Down to earth

‘As a native of Rotterdam, I’m a very down to earth person. ‘Doe maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg’ is a Dutch saying you hear here a lot (‘Just act normal, that’s already crazy enough’). With that attitude to life, I really feel at home at NN. After all, I’ve been here more than 20 years, initially as an external IT consultant and then as an employee. I’m currently focussing on getting Microsoft 365 running properly for the entire NN Group: for all our business units and services in the Netherlands and abroad. I’ve been focussing specifically on rolling out and using the Microsoft Teams collaboration platform, which can be used to share and manage information, knowledge and applications quickly and effortlessly. Teams is now very topical because the number of people working from home has risen hugely as a result of the coronacrisis. In addition, a lot of my focus is currently on the Power Platform – PowerApps, Power BI and Power Automate – a system that allows us to combine data from different information sources into a large, connected environment.’

Wide team responsibility

‘We adopt an agile way of working at NN. The work I do depends on what we discuss with our team in the daily stand-up meetings and what’s on the sprint backlog. My work is very varied: from development to operations. Sometimes I’ll be implementing a new service or improving an application and at other times, I’m helping internal users if they encounter problems with our services. As a team therefore, we have a wide responsibility. That makes agile working great fun. Because what you develop and produce you also have to manage. It didn’t used to be like this. Back in the day, development and operations were two separate worlds.’

Transition to fintech

‘It used to be a trend at NN to outsource IT and we just did the managing part. Now it’s completely different. At NN there’s such a huge amount of IT work that we want to do it ourselves. The fact that NN is transitioning to a fintech organisation with a DevOps engineering culture makes the work here so fascinating. We’re focussing fully on technology, which enables us to build lots of knowledge. This also means that we want to continuously recruit and retain good IT professionals.’

Working from home: the new normal

‘The impact of the coronavirus on my work isn’t too bad. We were already used to working with tools such as Teams. It was also very normal for me to work at different locations and at home. I now work from home five days a week. We help our colleagues to get on with their work as effectively as possible. You can clearly see that the online collaboration platforms are coming into their own now. The use of applications such as Teams and Stream has really taken off, both internally and in interactions with customers in the Netherlands and abroad. As a result of the coronavirus crisis, I’m missing the social interaction a bit of course. For example, it’s a real shame that I can no longer grab a coffee with my colleagues every now and then or play a game of table football.’

You can just be yourself here

‘I’m married with three children. Sport is my main hobby, particularly tennis. I’m a positive person and try to enjoy life as much as I can. And that includes my work at NN. And really do. Because you can just be yourself here. For example, you’ve got the freedom and flexibility to manage your own work and to find a good work-life balance. NN is a flat organisation where everyone’s approachable and where we all help each other. I’m not just here as an IT professional, but also as Yvo Wesselius. A person who enjoys regular, enjoyable team outings, such as sailing in Amsterdam and going to the pub. This atmosphere, combined with friendly and skilled colleagues, is really important to me. Because ultimately, work is a big part of your life.’