OJ hits the sweet spot for employees worldwide

We talked to five OJ employees to find out.

 

 

 

A very good start

All five employees we talked to agreed that OJ’s onboarding program was excellent, and that the HR team and the company as a whole made them feel very welcome, while preparing them for their first weeks and months right from the start.

Mogens Jørgensen, a product manager who was recently hired away from a much larger company, was impressed by the warm reception he was given at OJ and by the onboarding process. At OJ, he got to know everyone – even people he might not work with much or only after many months on the job. For Mogens, this was meaningful because it helped him learn what he needed to know about the company, its products and its processes – and that made getting started much easier.

 

“Relationships are everything, and OJ’s onboarding process helped me start forging these right from Day One,”
Mogens says about the importance of getting to know his coworkers.

Warmly welcomed from abroad

Two recent hires – junior project manager Acqualine D’Costa from India and embedded software engineer Anderson Barros Rodrigues from Brazil – also mentioned the warm welcome they received and friendliness of their new coworkers. Coming from abroad, they naturally faced special challenges, from the new language to getting to know people in Sønderborg, their new home. “Everyone at OJ was so warm and welcoming,” Acqualine says. “They arranged the best intro program for me, including an exciting opportunity to intern in our production department for a day, along with my formal onboarding sessions.” She also notes that her new coworkers help her with her Danish every morning, which augments her after-work Danish lessons nicely.

Anderson was also impressed with the warm welcome he was shown at OJ. “It was far beyond just formal onboarding,” he says. “My manager helped me sign up for apartment listings when I first got here, and some of my workmates even donated furniture to help me get started.” Like Acqualine, he enjoys life in Sønderborg and the surrounding countryside – and has taken up karate as a serious hobby outside work.

 

“Everyone at OJ was so warm and welcoming,” Acqualine says.

Taking serious ownership

OJ is a smaller company, and of course this has an impact on workplace culture. All five employees we talked to noted that OJ isn’t a place where you go to work and just “do your job.” Senior director of sales and marketing Søren Schoubye puts it this way: “At OJ, you can’t expect others to come do your job for you, and you can’t say ‘it wasn’t my decision’. You have to wear lots of hats and really take ownership and follow through.” Part of this involves working with other people, he explains: “Here, you really need to open up to and get along with others. You can’t get a lot done alone – you have to be part of the team.”

 

Senior director of sales and marketing Søren Schoubye puts it this way:

“At OJ, you can’t expect others to come do your job for you, and you can’t say ‘it wasn’t my decision’. You have to wear lots of hats and really take ownership and follow through.”

 

Jörn Petersen, an embedded software engineer at OJ for over 20 years concurs with Søren’s view that you need to wear a lot of hats at OJ: “Of course we specialize in the sense that we go into depth,” he says. “But we can’t focus exclusively on our own narrow domain like you might at a bigger company.” Ultimately, Jörn sees this as something positive, as it gives everyone a slightly broader view of their work and unites OJ employees around a big-picture perspective.

Informal, but not in excess

Small, friendly, close-knit, informal. When talking to employees, it’s easy to get the sense that OJ Electronics is more like a family than anything else. The employees we talked to all agree on this, but those who have been around for several years also note that the company has grown and that this has necessitated the introduction of structures and processes that add a degree of formality you might not find in a very small family-owned business. Indeed, OJ was family-owned until we were acquired by BITZER in 2023, which of course also entailed a degree of additional structure.

Acqualine and Anderson both came to OJ from startups in their respective countries, and say that, while OJ’s workplace culture is open and informal, it’s a long way from freewheeling startup culture. If anything, the employees we’ve talked to see OJ as occupying a “sweet spot” between the openness, informality and accessibility you’d expect from a family-owned shop and the more deliberately designed structure of a bigger company. “It’s really a mix of family-owned and bigger corporate vibe,” concludes Anderson. “It’s a very safe and comfortable place to be as an employee.”