TOPIC Family | Where Teamwork Feels Like Home

Family comes in all shapes and sizes – It’s about connection, support, a sense of belonging and feeling at home. On International Family Day, we celebrate not only the families we’re born into, but also the ones we create at work.

In honor of family day, we highlight a few TOPIC colleagues who share a special ‘family’ connection. Team members Martijn (Scrum Master), Gabriel and Panagiotis (Software Engineers) from the BMC farm-out team, whose whole team is as close as family. As well as sisters, Paulien (Business Manager) and Moniek (MarCom), who have both been working at TOPIC for many years.

TOPIC Family is Team bonding

Creating a bond

The strong relationship between all the members of the BMC team extends beyond the office. Key to their close bond? Many of them being close in age and all willing to make a genuine effort. Through organizing after-work dinners, bar outings and always celebrating new arrivals and farewells, they also create lots of moments together outside of TOPIC.

This was also felt by Panagiotis, who joined the team 8 months ago. " I quickly felt welcomed by the team’s open and friendly dynamic. Gabriel agrees and adds: "The social activities outside work aren’t just fun, they’re the secret to breaking the ice and building trust within the team.”

Advantages of working in a close team

The closeness pays off as it makes it easier to collaborate with one another, and no one ever hesitates to ask questions and give or receive feedback - says Martijn." It becomes a lot easier to reach shared goals and solve problems together when a team is enthusiastic and unified. It’s not just about the work-when you invest in people, you get even better results in the end.”

TOPIC Family is Working together with your sister 

Sisters at work

When asking what it is like to work with your sister at the same company – Moniek shares that it has been really great so far. "We do not work together on a daily basis as we work in different roles and teams. This creates a nice balance to collaborate on mutual subjects from our own expertise, without overlapping too much."

Paulien adds: "We have always been very close, and it is nice to have such a good friend around also at work. We do feel we have a good separation between private life and work (though sometimes our family gets a bit tired of our work talk, but generally, we keep work where it belongs).”

Advantages

Knowing each other really well is a huge advantage, it often only takes a single word to know what the other one needs and we share similar ideas. Paulien: “When we text or mail each other with an idea, most of the time the other one is already working on it”.

It’s also nice that we can join the events together, with as highlight and family favorite, the yearly TOPIC Sinterklaas. Where our kids are invited to join, together with all the other TOPIC kids, to watch a Sinterklaas show and receive presents (A typical Dutch tradition). We find it great to spend this time together with our kids and our TOPIC ‘family’.