As the owner, I have to make sure all staff are given the ‘right’ workload. I have to share jobs out properly, help employees get organised, or even be prepared to reduce someone's workload from time to time.

My employees have also had accidents at work or been absent due to illness. On those occasions, I had to quickly rearrange things, but other employees have always been able to step in – luckily, because it's hard to find temporary staff.

We have the typical start-up problem: we're in the process of building things up, there's always more to be done and we can never say we’re finished. This quietly leads to an excessive burden – for all employees. That's why it's tremendously important to set the right priorities. We, as the management team, try to lead by example and help our employees do the same. We all need to learn to say no sometimes.

When we started working from home, I was worried that work and home life might blend into one. That people might not be able to switch off. So, we came up with a set of rules regarding communication: no e-mails outside working hours and nobody had to remain available for contact in the evenings. To do this, we defined a time frame of six hours in the day when everyone had to be reachable.

In our leadership team’s Monday meetings, we always have «employees» as an agenda item. That's when we bring up our observations – who might be feeling overburdened at the moment? Where are potentially difficult situations emerging? In short, what action needs to be taken? Once we’ve established that, someone from the leadership team takes care of the matter in hand and tries to engage in dialogue.

Some of our employees have had injuries too. A cut maybe, nothing too serious – but all the same. That's why I’m keen on good processes, orderliness and cleanliness. We’re not allowed to simply set crates of beverages down in corridors or leave knives lying around: colleagues are less attentive when under stress and this is when accidents happen.