Willemen Groep accepted the ‘HR Campaign’ HR Pioneer Award during the Belgian HR Awards on 19 April in The Event Lounge in Brussels. The organisers - Trends, Kanaal Z, Publicarto and De Facto Image Building - are using this award to emphasise the importance of HR communications. Willemen Groep was able to convince the jury with its ‘Step into your future’ campaign, in which they were the first Belgian company to use virtual reality in their search for new talent.

Willemen Groep developed a 360° video in collaboration with young start-up Yondr, which it takes along to job fairs. With its special glasses built into a hard hat, Willemen Groep crossed Flanders in recent months looking for future project and site managers. The glasses immerse students in a VR world in which they visited three major sites in just three minutes: the Astro Tower in Brussels, the planned A11 between Bruges and Westkapelle, and the take-off and landing runway at Brussels Airport that Aswebo renovated last summer.

“The glasses turned into a major attractor at job fairs. Hundreds of students would stop by to test them out. Each student was incredibly impressed with the new technology because it’s like you’re really on the sites. They then also all requested their own cardboard from our campaign website: www.stepintoyourfuture.be. This cardboard allows you to step into the VR experience in your own home, sharing it with friends and family,” explains communications manager Loïc Verstraeten.

So what Willemen Groep did was basically provide site visits from right there in their stand, which was able to enchant the Belgian HR Awards professional jury. “We are incredibly proud of this great distinction,” says CEO Tom Willemen. “It is objective proof that we are an innovative company that dares to utilise new technologies to achieve results. We want to dedicate this prize to all of our employees who give the very best of themselves, day in and day out.”

Willemen Groep is the largest family-owned construction group in Belgium, with a workforce of over 2,300 employees. It hires an average of four people every week. Because of its innovative HR approach, Willemen Groep is not only able to distinguish itself within the construction sector; this HR Pioneer Award is also recognition of its status as a reference within the entire HR world. The other nominees were Bubble Post, Fun, Nike and UZ Leuven.