The Ripple #2: Welcome to Loop
Scroll on for the full interview!
The Ripple at Loop HQ
Since early 2022, Loop has grown from around 30 people to 300+ (at one point the team tripled in size in a single year!) When your team is growing that fast, the culture that used to run on its own starts to need a plan. That's exactly what Loop has been through.
At first, the founders used to be interviewing every new hire and could gauge the culture fit directly. Today, senior leaders carry the culture, and Loop designs it on purpose: a clear decision framework, training in feedback and an office people choose to come to, even when there's no rule telling them to.
Scroll down to see the full interview with our guests:
- Isabeau Van Den Bogaert, Senior People Business Partner, advises leaders and managers on everything people-related.
- Thais Lauwers works on internal communication and employee experience.
From tribe to village: how Loop scales its culture
Few rules, high standards and spaces that encourage team get togethers. We walked around Loop HQ in Antwerp and sat down with Isabeau and Thais to ask how a fast-growing team stays one team, and here's what we learned.
1. Freedom needs a frame
( decision-making )
Loop hires ambitious, driven people and gives them a lot of autonomy: over where and when they work, over working from another country, and over building their own career through stretch projects and lateral moves. Isabeau explains why full freedom does not automatically make people faster, and how context, clear frames and a decision framework do.
"Because full autonomy, full freedom, doesn't necessarily create result always. You need to give a lot of context, a lot of clarity so people have all the information to move as fast as they can."
- Isabeau Van Den Bogaert, Loop
( Scroll down to see the full interview )
2. High performance, with room to recover
( wellbeing )
Loop expects people to perform, but also teaches them how to recover and recharge frequently. The team borrowed the name for its internal training programme from sports: Growth Athletes, which was launched more than two years ago. Although the programme has ended, its vocabulary really stuck - the core idea is that an athlete cannot perform at one level all the time, they need "pit stops". Loop covered "pit stops" on mindset, physical health, emotional wellbeing and purpose.
Isabeau and Thais explain how 'engagement pulses' and an elected employee council called 'the soundboard' show where teams struggle, why Live Fully Fridays moved from a team activity to time to recharge however you like, and why the meeting-free Wednesday needed a second look.
"Yes, we have a high performance culture. We do expect you to perform, but performance is not an 'always on' mentality. The whole team knows they sometimes need to slow down to speed up."
- Thais Lauwers, Loop
3. When nobody has to come in, why would you?
( hybrid work )
Loop works hybrid and async, but does hope people come in about half the time. Still, there are no fixed rules, and the days and hours are completely up to to them. So the office has to earn the trip, with enough spaces to connect (both informally and for brainstorms or Loop & Learns).
The calendar does the rest: getaways of three or four days, connection days at the hubs and team days spread over the year. So even if a new joiner would not come to a certain office, they always meet colleagues within maximum three months.
We also asked how trust is shaped, and how it carries online.
"Having that first live contact, that first face to face, really helps to speed up trust building online afterwards as well."
- Isabeau Van Den Bogaert, Loop
Did you know that 82% of Belgian employees would rather talk about their wellbeing with their manager face-to-face? Only 5% prefer online.¹
4. From tribe to village
( running a scale-up )
When Thais joined in March 2022, Loop was around 30 people and her onboarding was half an hour with every one of them, all in one week. Today the founders cannot be in every interview, so senior leaders, culture champions and the soundboard carry the culture.
Isabeau explains why culture grows organically at first and then has to be designed on purpose, and why you should slow down at least once a year to check it still holds.
"Before, I knew you were working on a certain project because you're literally sitting next to the person or you're literally seeing them at the coffee machine," says Thais.
"That's not possible anymore, but you can actually very consciously design for your culture and really think about how we make decisions, give feedback. What are our rituals?" adds Isabeau.
5. Small moments over big budgets
( tips for offices on a smaller budget )
Not every company has its own pool or a company-wide celebration for every launch, but as Thais says, it's still the small stuff that builds culture: a Loop-iversary, having lunch together, a welcome back after the holidays.
At around 300 people, recognition stopped being organic, so Loop also built habits to keep encouraging small moments of recognition, like "Friday high fives" with emoji on slack, or putting a team in the spotlight at the all-hands. When we asked what to do on a smaller budget, the answer was all about that recognition.
"It's the accumulations of those little small moments that make that nice culture where people are connected to each other."
- Thais Lauwers, Loop
6. What Loop promises its people
( employer brand )
Connection is one of the pillars of Loop's employer promise, alongside growth and impact. Thais explains why Loop wants to say more about the other two: how fast people grow here, and the impact a small team has on a consumer product that changes how people live with noise and other senses.
"We sometimes say that one year at loop is several years in another company, because of that flexibility and because of the type of projects that you get to do."
- Thais Lauwers, Loop
Five things to steal from Loop
No need to start constructing your very own pool. Here's what we took away from our visit at Loop.
1. Freedom needs context.
Loop hires ambitious, driven people and gives them a lot of autonomy and trust, but extensive freedom does not automatically make people faster. Isabeau's advice is that people need the right context to know where their playing field is, plus a decision framework that makes it clear who recommends, who gives input, who needs to agree and who ultimately decides.
2. Plan moments of connection, but also leave room for informal chats.
Loop hopes people come into the office about half the time. The calendar is where connection gets protected: getaways, connection days and team days are planned across the year, so a new joiner meets colleagues within three months.
Isabeau also asks managers to hold performance reviews in person as much as possible. At the same time, a lot of connection can happen outside of those planned moments, like in Loop's Engage Cafe over a good coffee or healthy dripl drink, or during an afterwork by the pool.
3. Check your rituals once in a while.
Loop's "Live Fully Fridays" give every team member the Friday afternoon off work over summer. This initiative moved from being used for a team activity to time to recharge however you like, and is now in its fourth year. The meeting-free Wednesday started to slip once meetings got booked over it, and the employee soundboard was the one to say so.
Isabeau's advice to scale-ups is to slow down at least once a year and check the culture and its rituals are still consistent.
4. Read the signal, then act.
The latest 'engagement pulse', which measures Loop's employee happiness, showed that people find it hard to make room for learning and development when there is so much going on. Loop treats that as a wellbeing signal and is working on concrete ways to create that space again. The People team also looks at results team by team, not only company-wide.
5. Celebrate the small stuff.
A work anniversary, a spontaneous lunch, someone coming back from holiday. At Loop's size, recognition sometimes stopped being organic, so it's also encouraged through habits such as "Friday high fives" and a team in the spotlight at the all-hands.
¹ UGent@Work Policy Brief no. 28, "Mentaal welzijn op het werk in België", 6 October 2026, funded by Helios Foundation. Survey of 1,333 Belgian employees working at least half-time. Figure 12: 82% prefer an offline format for conversations with their manager as a wellbeing measure, 13% have no preference and 5% prefer online.
Guests and host
- Isabeau Van Den Bogaert, Senior People Business Partner at Loop, advises senior leaders and managers on everything people-related, from engagement and performance to culture. She has been at Loop for three and a half years and has led People roles at three scale-ups, including Too Good To Go and Pepperminds.
- Thais Lauwers joined Loop in March 2022, when they were just a team of 30 people, and started in employer branding. She now works on internal communication and employee experience.
- Also featured: Maarten, Manager of Acoustics and DSP, who shows us the soundproof room.
- Host: Marth Van Roey, Dripl, who leads brand and marketing at Dripl and hosts The Ripple.
About The Ripple
The Ripple is a series about how the space we work in shapes everything else: daily routines at the office, employee retention, company culture, employer branding, and even wellbeing.
We make it for the people who shape workplaces: People, office and facility managers. At Dripl, we encourage people to take healthy breaks at our refill points, which made us curious about everything else that happens in today and tomorrow's workplaces. What keeps people coming to the office? What makes them feel part of the team? There's a lot to learn from office & people teams!
Discover more episodes on The Ripple