Interview with the expert: Human Resources

The Human Resources department is the area that focuses on managing and developing the organization's human capital. The aim of creating a healthy and productive working environment, with policies and procedures that guarantee fairness and equity, led Stecla Engenharia to win the GPTW seal. Ellen Moura, the company's Human Resources manager, who has a degree in psychology and specialization in HR, details the organizational vision applied at Stecla in relation to its employees.

What does the GPTW seal mean?

The GPTW seal is the certification of a company as a Great Place to Work through an anonymous climate survey, in which the people of the organization are invited to evaluate the environment. "We achieved an average score of 90 in the GPTW, an excellent mark for our first participation. We had a positive contribution from employees too, because it's not compulsory for everyone to respond. So we need to achieve more than 50% responses, otherwise the survey is invalidated," explains Ellen.

With regard to the GPTW seal, Ellen believes that Stecla's organizational culture played a fundamental role in this recognition. "I think it's because we provide an environment in which there is dialog, in which the employee can talk to the leader, bring up problems and where HR is also open to listening to demands."

Human Resources and Organizational Culture

As a company that manages work for third parties, Stecla's human resources department was structured with special attention to recruitment and selection. "It was important to define how this process would be carried out, how these professionals would be assessed, in order to minimize recruitment time and bring the professional into the company as soon as possible, because this directly affects our client's results. Now we're also taking care of the ESG part - we've recently implemented one-on-ones, which are constant feedbacks that managers give to their team members. In addition, we have been offering more and more training courses, including one for female leaders," he says.

Ellen also stresses that Stecla's organizational culture comes from the founders' mentality. Because if they don't have a mindset of well-being and caring for people, of providing a healthy environment, HR won't be able to implement that culture. "The example will always come from the top. So the leader of the company needs to have these values very strongly. Ethics, responsibility, being loyal and truthful are very much linked to what Stecla believes in," he adds. 

Human Resources and People

"You can't separate the person at work from the person in their personal life. Human beings are unique, regardless of where they are. As a company, it's important that we understand this. There's no machine that's going to defragment me when I go to work and my problems at home will be left behind, and vice versa. Understanding this is important if you want to feel good in the workplace," explains Ellen. Another of Stecla Engenharia's differentials is psychological support for employees. "It's not normal for companies to offer this kind of help. They offer health insurance, but forget about the mental side," she says. At Stecla, in the psychotherapy service, the employee pays half and the company pays the other half for three months.

Starting to take care of yourself is something that, especially in the engineering industry, is not very common. This mentality was already at the foundation of Stecla, which understands that psychological care for employees is fundamental. "We are ahead of other companies when we offer and understand the value of psychotherapy in people's lives," Ellen concludes.