Who is Maarten?

How I ended up in a lab

I first trained as a teacher for four years and then studied chemistry for another three, a professional bachelor's degree. The plan was to teach chemistry in secondary education. I ended up in the chemical industry and that is how I got here. Whether I will ever stand in front of a class, I do not know. If the chance ever comes along, maybe I will.

I spent my first six years in a commercial testing lab, on sulphuric acid and oil, in early, late and night shifts. Everything there revolved around speed. A truck had to be back on the road within half an hour, so we had half an hour to produce results.

At some point we no longer needed those shifts. The first loans were paid off, and then we said we wanted a bit more time together. So when a recruiter from Pauwels Consulting called to ask whether consultancy appealed to me, that phone call came at exactly the right moment. I now work from seven to half past three, and the balance is exactly right.

I had no pharmaceutical experience. I came from heavy chemicals and landed in the laboratory of one of the largest pharmaceutical sites in the country. That is a completely different world, but you get a full month of training straight away, so you are well prepared.

What the work in the lab is really like

The biggest difference from my previous lab is the documentation. There, a deviation was quickly resolved: bring in a new sample, cross out the old one, measure again. Here you cannot cross anything out. A deviating result stays in the file, even if it is later declared invalid. First we look for an identifiable cause in the lab, a calculation error or an instrument that is drifting. If we do not find one, a wider investigation follows, with a retest protocol that has to be approved first. That is what stops anyone from testing their way towards a good result. Expect a week to a month before the retest happens. That comes with pharma, and you learn it. It is also exactly what someone starting here runs into.

There are around fifteen labs side by side on our site, each with their own tests and their own expertise. Ours revolves mainly around chromatography, on a single product family. It sounds narrow, and it is not: a single analysis takes three days, with a day of preparation, the run itself and then the calculation. On top of that I review my colleagues' result packages, and I give training. One for lab technicians, and once a month a general session.

Is it routine? Yes. It is never one sample being set up, it is twenty to thirty, and that means the same operation twenty to thirty times. Some people cannot keep that up. I can, and I think that is simply my character.

What I would tell someone who has just graduated: chemistry is a theoretical degree, and in your first job you want to be able to explain everything. That is not your job. There are people who do that thinking. You read your procedure and you carry it out. What you do need is precision. You fill a volumetric flask drop by drop until the liquid sits exactly level with the mark. The smallest shadow below it is wrong, and so is the smallest drop above it. Beyond that: no trouble following procedures, and still being able to think about them now and then. Being a hundred percent sharp at the critical moments, and efficient the rest of the time. That balance is the craft.

Why I put myself forward as an ambassador

When the ambassador role on our site opened up, the question went out to everyone on assignment there with Pauwels Consulting. I put myself forward.

Above all I think there should be someone. That is the first reason. Working for a client is not always easy, and the office knows the client well but cannot see every day what it is actually like on the floor. There is a space in between, and someone who is here every day can fill it.

What appeals to me most is the smallest part of the role. Those little chats, bringing people together. If someone says they are having a hard day, five minutes over coffee is sometimes enough.

I know what five minutes like that are worth, and that comes from somewhere. Debbie Croonen was my Talent Manager, today it is Annick Stevens. At Pauwels Consulting, a point of contact who stays with you comes with the job. You do not get that automatically with a direct employer, and not at every consultancy either. When they were on site, they always came over for a chat. How are you, how is it going. That sounds small, and it is not. There was a period when things were harder for me, and I would be on the phone with Debbie at five in the evening. Not about work.

I do not expect that of anyone. I assume every day that people have their own work to do. On that front I have been pleasantly surprised a few times. And that is exactly what I want to be now for my colleagues on the site.

"If someone says they are having a hard day, five minutes over coffee is sometimes enough."

Why I think an ambassador is needed

People leave sooner than they used to, and especially at the start. In Belgium the number of permanent contracts terminated early rose by 16 percent in the space of a single year, and among employees under 25 almost one in five contracts has ended after twelve months (Acerta, analysis of 390,000 employees at 31,000 private sector employers). That does not surprise me. If you arrive somewhere and you know nobody, there is not much holding you there.

And the support that keeps people going does not come from above in the first place. 73 percent of employees in the EU say they get support from colleagues, against 64 to 65 percent from their manager (Eurofound, European Working Conditions Survey 2024). That matches what I see. Except that for a consultant, those nearest colleagues are the client's, not your own employer's. That is where the gap is.

In Belgium there is already something like a workplace mentor, and it is set out in law. A new employee has to be guided by an experienced colleague appointed by the employer (Royal Decree of 25 April 2007). But that is about safety and well-being in the work itself. What I do is something else: making sure that here you also run into your own employer somewhere.

So I do not replace the Talent Manager. I simply stand where that support most often comes from: next to you.

What being an ambassador means to me

The ambassador programme has been running for a while, we have written about it before, and it is led by the Talent Managers. I went through the role with Annick before I started, and I am not the only one: on another pharmaceutical site Florian Scheenaerts takes on the same role, and he has been doing it for over a year.

For me it comes down to being approachable. Welcoming new colleagues, organising a lunch now and then so that a group forms instead of a list of names, and making sure that someone arriving here does not get lost in the crowd and runs into a familiar face somewhere.

I also pick up the practical questions. Around seventeen Pauwels Consulting colleagues work on our site. A Talent Manager keeps close track of those people, but is not on this floor every day. Where do I find what, how does this work here, who do I need for this. I am here, so with me that is a thirty-second answer.

And I stay close to what is going on. A team grows, a department reorganises, more work comes in. Anyone walking around here every day notices that sooner than someone at the office, and I pass it on. For the people on this site I also represent my employer, and once a year we as ambassadors sit at the table for the workshop on the results of the Great Place to Work survey, so that what is happening on the floor actually makes it back into the business.

What I will do first as an ambassador

Is someone new starting soon? Then I always send a message first: "Hi, I heard you are the new colleague?" I try to keep that fairly informal and put the person at ease. And then we meet somewhere we can have a coffee, because that is less formal. First I just ask how someone ended up here, and I let them tell me what they want to share. Only then the practical side: the systems we work with, how Pauwels is organised on this site, and how things run at the client.

And then a lunch with a few colleagues. We did that a few months ago for a number of new people. Just on site at midday, everyone with their own sandwiches, sitting down together. You should not make it bigger than it is.

On top of that we eat together once a month with our own group. And I keep an eye on our shared mailbox, because that is where everything people here need to know comes in: that the annual survey is open, that there are after-work drinks somewhere, exactly where we will be standing at the New Year's party so that nobody is left on their own.

I would also like to bring people together outside work. A quiz, laser tag, karaoke. Or just a drink after hours, which does not have to cost anything. A Secret Santa around Christmas, out of our own pockets. That kind of thing.

What I am not going to turn this into is a second job. Most of it fits into the days that already exist: a message, a lunch break, five minutes in the corridor. That is also the only way it works. Once it becomes a calendar entry, it stops happening.

Being an ambassador, in a single evening

Of all the company events, the New Year's party is my favourite, because that is where the most connection happens. Last year I walked around with my predecessor as ambassador, and that is how I ran into people I knew all evening. At the Family Day you are mostly with your own family.

That is the role summed up in one evening. The difference was not the party. The difference was that someone was walking beside me who introduced me to someone else.