Our mission? Unsuck Work
Work is fantastic. You feel useful and you learn. You even get to know your friends there. You are appreciated.
That is until you suddenly bang your head on the glass ceiling. Perhaps you notice that you aren’t getting the same opportunities as your colleagues, simply because of your surname. Or maybe you realise that things that were promised will never come to pass or that even your wages have not been paid on time. That sucks. That sucks big time.
That’s why Accent has a mission: Unsuck Work. We want to make your job and the entire job market better, with equal opportunities for everyone, whatever their surname. We want proper contracts, with no empty promises, with no glass ceilings, with no pigeonholes. We listen to you, look beyond your CV and aren’t afraid to suggest things you haven’t thought of yourself, without being pushy.
This is how you find a job that is fulfilling and well paid. Because work doesn’t have to suck at all. It can simply be fantastic.
Accent. Unsuck Work
What we promise and how we deliver it
Equal opportunities, no matter your surname.
We've been fighting discrimination from day one. Providing equal opportunities to everyone is so ingrained in our DNA that we never cease to be amazed at the discrimination still occurring in the job market on a daily basis.
All our employees receive intensive anti-discrimination training as early as the first day of their training journey. We even organise a full-day diversity training course every year. To ensure that this theory is put into practice, we conduct mystery calls – fake job applications, in other words. And we’re not alone in doing this, as our sector federation also keeps an eye on things in the same way. These efforts are paying off. With a score of 88%, we are outperforming others in the sector.
Of course, anti-discrimination and diversity are not just an internal priority for use. We have also optimised our processes for the employers we work with in order to eliminate bias. We do this through open-minded hiring.
We ourselves are already setting a good example, opting for inclusive neutrality among our employees. This means that the people who represent our organisation are free to reflect the diverse society we live in as long as the services we deliver are neutral. Want to find out more?
Eline Boggiano
What really struck me at Accent from day one was the fact that absolutely everyone is given a chance. They look at your personality, not your CV. And this applies both to internal employees and temp staff. I myself was given the opportunity to start – with zero experience – as a Junior Consultant. Six years on, I progressed to Regional Manager.
Enthusiasm trumps experience.
Having less of a chance of scoring a great job because you're fresh out of school or haven't yet acquired any relevant experience? That sucks. With us, this doesn’t happen. Enthusiasm and motivation are more important to us than a well-rounded CV.
Some examples
- In 2021, we employed 10,437 people under the age of 25. That's a staggering 23% of all the people we were able to help find a new job that year.
- We don't just encourage employers to hire first-timers. Our own door is also always open to enthusiastic school leavers and those without experience. Of those we welcomed to our team over the past three years, 61% had no higher education degree or less than one year of work experience.
- Finding someone who's a good fit for a company's culture is more important to us than being able to tick off all the required skills that are often listed in job ads. Because a lot of skills can be learned on the job. Guided by our motto 'training is the new recruitment', we set up Talent Lab: a training hub that provides people with the retraining and upskilling they need to do the jobs they are interested in.
Elien Schacht
I studied speech therapy. During my placement year, however, I soon realised that working as a speech therapist wasn't for me. Finance spoke to me instead, so I plucked up my courage and applied to work in Accent’s Finance department, even though I didn't have any relevant experience. To my delight, I got to start straight away, studying accounting via evening classes and receiving a good amount of on-the-job training.
A boss who realises there's a new boss.
Working hard to be able to play (at least as) hard. That's many people's mindset at the start of their careers, and that's totally fine. But one day, you might get to a point in your life where your priorities change dramatically. A day when you want to work less, because you want to play harder. Because junior-you suddenly dominates your agenda. On that day, you'll be only too happy to have a boss who realises there's a new boss in your life.
Such a life-changing moment logically also affects the things you find important about your job. Perhaps you've braved the traffic jams to Antwerp or Brussels for years, but would now prefer to work closer to home? Or are you looking for a job with slightly more regular hours, perhaps one that allows you to work from home?
Our job coaches are here for you. Not just once or briefly, but for life. If your priorities change, they'll be happy to look for a job that suits your new way of life.
Home on time and paid on time.
What you do after 5pm is entirely up to you. Whether it's raving, cooking, exercising, fishing, knitting or maybe even working your own side hustle. The one thing that definitely doesn't belong on the list is worrying about your salary being paid correctly and on time.
If you start working through Accent, you'll receive weekly transfers to your bank account for the hours you worked the previous week. You'll always receive this amount within max 8 working days.
And you can validate these hours yourself, via our handy MyAccent app. The app lets you easily validate the hours you worked or request a correction if the information your employer sent us wasn't quite correct. Were you sick or absent for some other reason? You can also easily tell us yourself via the app.
You do the job, we do the rest.
Arriving in a country where you don't yet speak the language because you're looking for a stable and financially rewarding job there? That's pretty intense. That's why we set up specialised Accent Foreign offices back in 2008. These are branches run entirely by foreign-language consultants, who guide foreign-language speakers in at least 12 different languages in their search for a job in Belgium.
Their guidance goes far beyond helping with your job search. Our Foreign job coaches provide assistance and advice on registering at the local town hall, rental agreements, mobility, opening bank accounts, setting up your medical insurance, applying for child benefit, and much more.
A bit older, so what?
Just as people without any experience sometimes come up against a brick wall in their job search, CVs that list years of experience sometimes prove a deal breaker for employers. We don’t subscribe to that logic.
> In 2021, our job coaches ensured 6,900 candidates over 50 found new jobs. That's a staggering 15% of all our active temps during that year.
> We also launch initiatives to combat all forms of discrimination during the recruitment process. One of these is ‘open-minded hiring’. Thanks to open-minded hiring, employers don't know exactly who we're putting forward for their vacancies. All personal details are removed from applicants' CVs, so the focus is genuinely on experience and ambition.
> Did you know that in 2021, we even launched a new company entirely devoted to over-60s? Sixie is a community of motivated and committed over-60s who are determined to keep contributing to society even after they've retired. The Sixie team seeks temporary and project-based assignments tailored to these workers' needs, from companies or public administrations that are looking for experience, knowledge and temporary reinforcement.
