Ormit
Hetty van Ee
When the opportunity for a management buy-out of Ormit, a for-
mer daughter of Ordina, came up, Hetty van Ee showed what her
company tries to develop in its employees: leadership.
The award placed at the main entrance to Ormit's office villa
in De Bilt tells visitors that they are about to enter a company
of great beauty. On the walls inside there are many more
awards that testify to this. Among the most prestigious is one
that Ormit won in 2011. That year, the specialist in manage-
ment and leadership development was elected as the number
1 among medium sized enterprises in the Netherlands Great
Place to Work survey.
Hetty van Ee, Ormit's general director for eleven years, takes
a lot of pride in all these awards. They show that she has
succeeded in establishing a culture at Ormit in which `people
work hard, laugh a lot and are very driven'. That, although
maybe not in those exact words, has been her ambition ever
since one Friday afternoon in 2001 when Ronald Kasteel,
then CEO of Ormit's parent company, IT and consultancy firm
Ordina, asked Van Ee to run the subsidiary. She was given
the weekend to accept the offer or not, but did not nearly
need that much time to decide. "This job fits me like a glove.
I am passionate about working with young people around the
leadership theme. Those two elements of the job alone were
enough to get me excited. That same Friday afternoon I said
I wanted to do it."
Bigger and better
Van Ee has remained excited about her role at Ormit ever
since; so much so that she could never think of another job
she wanted to do. But even though Ormit was allowed to oper-
ate rather independently within Ordina, for Van Ee there was
always one thing left to wish for. Not surprisingly, for someone
with such strong thoughts on leadership, Van Ee wanted to
make Ormit independent via a management buy-out. "That
would give me the freedom to continue to make Ormit bigger
and better. Over the years I must have asked at least ten
times if there was an opportunity, but the circumstances were
never quite right."
That all changed when, in July of 2010, Ronald Kasteel told
Van Ee that Ordina had decided it wanted to divest Ormit,
preferably to a new strategic partner. Van Ee had something a
bit different in mind, and had prepared herself for this moment.
Several months earlier, she had sought out advisers in case a
buy-out opportunity might occur, and she had settled on Holland
Corporate Finance. "I believe at Ordina they were a little sur-
prised when I immediately brought along my own advisers. But I
must really pay them my compliments for the way they more or
less let me take direction of the entire process." Apparently the
division of labour worked very well. Van Ee recalls one sunny
afternoon in the garden of her house where she, Ormit's cfo,
and their advisers had gathered to work on the deal. As she saw
everyone else working their cell phones and laptops, she felt
comfortable enough to start skipping rope in the grass. For Van
Ee, being driven and working hard should not stand in the way
of having fun at the same time.
"This job fits me like a glove. I am passion-
ate about working with young people around
the leadership theme."
Employee satisfaction
For Ormit, the deal actually could not have been done without
her steering it in a certain direction, explains Van Ee. "The view
I and my colleagues have on what kind of company we want Or-
mit to be is an integral part of our success. If new owners could
not fully subscribe to that, it just would not work." So strategic
partners who might have their own plans for Ormit's future were
not Van Ee's preferred type of buyers. Private equity firms would
be a better option, but not just any firm would do. "We looked
for investors with a genuine long term perspective. Investors
moreover who consider financial profits not as the primary ob-
jective of a company, but who understand that profits are merely
the result of a process in which we create true value. At Ormit,
the key is the employee satisfaction that comes from their own
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