also get to work on integrating HR into management and be there where decisions are made, it was an easy choice.”

You should always take the temperature of the company from an HR perspective, Ingrid continues. She loves to walk around and talk to colleagues and check how people are doing. With a “bottom-up perspective,” she wants employees to gain a deeper understanding of their work and feel that they are part of the strategy and the decisions being made. This creates engagement, motivation, and belonging, Ingrid believes.

“NOVA's most important resource is our employees - those we have today and those we plan to hire in the future. While we attract more candidates to the group, we need to ensure that our existing employees are satisfied.”

To achieve that, we depend on further developing our existing culture and our concept of 'the world's best workplace.' My ambition at NOVA is to help create a company where everyone wants to work, she says.

The best of both worlds

During the pandemic, we have seen that it works to combine the best of both worlds, Ingrid explains. “You can work from home when you want full focus on tasks and avoid the stress of rushing between preschool, schools, and leisure activities. At the same time, we can go to the office to meet colleagues and have a stimulating environment around us,” she says and notes, “during the pandemic, we have confirmed that we can deliver from the home office, in different teams, and across projects. At the same time, it is important to emphasize the importance of having the office as the place where we meet and collaborate. The office will become an even more important arena for culture building, innovation, creativity, and knowledge transfer.” She explains that NOVA will not make any hasty decisions when it comes to guidelines for employees, but today's and future offices will be a combination of home office and physical office. The office will be a place for collaboration and a social arena, to a greater extent than a workplace.

Can you imagine working at the world's best workplace?

Do you want to be a part of NOVA? When we recruit new experts, we have a recruitment process that helps us figure out if we are a good match. We can start with a cup of coffee. Send an email to Ingrid and we will find a time and place that suits you.