OpenBC was founded in 2003, grew and later went public under the name XING. In 2019, “New Work” became the umbrella for all company activities and XING SE was renamed New Work SE. The XING brand was retained as a product brand. Over the course of these 20 years, the Hamburg-based company has repeatedly expanded its services and added numerous new companies to its corporate structure. Today, more than ever, New Work SE is committed to aligning all of its services and products to shaping the future of work and making it more people-centred, thus enabling a more fulfilling working life. The company follows the views of the renowned philosopher and New Work pioneer Frithjof Bergman: individuals should recognise what THEY really want and not the companies. Presenting this philosophy and the entire associated value chain to all employees in a memorable corporate mission statement – that was the challenge that New Work SE presented us with. And of course we accepted it. But see for yourself!
Client
NEW WORK SE was founded in 2003 under the name Open Business Club (OpenBC for short) by the Hamburg entrepreneur Lars Hinrichs. At that time, the platform had around 1.5 million members. In 2006, Hinrichs renamed the company XING. The company has been called New Work SE since 2019. Today, the subsidiary brand XING has 21 million members. The company believes in a working world in which people can fulfil themselves and develop their potential. For happier employees and more successful companies. Based on this conviction, the New Work SE Group is committed to a fulfilling world of work – for a better working life – with its brands XING, onlyfy by XING, kununu, XING Marketing Solutions, Honeypot and InterNations as well as its services and products.
Task: Making the corporate mission statement tangible
New Work SE approached us with the wish to create a Big Picture that would primarily be dedicated to the company’s employees, but would nevertheless also be suitable for use in the “outside world”. The big picture was to paint a complete picture of New Work SE’s mission statement:
WHY does the company do what it does (purpose, mission), WHAT does the company do (brands, business model) and HOW does the company achieve its goals (culture, vision). The big picture should clearly illustrate the company’s value chain with memorable imagery and concrete examples. With the help of the picture, employees should understand what they are contributing to when they act in accordance with the company’s transformation principles. The needs of the target groups should also be clearly recognisable and the examples should be used to illustrate what New Work SE wants to achieve on the market and what should therefore also be achieved for the Group’s brands.
Implementation: The corporate mission statement becomes the big picture
The big picture was developed in a multi-stage process in close collaboration with the Change Management, Employer Branding and Brand Strategy teams. The basis was a visual world that combines the internal and external perspectives of a company and describes the path to the vision. The details are made up of general and company-specific elements that were redesigned. In addition, as in every Big Pictury project, they were adapted to the corporate design and, in a further step, updated following the rebranding of the New Work SE brand.
Step by step, for the first time in the company’s history, a picture was created that shows the entire world of New Work SE at a glance – from the vision to the marketplaces to the identity. The Big Picture will initially be used in the New Work SE offices. Further versions of the Big Picture are being planned. In the future, the Big Picture will also be used as a digital animation, at company meetings, as a hook for the annual kick-off and as part of the onboarding documents.
The Big Picture shows our vision and how we will achieve it: We give everyone the chance to discover and develop their talents and thus become the best version of themselves.
Malin Gereke, Teamlead Employer Branding DACH, New Work SE
In the picture, we work with the metaphor of a city: each brand is its own neighbourhood and everything that holds us together is New Work SE.
Julia Rosteck, Manager Employer Branding DACH, New Work SE
With the Big Picture, we now all have the same picture in mind when we talk about why we exist as a company, how we can achieve our goals and how we want to work together to achieve them.
It is the right medium in times of change because it provides orientation – it shows us where we want to go.
Sina Marie Gercken, Senior Change Manager & Leadership Consultant, New Work SE
I am proud of what we have achieved here in collaboration with the New Work SE team: a corporate mission statement in an iconic design that radiates calm and strength. Reduced to the essentials, but still complex enough to make the interplay of Why, How and What tangible in the context of the corporate world with its various brands.
Wolf Wienecke, Big Pictury GmbH
QUICK-FACTS
CLIENT: New Work SE
SCOPE OF SERVICES: Corporate mission statement Big Picture for digital and printed use
PROJECT DURATION: 9 months
BUDGET: five-digit