Gradually when time passed, I stopped focussing on Covestro as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That did not mean that I stopped working hard or that I stopped caring about the people around me. Quite the opposite. I had my own area of responsibility, my own systems and, importantly, my own users. They were largely the people in the plants with whom I had already worked for many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew what information they needed, how they used it and what was useful to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I decided, in effect, to focus on my own shop<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Part of that work was the reporting of OEE data coming from the systems I was responsible for. The reporting had originally been developed at DSM and, after the migration, was rebuilt on Covestro’s analytical platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This work could take place relatively unnoticed by the wider Covestro organisation. My customers were largely the plants that had previously been part of DSM. They already knew the data and were familiar with the way we used it. I could therefore concentrate on making the reporting useful in the new technical environment rather than having to redefine its purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We automated much of the monthly reporting process and also built a data foundation for setting performance targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also had to decide how much to standardise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I chose to build standard Python scripts that could be parametrised for individual sites. The basic transformation architecture was common, but specific functionality could be added where a particular site needed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could have made everything identical. Instead, I tried to find a middle ground:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Standardise what benefits from standardisation, but leave room for genuine differences.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n When I later became involved in version 2.0, the technical environment had changed. The data was now coming from an emerging new standard tool, so parts of the solution had to be rebuilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I kept the architectural principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The common functionality remained standardised, while the architecture allowed site-specific additions where they made sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In that way, I could carry some of the ideas I had developed earlier into the new environment without making a particular point of doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was no longer trying to change the organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was simply trying to build something that worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was another way in which I moved on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I became a union officer within Synergo<\/strong>, taking on organisational responsibilities, and became involved in the CLA negotiations. I organised union leaders’ tours around the Dutch Covestro sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although I was a member of Synergo, a union serving higher professionals, I cared about cooperation between the different unions. I tried to facilitate a common line towards management rather than having the unions approach the negotiations as competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the negotiations, I also helped organise surveys among employees, so that the combined union effort could start from as good an understanding as possible of what people actually wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sitting in the CLA negotiations, I learned another thing that I had not expected: quite a lot about negotiation itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The relationship between management and employees felt different there. Neither side could simply decide for the other. To reach an agreement, you needed each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I found that surprisingly instructive. The formal hierarchy that existed in the company was still there, of course, but at the negotiation table it was balanced by mutual dependence. Management needed an agreement; the unions needed an agreement. Both had something to bring to the table, and neither could simply dictate the outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also think that my increasingly limited emotional attachment to Covestro helped me in that role. I could represent the interests of employees and work towards a good agreement without feeling that I had to defend Covestro as a company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I found the experience valuable enough that I would recommend it to colleagues. Even if you never intend to become a union officer, sitting through serious CLA negotiations gives you a quite different perspective on how an organisation works \u2014 and on negotiation itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I did this during the negotiation cycles of 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was another way of having an influence that felt natural to me. I had a clear role, a constituency I was representing and colleagues from different unions with whom I could work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also became a member of the Works Council in Geleen, the site that was my formal work location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I did not have direct colleagues there with whom I worked on a daily basis. And the site itself had changed considerably. The sale of one business and the closure of two others had greatly reduced the number of people remaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Works Council nevertheless gave me a connection with the site and with the colleagues who were still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So my engagement with Covestro did not disappear. It changed its form.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Even when I was no longer trying to influence the direction of Covestro itself, I continued to follow what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The transition of Covestro to ADNOC was another example. I followed the developments and was interested in what would happen to the company and its people. But I noticed something in myself: I followed it without feeling personally engaged in the outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was perhaps the clearest sign that something had changed. I was still working at Covestro, still doing my work and still engaged with the people around me. But my relationship with the company itself had become different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had moved on \u2014 while still being there.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps that is what “moving on” ultimately meant for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had not stopped caring about doing good work. I had not stopped caring about colleagues. I had not even stopped being interested in Covestro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I had stopped carrying Covestro as a company<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My engagement had become more local and more concrete: my systems, my users, the plants, my colleagues, the unions, the Works Council, and the things where I could actually contribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now even that phase is coming to an end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the 2025 negotiations, my successor will have to step into the organisational work I had taken on within Synergo. My professional work will also eventually be handed over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back, I think I moved on not by becoming indifferent, but by putting my engagement where I could make a difference<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gradually when time passed, I stopped focussing on Covestro as a whole. That did not mean that I stopped working hard or that I stopped caring about the people around me. Quite the opposite. I had my own area of responsibility, my own systems and, importantly, my own users. They were largely the people in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_heusje_archive_order":150,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[19,18,21,23,20],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career","tag-career","tag-covestro","tag-dsm","tag-english","tag-work-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":460,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Another way of contributing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Watching from the outside<\/h3>\n\n\n\n