Bakker Goedhart and the power of knowledge transfer

Bakker Goedhart was formed in 2018 after the family-owned company Borgesius took over a large bakery organization. Bakker Goedhart has been baking bread for over 125 years and will continue to do so with great passion. The company has 1000 employees and 11 production facilities in the Netherlands and supplies bread, confectionery, and freshly made sandwiches to stores, gas stations, and foodservice customers. HR business partner and educational coordinator Henk van Enk explains how the company improves in the field of HR.

What does production at Bakker Goedhart look like?

“We manufacture different products like artisan bread, buns, sourdough bread, and even pastry. Our 11 production facilities have production lines running daily to deliver all of our freshly-baked products.”

What impact does knowledge level have on the work floor?

“Actually, it plays an increasingly larger part. In the past, it was all about production, but now quality and safety are import priorities. Our employees need to know everything about basic safety and food safety on the job. That’s not just an internal demand; we must be able to show our clients that our employees work safely when we’re audited.”

“Knowledge level will play an increasingly important role on the work floor.”

As an educational coordinator and HR business partner: how do you deal with continuous improvement?

“We’re responsible for the knowledge level of our employees. Both our permanent staff and our agency workers have to be trained and stay trained. That means that knowledge has to be refreshed regularly and has to be updated with new rules and regulations. Also, we focus on securing and standardizing our improvements.”

How does that work in practice?

“We use Cierpa Competence. We make sure the right study material such as trainings and tests are available online in the Competence Cockpit; employees receive a notification via email or notice board that they can start their training and know when to complete it. We make sure it’s done in a low-threshold and user-friendly fashion.

Nowadays, everybody receives their training the same way and from HR we can monitor the existing skills level. In the past, it worked quite differently. Every bakery really worked in their own way: a paper-based instruction, or a workshop, different content in every bakery. That doesn’t provide any overview of the knowledge level on the work floor.”

“Employees can start in a low-threshold, user-friendly fashion.”

What does this procedure mean for HR?

”We’ve been able to automate knowledge transfer and insert it more into the line. Together with Cierpa and our employees, we have adapted the cockpit to our needs. We simplified management and usage considerably, so we could transfer this task to the bakeries. That gives HR more room to focus on other big issues, like recruitment, placing the right people at the right spot, and reducing the absence rate.”

Which developments are current at HR?

“We’re focusing on automation as a means to better serve employees and unburden the management. And standardizing on various levels. Also, we are busy with themes like employee development to keep ensuring the quality of our products.  We bake great bread, and we want to keep doing so in the future!

Another improvement area is on working with foreign employees. At first, our training material was written only in Dutch, but we’ll make a transition towards English and perhaps Polish too. We keep on developing!” 

Cierpa Competence helps organizations by centralizing and storing the latest in knowledge and standards. From knowledge sharing to assessment and from pilot to multi-plant. The knowledge level will grow and become more insightful, while the number of operating errors will decrease considerably. We would love to give you an online demonstration!