Success Stories

"Zest for Work helps us to kickstart, pilot and set up a career development initiative at PwC Netherlands. Throughout their people-centered and tailored Career-Fit workshops and individual career coaching, our directors deeply reflect on their personal career aspiration and what it takes to self-steer their careers whilst sustaining motivation and energy. The Zest for Work coaches are highly professional and demonstrate outstanding facilitation and coaching skills in virtual and real-life environments, alongside scientific and cutting-edge subject matter expertise on sustainable careers.

Further, Yvon Golbach uses her broad experience in the field of Career development and supports us to move beyond delivery of interventions for individuals and facilitates the strategic implementation of our approach to successfully transition towards sustainable careers. She thinks on a strategic level about conditions for success and how to effectively create them. She understands our unique organisational challenges and provides practical ideas to overcome those. As an example, we organise HR Think Tank sessions to reinforce and strengthen the mindset of our HR team towards contemporary careers and to start identifying how that will affect our processes. Yvon is passionate about the topic and passes her energy on to others. What I like about working with her is that she can put things in perspective and she has a nice sense of humour."

Zests delivers the HPI Corporate Athlete training (internally branded as Energy for Life) at Mars since 2018, everywhere in Europe and Russia. Over 1,000 employees were trained in 6 different languages either face to face and virtually since 2020. Their trainers are absolute experts in the field and provide the human touch needed during the virtual classrooms. I do not foresee us ever moving back to 100% face to face sessions!

Thanks to this programme, we are shifting behaviours and culture @ MARS to one that breathes and sustains high energy and well-being. Our course study data shows that pre-course only 13% of Associates were fully energised. 6 weeks post course, 45% of the participants reported to be fully energised. An increase of 245%.

On top of this, Zest moves beyond delivery, unburdening our team and functions as a strategic implementation partner by supporting our rollout expansion to new languages and locations worldwide. I love their flexibility, and also important for me, they are easy and fun to work with!

“The training is compact, complete and practical. It gives employees (and managers) insight into changing careers, how they themselves stand in their careers and what tools they need to get moving better. The trainer of Zest will bring the workshop with energy and appropriate examples for the participants. In addition, they think along flexibly if there is a need to adapt the training to suit the target group even better. I like to work with them!”

“Designing a custom-tailored learning with Zest – it’s been a pleasure!

Zest designed an engaging learning format to enhance manager’s competencies to detect stress signals early on in themselves, and in their teams, and take appropriate action. The training has been rolled out to our leadership population and is now receiving excellent feedback for both, the virtual and the on-site format.”

Our leadership wellbeing programme with Zest for Work was a game-changer for us at MAF Properties. It equipped us with practical tools to better manage our energy and prioritise recovery—so we have more to give, both at work and at home.  This also helped us role model the right leadership behaviours to promote wellbeing across our organisation. The experience also helped us build greater resilience as leaders, enabling us to navigate challenges with more clarity, composure, and purpose. It was an inspiring and timely reminder of the importance of investing in our own wellbeing to lead sustainably and effectively.

The Resilience 1: Stresswise programme helped in getting to know your inner self. Identifying your triggers before you enter the high survival zone and come up with good solutions to restore your energy level. The trainer was good and was very passionate. There was room to ask questions and make it personal. Even though you are in a professional environment, the vibe was more informal and you felt comfortable to share.

I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘Energy for life’ course and was pleasantly surprised about how well it worked online. The instructors were very engaging and did well to create an open and dynamic atmosphere virtually where people felt comfortable and happy to share their personal experiences.

I found it a welcome break from the fast pace of work/life, offering a unique opportunity for self-reflection and increased self-awareness. I not only learnt about how I could increase my energy levels across the four pillars (mental, emotional, physical, spiritual) and why it is so important but also how to really implement change in my life with tips about how to embed new habits into routine. The course’s varied approach using virtual tools such as online breakout rooms, private buddy conversations, drawing boards, videos worked well to keep us all engaged throughout.

We deployed the “Career Discovery” workshop amongst the former Actelion headquarters’ employees based in Basel, Switzerland, as a way to help them take ownership of their career within the J&J organisation.

90 employees did attend the workshop delivered by Zest for Work, and more than 90% of them were fully satisfied by the experience. For many of them it was an eye opener and a call to action!

Zest for Work has very strong content and expertise about career development, as well as great facilitation and coaching skills! It helped the internal organisational mobility and fostered employee engagement.

“Based on the scientific insights concerning contemporary careers; the Career Fitness Profiler and Career Discovery Workshops have permitted our employees, managers and HR collaborators to engage in a dialogue concerning contemporary careers, connecting people and raising awareness.”

Zest has been a flexible and reliable partner in delivering career planning workshops across multiple departments within a drug production environment. I very much valued their ability to provide high-quality content geared towards a broad talent population spanning early career to tenured managerial levels as well as encompassing lab and office-based roles.

The Resilience 1: Stresswise programme has nicely explained topics with energisers and real life examples. The 30 day plan will support me in reflecting and recognising my triggers and the provided tools will help me to move from survival zone to optimal zone.

Elly joined both the Career Fitness Profiler Certification course and the Train the Trainer for the Career Discovery workshop to add an evidence-based approach in her own coaching and consulting practice.

“The Career Fitness Profiler offers me a nuanced and substantiated insight into the career perspective of the individual employee and has reshaped my coaching approach, helping me to cater to the interests of both the employee and the organization.”

Our coaches find that the use of the Career Fitness Profiler allows them to have more in-depth sessions with the trainees and make the coachees more conscious of the contemporary career context compared to the period prior to the Career Fitness Profiler!

“Caroline and Yvon took us -the whole Fairtrade Belgium team- on a talent and feedback trip in several sessions. We experienced a nice balance between theory and practice and gained useful insights in our individual talents as well as the team talents. We learned when to team up with others and how to counterbalance some talents as to keep our energy level healthy. Zest for work has a very refreshing and pragmatic way to look at sustainable careers. I think the world needs this approach more than ever.”

The blended learning solution for the Career Fitness Profiler certification training was an efficient way to organise my learning process. The interactive sessions with the other participants were focused on practice, which made the exchange a very rewarding one.

Over the past few months, I have been going through the Career Fitness Profiler certification. My expectations for this were high. And…. they were fully met by the two passionate CFP ladies Yvon Golbach and Lesley Vanleke!

The program I went through was much more than a certification on an instrument. It was an in-depth learning trajectory around motivation science and contemporary careers. Step by step, you are taken through the different parts of the CFP test. I especially appreciated the combination of the theory offered, the discussion of this theory with my fellow participants and the practical implementation of the instrument.

I gained a lot of insights into the current context of careers and what this means for both the individual and an organisation. I think there are still battles to be made in understanding today’s careers, but this tool certainly helps. And the valuable thing is that the CFP test is scientifically underpinned by the University of Antwerp.

I am very content that from now on I can use this Career Fitness Profiler in career projects from my company De Coachzuster.