Moving forward with people

The People of Kramp play a crucial role in empowering the business to move forward. They are enabled by a strategy that focuses on streamlining leadership structures for greater efficiency, prioritising key initiatives to improve hiring, onboarding and performance management, and continuously improving the overall employee experience.

Key people-related advancements in 2025 included the implementation of improved top management structure, roll-out of portfolio management across people & culture, continued focus on employee engagement, and a refresh of the people & culture strategy as part of strategy 2030.

Introducing a new management structure

At the beginning of 2025, we introduced our new top management structure with a Board of Directors (BoD) and an Executive Team (ET). The ET, in which market and customer perspectives are stronger represented, aligns on strategic direction and priorities. Each of our Managing Directors drive growth, customer success and results in their own cluster of countries: Benelux, DACH, Southwest, Nordics and Central Eastern Europe.

Our Vice Presidents strengthen functional excellence across the group in technology, omnichannel, category & buying, supply chain and people & culture. This has brought more speed, simplicity and clarity, and – most importantly – much stronger collaboration between group and clusters, and across functions.

The new, smaller BoD consists of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Eddie Perdok, Chief Operating Officer (COO) Rutger Bruijnen, and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Roeland Tjebbes. By the end of 2025, we were proud to conclude that the new setup was working well and proved to be futureproof.  

Streamlining initiatives for greater efficiency

Related to our new operating model and governance, project and portfolio management became an even more important element of how we operate and execute our strategy. While the new approach to portfolio management was already formally introduced in Q4 2024, it was fully rolled out across all functions in 2025, including people & culture. It has provided focus and enabled us to finish key initiatives.

We reduced the number of initiatives in the People & Culture domain by 50% at the start of 2025. All of the remaining initiatives are either delivered in 2025, or on track for delivery in 2026. Examples of key initiatives delivered in 2026 are the launch of our new people performance management methodology, roll-out of improved hire and onboarding process, the start of a pilot around skill development in technology, and the launch of a new corporate website and career page.

Continuously improving employee engagement and experience

During all these changes, employee engagement is more important than ever before and remains one of our company’s key metrics, because our people are our most important asset. Engagement influences how we show up to work, how they collaborate and, ultimately, how successful we are as a company.

In spring 2025 we have re-introduced the ‘Pulse’ survey, a quick check-in on engagement that allows us to stay close to the topic and understand how it is developing. As always, we then conducted the extended employee engagement KWEE survey in September. At 81%, the 2025 KWEE participation rate was high. Key themes our employees are positive about are tools and hardware provided, feeling of belonging, respectful treatment by management, and feeling safe. Elements that can be improved are organization of work processes, appreciation, and clarity on our strategy and vision for the future.

The overall engagement score was also strong with 3.93, however slightly below both our ambition and last year’s score (4 and 3.99 respectively). Therefore, we have intensified the follow up of the results both at group-level and at team level.

As part of the wider corporate Strategy 2030, the long-term people & culture strategy was also refreshed. While the overall direction of the strategy remains the same – to enable joint success – the ambition is to further accelerate on providing more focus by defining three strategic tasks:

This agenda was aligned across all functions and clusters, and is ready for execution in 2026.