For organizations
Are your people still in the right place?
The Passion Compass helps them answer that question. Twelve steps, six to eight hours, at their own pace, with Noa as their AI guide.
1,100+ professionals guided40+ certified coaches15 years of hands-on experienceAlso available in Dutch
The problem
The group under your radar
40%
of Dutch employees are unhappy at work
1 in 4
sick days is linked to stress
+5 years
of rising stress-related absence in a row
Source: TNO/CBS, 2024
In every organization there is a group that does not stand out on its own and does not speak up easily either. They do their work well. Some still get promoted. But something is gone.
40% of Dutch employees are unhappy at work, according to the annual figures from TNO and CBS. One in four sick days is linked to stress, and that share has been rising for five years straight. The group we are talking about has not dropped out yet. On paper it often looks fine. Salary, status, security. And yet something keeps nagging.
We see it in different situations. Someone who has been doubting for a while whether they are still in the right place. Someone who feels there is more in them than what they are showing now. Someone whose field is being changed by AI or a reorganization and who wants to know what that means for their role. Someone who just got promoted and wants to check whether this really fits. Different questions, the same need: room to honestly figure out where they stand.
They do not come forward with a crisis. If they say anything at all, it is a question:
“Is this it?”
For a large group, a full coaching programme is too heavy. A questionnaire or vitality workshop too shallow. And waiting it out costs you quiet disengagement, sudden departures, or stress-related drop-out a year down the line.
The savings are not only in preventing absence, but just as much in less lost productivity from employees who do keep working, but no longer at full strength.
What it is
A guided self-inquiry, not a standard tool or talent assessment
The Passion Compass is an interactive journey of six to eight hours, in Dutch or English. Along the way, exercises alternate with conversations with AI coach Noa, who thinks along like a coach: she reflects, summarizes, recognizes patterns the employee cannot see themselves, and mirrors back where it chafes.
Where are you now?
2 steps·20–30 min
What makes you you?
4 steps·2–3 hrs
Which patterns do you recognize?
2 steps·45–55 min
Which direction fits?
4 steps·2–2.5 hrs
The exercises ask for concrete work: sometimes by sorting something, sometimes by filling in what fits for you. In between, Noa asks questions, remembers what the employee said earlier, and confronts them when there are contradictions in the story. It feels like a conversation, not a test.
·Step 3 · Sort your valuesWhich values are truly essential to you?
·Step 4 · What gives you energy?
Good that you filled this in. One thing stood out to me: autonomy is right at the top for you, while you just wrote that you often feel directed at work. How does that sit with you?
I think somewhere I already know. But I'm not doing anything with it yet. It feels easier to stay.
At the end, the employee gets their dashboard. It contains: a direction statement in one sentence, their core values ranked, an energy profile (what gives, what costs), three fitting career directions with a fit score, and an estimate of AI impact per direction. Plus first steps for the coming week. It stays available, so six months from now they can come back to it.
·Your dashboardYour compass direction
You’re at your best where creative depth and autonomy meet, with enough room to build at your own pace.
Core values
Autonomy
Creative depth
Connection
Energy
First steps
- 1Block 3 hours a week for your own creative work.
- 2Ask Sanne for feedback on the design proposal.
- 3Explore one role at an organization that moves you.
For each direction they get a name, a fit score, the values it connects to, and concrete first steps for the coming week.
·Possible directionsDirection 1
Strategic designer at a mission‑driven organization
A role where you set the direction, with room to think before you act, and where your work matters. Not a fixed role at one organization but a handful of long‑running engagements.
Why this fits you
You consistently marked autonomy and depth as essential, and you get energy from designing something whose outcome isn’t fixed yet.
Conceptual work where context, meaning and human judgment make the difference stays valuable alongside AI.
First steps
- 1Talk to two people who already hold this role this month.
- 2Explore organizations like Springtime, Studio Roosegaarde, or De Kleine Consultant.
- 3Build a portfolio of three projects where your thinking led the way.
2. Independent advisor in your field
3. Senior role with more room for strategy within your current job
Fifteen years of practice
Fifteen years of practice, established science
The method grew out of practice, not the drawing board. Fifteen years of coaching at Het Passie Profiel, over 1,100 individual programmes. Beneath every step sits a scientific model.
Savickas
Career Construction Theory
A career is a story you write yourself. People who tell their work story in their own words discover faster what they want.
Deci & Ryan
Self-Determination Theory
Three needs predict job satisfaction: autonomy, competence and relatedness. When one is structurally unmet, work drains energy.
Hoff · Chen
Person-Environment Fit
How well someone fits their role predicts how they fare. With a mismatch, absenteeism and turnover climb.
Porges
Polyvagal Theory
The body registers what the mind is not yet ready to know. As far as we know, no other AI career tool does this.
Wood · Linley
Strengths Use Research
Knowing your talents is one thing. Using them is what structurally raises wellbeing.
Strauss · Parker
Future Work Self Salience
The sharper the picture of the future, the stronger the movement toward it. One of the best predictors of proactive career behaviour.
This is really something. The questions Noa asks genuinely move me. Even brought tears to my eyes.
What Noa is and isn’t
Isn’t
Noa is not a therapist. She does not make diagnoses, she does not optimize CVs, and she does not promise outcomes. At signs of burnout, depression or anxiety disorders, she refers people to professional help.
Is
Probing where the employee tends to skim past. Remembering what they said earlier. Naming patterns they are blind to. Many people tell Noa things they would not say out loud to another person. No judgment on the other side. No report to HR. That helps.
When to use it
Six situations where The Passion Compass works
The Passion Compass is not for a single moment. Below are six situations where organizations use it. Some preventive, others during transition.
The doubting employee
Not dissatisfied, not quite in the right place either. A full coaching programme is too heavy for this group. The compass sits in between: stay, move internally, or leave on their own terms, all three better than a year of muddling through.
The career or employability conversation
"Will you still be happy here in three years?" With the compass beforehand, there is material on the table: core values, energy balance, three directions. The conversation gets shorter and more honest. Fits within sustainable employability budgets and the personal development budget.
Burnout prevention
Stress-related absence grew 36% in five years. With burnout, someone is away an average of 330 days. The compass puts an early finger on the mismatch between what drives someone and what their work gives them, before the signals lead to drop-out.
AI disruption of roles
In finance, legal, marketing and knowledge roles, AI is changing the work. The compass shows, per direction, what AI does with it, what stays human work, and which part someone wants to keep. Reskilling based on direction instead of waiting it out.
Reorganization or major role change
When thirty or two hundred people have to move at once, individual outplacement is unaffordable. The compass can serve the whole group, including those who stay but whose work changes. That last group usually gets the least attention.
Departure by mutual agreement
The compass can precede an outplacement programme: first know which way you want to go, then start applying. Or it replaces a full programme when that would be overkill. Fits within the statutory transition payment as employability costs.
How it fits
Standalone, or as a lead-in to further coaching
The Passion Compass works in two ways.
For most people it is enough on its own. Clarity, a direction, a first step. The employee carries on under their own steam and can look back at their dashboard a year from now.
Sometimes someone asks for follow-up coaching. With major career transitions, when implementing a new direction, or with the emotional side of such a step. In that case they can be referred to a certified coach from the Het Passie Profiel network. The dashboard then serves as the starting material. That saves sessions, and the coach does not have to build from scratch.
For the organization this means your own coaching capacity stays available for the heavy cases, while the broader middle group is served too.
Practical questions
Three questions every HR department asks
Privacy and data
The Passion Compass complies with the GDPR. All data sits on secure servers in the EU. Only the employee themselves has access to their conversations and dashboard. The employer gets no insight into the content, unless the employee chooses to share something. With one click they can share their dashboard with their employer, for example as a lead-in to a career conversation. For use within organizations, our data processing agreement applies (available at /dpa). It becomes part of the contract as soon as you deploy the compass for employees.
Does this fit alongside our EAP, coaching pool or vitality programme?
Yes. The compass replaces nothing. It sits in front of it. The lighter group, who often have nowhere to turn right now, get an instrument that matches where they are. The heavier cases still go to the coach or EAP, but arrive better prepared.
What if someone concludes they want to leave?
That can happen. It is not the only outcome, by the way: some people actually find more peace in the compass about why they want to stay, others shift to a different role or an adjusted set of tasks. For those who do decide to leave, it is usually a choice that has been brewing for a while and is now made out loud. That is better for both sides than someone who stays reluctantly, gets sick, or suddenly quits a year later.
Contact
Tell us briefly what is going on
We are currently exploring, together with organizations, which forms of deployment work best. Some use the compass during reorganizations. Others as part of their sustainable employability policy, or as an instrument in the annual review. Tell us briefly what is going on at your organization, and we will respond within two days.
Bas Smeets
Founder of Het Passie Profiel & The Passion Compass