How Wouter Debaere Check Someone’s Reliability at Work

How Wouter Debaere Check Someone’s Reliability at Work

Sean: We go through all of these checks and I’m wondering, what are some checks that you have in place if you do have them, to make sure that people you have in the team are at the least bit have a standard level of reliability, and then that is where you measure them to what your actual idea of reliability is. So to give a more concrete example for that question a lot of companies might include it. We have time trackers installed. I use Hubstaff for my team. This is to know who’s going to be the terrorist here, right? Who’s going to just waste time, get paid, and not really do their part in work. Do you have those systems in place and how do you check if someone’s reliable or not?

Wouter: Look, a couple of things to comment on that. So one is you never really know upfront. It doesn’t matter. Look, let me go back to your question from Mangtas Internal, but let’s talk a little bit about our marketplace. What we deliver to our clients is reliability. The problem that they face today is if I need to find a business partner, a vendor, or an outsourcing partner on the other side of the world through Google, how do I trust that company? Of course, they’re good at selling themselves, but how do I trust it? We solve that problem for our clients and we do that by a 13-step process and this and that and you know, nine out of ten times that works. But sometimes it still doesn’t. Right. And then the proof is really in the pudding.

Then it’s really about giving people trial time and then making sure that you have a process that now you’re on the job and having a system on that as well. Now that translates to us internally. We cannot deliver reliability without being reliable ourselves, and that’s why we developed it down. We had all these different rules and no, no, no, very simple, but given me, I created a code of conduct. If you ask me, you know, off the top of my head, I would always miss a couple, right? No, no, no. Let’s keep it very simple. Very simple. People do need to remember one thing. Am I reliable, reliable, and reliable?

So in our hiring practices to begin with, depending on the role, obviously, it depends a little bit like do we look for referrals and we but ultimately we have conversations with them. We check, you know, the backgrounds and all that. That’s one thing. There’s a minimum there. But I think where we really, and what I really emphasize and what’s really important to me is ultimately we give people chances. There are some minimum checks we do, but I don’t want also prejudice too much. Like if you hit the minimum criteria, give us a go. Come work with us for a month and let’s see how that goes. But let’s be very, very clear. Your trial period ends within a month, and we’re going to judge you on one thing only, which is reliability. And you know, black and white. We can stay friends this and that, but there are very clear objectives here. So I don’t believe in time tracking. I don’t care if you work one hour or 100 hours. It doesn’t matter to me if you get the job done with the right quality, based on how you committed it, you’re reliable. That’s great. That means you’re consistently delivering according to what you’re supposed to create. You fit in perfectly. And that’s why I’m saying the team evolves and changes. It’s because we also give chances to a lot of people and ultimately assess them very clearly. We’re very upfront about this. We are very decisive in moving forward, like the moment we see the great potential. We can invest a lot of time in that person and is proven to be reliable. Let’s go. When the answer is no, we don’t waste time, we move on.