A good work-life balance and helping 70,000 households make their homes more sustainable

“This can be done by renovating and improving the home. Solar panels, heat pumps, insulation... as a homeowner, you just need to know where to start and what best choices for your home are. In the project Vooruit met je Huis (Move Forward with your House), we offer mortgage clients tailored advice from a specialist, resulting in a report including a new energy label. And then we offer the possibility of receiving €500 back if you implement insulation in the home.”

From Understanding CO2 Emissions When You Pay by Card to a Home Health Check

Coming up with innovative ideas seems to be the common thread in Petra’s career. She wanted to become an astronaut, but after studying Physics, she ended up in technology. She worked for innovative platforms that processed internet transactions in the cloud. There, she had an interesting idea: a tool that allowed customers to see the CO₂ emissions of their debit card payments and that idea brought her to Rabobank’s Innovation & Strategy department. “The work here is tangible. Stopping eating meat is a great step you can take yourself, but how much impact does it have? If homeowners start saving energy, that really moves the needle. I had strong opinions about our mortgage portfolio, and that’s how I ended up at Duurzaam Wonen (Sustainable Living). The manager there wanted to help mortgage clients with sustainability – not a marketing story, but a real product that means something to a customer. We wanted to do something big.”

The big idea came naturally. “Energy consultancies told me a new standard was coming in June 2023, setting requirements for tailored advice on a home. But you need advice on where you should start insulating first or finding the leaks. I was at a Rabobank member council meeting and had a conversation with someone about the expired MOT on his car, then it clicked. Shouldn’t we, as a bank, send out a sort of MOT letter to homeowners with energy labels G, F and E? That became our pitch.”

Improving Home Sustainability While Empowering Families

It turned out to be successful. Petra and her team received a budget to expand the advice with a financial incentive to help clients get started. In the meantime, more than 70,000 people have made use of it. “It’s great that something like this leads to a larger movement. This project has so much impact on so many families and homes. It’s truly amazing to be able to contribute to that, not alone, but with many people. This is very typical of the bank: things emerge.

The big challenge is being able to sell it. You must build your business case, mobilize people and seek each other out: if I help you with this or have someone look into it with you, can you help me with that? If you keep it small and try to organize it well, a lot is possible.”

Organize Your Workday in a Way That Suits You

And when it comes to possibilities, Rabobank encourages employees to work hybrid: at home, in the office, or somewhere else. Together with your team, you determine which location and working hours fit best with the work of you and your team. This means that you must pay close attention to your work-life balance, something Petra strongly believes in.

“What’s important about a good work-life balance is that you truly have the power to organize your time in the way that works best for you. You are responsible for finishing your work. That also means you can create space to do your work at other times and to choose, for example, to go for a run during lunch or spend the afternoon with your son. That really doesn’t come at the expense of your work – and that space is very much present here. Ultimately, it results in less stress, plain and simple.”

To keep her own energy up, Petra does indeed go for that run, sometimes a 10k at 7am, and sometimes during lunch. “Going for a run now and then during my workday really clears my head. Then creativity returns, and I find space again for alternative paths and new solutions.” New ideas are already bubbling, tackling the many subsidies available. Consumers often can’t see the wood for the trees. Technology in homes is a big deal and what about homeowners’ associations (VvE’s), where some members want to move forward with sustainability, but others hold them back?

Change Starts from Within

“There’s still so much to be done! Honestly, we should only hire people who think sustainably, but we also need people who know how to get things done internally. The people who influence the way we work from the inside probably have more impact than those shouting from the outside. That’s where you can really make a difference – so that’s where you should put your energy. If you only keep looking from the outside in, nothing will ever change on the inside.”