perMens
culture
strategy
expression
Jul 2021
Story: perMens
After Volksbond and Streetcornerwork joined forces to become perMens, the real work began: bringing cultures together with patience and care. Through playful, science‑based co‑creation sessions using 23plusone, employees and participants shaped a shared brand soul. A living promise of support and humanity taking root in Amsterdam.
perMens
Two organisations with different histories and the same impossible day job: being there, patiently, for people in Amsterdam who don't fit neatly into systems. Volksbond and Streetcornerwork. The merger paperwork was the easy bit. The harder question was waiting afterwards: how do two teams, both proud of how they show up on the street, turn into one organisation without one culture quietly swallowing the other?
You don't fix that with a new logo and a launch email. You fix it by doing the work with the people who actually have to live inside the answer.
Listening to staff and participants, not just the board
From day one we worked with everyone who carries the mission day to day: frontline workers from both organisations, management, and, crucially, the participants themselves. Trained ambassadors from inside the teams helped carry the conversations, person by person, so the work didn't feel like something being done to people.
Using 23plusone we tested which of the 24 fundamental human drivers were already shared across both cultures. Care, obviously. Recognition of the other, strongly. And a quieter one that turned out to hold the whole thing together: dignity. Not service-speak dignity, the everyday kind. Treating the person in front of you as a person first, case second.
A name and a brand that say what the work already does
Out of that came perMens: one name, one shared story, one organisation that still recognises itself whether you used to work at Volksbond or at Streetcornerwork. During the process we watched colleagues move from understandable hesitation to real ownership, because the story wasn't handed to them, it was built with them.
perMens is now a living promise of support and humanity, rooted in the hearts and streets of Amsterdam. The merger didn't flatten two identities, it found the sentence underneath both.
Merging two organisations without losing either culture?
If your organisation is going through a merger and you want to avoid the quiet loss of culture that usually follows the press release, there's a way to bring staff and the people you serve into the same conversation and build a shared identity that both sides recognise. Let's talk about it.
Reach out to Kim or Alexander if you're looking for something similar