Work-life balance, ownership and societal impact: this is how we work at Nazka

At the moment Nazka Mapps is looking for three new hires: two digital project managers and a full-stack web developer. A good moment to explain what kind of workplace culture we have, because Nazka operates differently from other companies. “We want people to feel good when they come work for us”, says our co-founder Han Tambuyzer. “Which is why we invest strongly in our culture, and in a new way of working.”

Our culture is based on three core elements:

• strong work-life balance,
• ownership of your work,
• social impact.

First, Nazka pushes strongly for a good work-life balance. We for example use a hybrid system of remote work. Monday and Friday employees can work from home, while Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are office days. This way our team still sees each other most of the week, but at the same time people can sometimes work from home without being disturbed. This way we combine the best of both worlds. Team members can also partly arrange their schedules themselves. Of course they have to complete their 40 hours per week, but how much per day can they plan themselves up to a certain level.

Secondly Nazka, because it’s a small company, likes to give employees ownership over their projects. We work more horizontally than hierarchical. Everyone has their own area of expertise and responsibilities (front-end, back-end, design, testing, product owner, DevOps, management). New projects are always divided into different tasks and components, after which the different team members can decide in mutual consultation which tasks they will take on. For some projects, you are a "lead developer" and in others a supporting role is taken up. This ensures cross-pollination and variety across projects and specialties.

Finally our mission is key for Nazka. What we do revolves around making a societal impact. When we for example receive a project proposal we first analyse whether it really will add value for current and future generations. If it doesn’t, we are generally more reluctant to accept it. Which is why we mostly work on themes like mobility, energy, health and climate. “When you end up with Nazka, you will never be a pure coder”, says Han. “You will be challenged to go beyond thinking about writing code. We expect you to brainstorm along on how the applications could be improved for client and society. You will be challenged to take responsibility, taking up a leadership role or start coaching others.”

Something the people at Nazka see as a key part of their job. “You’re always working on social impact projects”, says Kristof Vandenbroucke, a full-stack web developer who joined Nazka in September. “You never just build a website, there’s always something behind it.” Kristof is our newest employee, and he started working for Nazka after an internship. “During that internship I for example worked on an air quality map of Mechelen, my hometown”, he says. “Working on subjects like that is just very gratifying.”

So did you get excited reading this, and do you want to build societal impact at Nazka?

Below you can find our job descriptions. In the meantime, we are also always looking for interns who want to join us for a couple of months.