In 2020, Tobania's purpose was more relevant than ever before: to transform people, businesses and technology.

Despite budgets often being squeezed as a result of the corona crisis, the need to accelerate digital transformations was high. In short, all companies had to rapidly reinvent themselves, digitise and respond to change. Tobania assisted its customers in these (digital) transformation processes.

Curious to find out what our adventure looked like? We would like to present you our growth report, in which we show our 2020 results and share our vision for the future.

A few words from our CEO,
Lode Peeters

2020 will go down in history as the corona year. A lot of companies faced some tough challenges, however, Tobania managed to achieve a turnover of 100 million euros. And as Tobians never sit still, they are aiming for a significant growth in the coming years as well. Curious? CEO Lode Peeters loves to share some insights with you and talks about the value of right-sourcing during crisis periods, the care for talent, data analytics as key accelerator and the constant need for innovation.

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THE NEW NORMAL

During the pandemic, all Tobians were challenged to adapt very quickly to the new working environment and modified working methods. Teams were suddenly split up and everyone had to work from home. The role of HR was crucial and valuable in supporting the new way of working by continuing to bring people together, by having a sharper eye for wellbeing, by learning virtual skills and by providing new services.

BRING OUT THE BEST IN PEOPLE

At Tobania, we bring <out> the best <in> people, and no pandemic could stop our HR team from contributing to this goal.

Because people are at the heart of what we do, we continuously strive to bring them a work experience that brings them value and that they like. In our recent employee engagement & wellbeing survey, we learned that 99% of our Tobians feel committed and connected to our company values and culture. We are proud that our employees can identify themselves with our TOBE values and feel at home at Tobania.

STRONG FOUNDATIONS

When facing challenges such as the covid-19 crisis, having strong foundations becomes even more important. And these strong foundations should be more than ever employee centric, forwardlooking and datadriven. In 2020, HR created together with our employees our new Employer Value Proposition, HR focused on recruitment excellence and improved our employer branding. Furthermore, HR invested deeply in developing the vision for a strong and inclusive talent management and in implementing development journeys and agile growth paths, enabling Tobians to unlock their potential and ambitions.

So in short: 2020 was all about setting strong foundations for our Tobians to thrive and to support Tobania 3.0!

"99% of our Tobians feel committed and connected to
our company values and culture!"
Eva Van den Brande - HR Director

THE CORONA EFFECT
The first quarter of 2020 was one of the most difficult for many companies in a very long time. While most economies continued on their (moderate) growth path in early 2020, their pace was halted in mid-March due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in most parts of the world. We observed an Belgian economic growth of -6.3%.

As a result, governments responded with restrictions on economic activities, which was unprecedented in recent history: from disruptions of day-to-day activities to a complete shutdown of certain industries.

FURTHER GROWTH IN 2020
Tobania SA coped successfully with these constraints and was able to adapt its daily activities effectively. We experienced few project or budget stops. This means that, financially speaking, we have weathered the pandemic well. Admittedly, with a slight delay in the expected growth of the organisation.

TOBANIA 3.0: NEW SERVICES, MORE GROWTH
We are ready to grow even further. The necessary investments are foreseen and fit within an established strategy called “Tobania 3.0”. This new strategy includes, besides the existing services that we continue to market, new services and growth in new sectors.

All this means that we have a budgeted turnover of €101 million for 2021. A growth of more than 10% (compared to the expected growth of 4 to 5% of GDP).

"Tobania's financial health is and will always be my number 1 top priority.
It’s our golden key to ensure further growth and enabling innovation."

Ingrid Stoop - CFO

In 2020, Tobania focused on sustainable initiatives on different levels:

OUR TOBIANS HEALTH

Our own Tobians are the most important capital the company has. Therefore, we invested in regular dialogues with them. Our HR team ensured proper interaction moments to keep the great atmosphere going.

OUR SOCIETY

We receive so much from our society that Tobania would like to give something in return. Therefore, we organised donations to food banks, charity walks and so on. We are witnessing a huge empowering platform within our Tobian community, which we will continue to develop in 2021.

NATURE
We have one planet, so we need to take good care of it. In 2020, Tobania has selected more environmentally friendly materials and partnerships than ever before. Some examples: we now print CO2 neutral, we select our partnerships with local players and with a limited impact on our environment. Did you know that Tobania achieved the Ecovadis Silver label for 2020, same score as the year before being gold labelled?

We always strive to get in touch with all our Tobians. The pandemic made this quite a challenge in 2020. All contact moments shifted to digital touchpoints. To make these as enjoyable as possible, we often added a bit of "fun" to break up the business. Even the learning moments all changed to e-learnings.

2020 was not an active year in terms of events, but it was an exciting year in terms of online meetings. We are looking forward to a breakthrough in 2021 where we hopefully will be able to organise live events again, as these are an essential part of our Tobania community.