Tell us about yourself and your role at LIQID.
‍My name is Lara and I’m responsible for the Office & Culture department. In my area, we are planners, doers and people lovers with a view of the whole and the detail. Having a background in the hospitality industry, I see myself as a host; often being a person of contact for all LIQIDians, but also the first point of contact for our guests in the office. While structured office management with its tasks like ordering system and provider management are part of my job, my passion is mostly in organising all kinds of projects and making people happy. From engagement surveys, feedback talks, all hands meetings to company events and offsites, the people at LIQID are always at the center of my work.
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Why did you decide to join LIQID? What was the main reason for the application process to join LIQID?
‍Office management was still at the very beginning when I started my journey with LIQID. Already in the recruiting process, I could feel that this would be a great chance for me to bring in my personality and establish the department. During the interview with my former team lead, I was convinced that I would be able to have a real impact in forming the department – but even more: assist in shaping the organisation. This was, besides very good framework conditions, the main reason for me to join this fintech startup. 

What is your purpose? What drives you?
‍Driven by perfectionism, I always strive for the best possible results like high participation rates, high-end office design or the perfect customer experience, while a customer in my context means our real customers, but also our employees. Gaining standing in the company over time, being valued by my co-workers and the management team and being given the trust in everything I do is to me as important as experiencing macromanagement from my team lead. Also, from the bottom of my heart, I love to connect people, build bridges and create an inclusive and safe environment for all LIQIDians.

One of LIQID’s core values is “WeQ” How does this mindset shape your approach to daily tasks?
‍As a little explanation, “WeQ” is a term used to describe a team or group that has a high level of collective intelligence, collaboration, and emotional intelligence. The “We” in “WeQ” refers to the team or group as a whole, rather than any one individual member. “WeQ” determines my everyday work life in various ways. Our Office & Culture team is part of the People Team composed of different areas like business partnership, HR operations and recruiting. For every field, we have experts in the team and everyone has their own area of responsibility. In our team, we trust each other’s expertise and know that we can only succeed when everyone does their bit. This does not mean we always agree. It means that every opinion is valued and that our different personalities make our team diverse and allow us to deliver the best possible results.

What’s your greatest personal success regarding “WeQ”?
‍With the last pandemic, we rethought our way of working together and decided to expand and renovate our office. While the opportunity to work remotely gives all employees a lot of flexibility, we realised that our office should even more become a place for people to meet. As a result, we tore down some walls to create collaboration areas to work in, increased the number of meeting rooms and workshop spaces, equipped them with high-end video conferencing systems to enable hybrid meetings and created a community space to casually meet for a ping-pong match, all kind of events or simply a great portafilter coffee. This project was one of my favorites so far at LIQID and it formed the basis for teamwork and effective collaboration.
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What are initiatives to demand & promote “WeQ”?
‍For their daily work, all teams have individual meeting structures and tools that they use for collaboration, such as the project management tool Asana. We have a shared knowledge platform, a weekly newsletter with updates from each department and a well-structured Slack communication. To come together in person, we established a quarterly Office Week, in which all team members work from the office for one week to enhance collaboration and offer a platform to build personal connections. While the team leads plan workshops or in-person meetings, we take care of all social events, from all-hands meetings and mystery lunches to outdoor volleyball sessions and after-work parties. Certainly, we also have big company events like summer and holiday parties or even offsites for several days in which we all come together and celebrate our success.