Herculean Alliance is building an international ecosystem of employee engagement specialists across four domains: Aura, Fabrica, Machina, and Arena. We believe that measuring and improving employee engagement is true craftsmanship.

With our own offices in Belgium and Dubai, we operate in the EMEA market, focusing on mid-sized and large organisations.

The engagement programs can contain a mix of expert services and events. Our SaaS platform relieves you of administrative tasks and ensures that participants arrive at the event better prepared.

Want to get started? Order the book, use our free and anonymous employee engagement index, book a team for Hercules Trophy or Pink Ladies Games, and participate in the Bravos! Employee Engagement Awards.

Inge Van Belle
Founding Partner Herculean Alliance

Yves Vekemans
Founding Partner Herculean Alliance

How it all started

1999 was the year when the Hercules Trophy came to light. A tiny seed was planted. Every year, the concept transformed into what we are today.

In November 2019, or twenty years later, our organisation reshaped into the Herculean Alliance, employee engagement specialists. Crafting Powerful Workforces since 1999.

Following the example of Duval Union, which has meanwhile invested in the company, we aim to build an international alliance of organisations focusing on employee engagement to address a significant challenge that today’s companies face. 77% of employees turn out not to be engaged or to be actively disengaged.

Inspired by the United Nations, the Herculean Alliance was founded as a cooperation because the founders were fed up with the short-term thinking of ‘capital’. Several investors and even crowd funders joined the dream of rolling out the Hercules Trophy on an international scale. Thanks to one of our first clients, Safmarine, we saw that Hercules Trophy appealed to a very international audience.

Phase 1: understanding our product

After 10 years of growing the Hercules Trophy to a festival with +5000 participants, we chose to take our concept abroad. It enabled us to gain a deeper understanding of our own product.

The Hercules Trophy was organised in South Africa, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, New York, Spain, Lithuania, and Germany, among other locations, within a few years’ time. With a lot of blood, sweat, tears and, above all, a lot of pride. The international journey enabled us to refine the concept further in Belgium, drawing on lessons learned abroad.

How cool is it to organise the Hercules Trophy in the middle of the desert, or in front of the New York skyline, or for the benefit of Nelson Mandela?

We learned about our product, doing business abroad, resilience, and culture.

Phase 2: broadening the scope

With the success of the Hercules Trophy, customers began asking us to organise their own ‘private Trophies’. Fabrica (back then known as Hercules Projects) was born. Dozens of satisfied customers later, we realise that our format is unique and ideal for making messages resonate better during team-building events, family days, and corporate gatherings.

By 2013, when many European companies were struggling with stress-related issues, such as burnout, we were asked to develop a solution to enhance corporate well-being. Together with several Belgian top athletes, we introduced Aura (then known as Hercules Academy) and corporate well-being to the market. And it worked. It became the basis of our “alliance thinking” because we recognised that it requires a wide range of skills to serve a customer effectively. The well-being market is particularly fragmented.

But it did not stop there. New formats, such as the VTM Kids Trophy and Pink Ladies Games, emerged. When we organised the Pink Ladies Games in Dubai, we knew that this format would also grow internationally!

Phase 3: scaling up

Scaling up, according to Verne Harnish, is about focusing on 4 things: growing thyself, purpose, organisation, systems, and experiments that cost money.

We strengthened our capital through equity crowdfunding with Spreds and were named Crowdfunder of the Year. Two years later, Duval Union joined as an investor, as a result of the strategic synergy between HR and Marketing. Founder André Duval also proved to be a strong advocate of the networked organisation model.

Over the years, we also developed our own team engagement SaaS on top of AZURE. Meanwhile, the platform is used by thousands of employees. The online survey on employee engagement was also launched.

By the end of 2019, we redefined our purpose, mission and vision, together with Duval Branding. This resulted in the Herculean Alliance.

A few months later, COVID-19 happened. The most significant part of our business was reduced to zero due to the lockdowns. We suffered greatly, had to cut all costs, shifted from growth to survival, and transformed the company once again, as regular events were not permitted. We launched the Bravos Employee Engagement Awards, wrote a book, and the founders relocated to Dubai, ready to restart after the madness.

We were right not to throw in the towel: Hercules Trophy Dubai restarted in 2022, and Hercules Trophy Belgium 2023 broke all records in terms of the number of teams and was sold out three months before the event! Customers have returned to host their large private game days, and many are now utilising our advisory services.

What’s next?

Stay focused. We are not going to shout our strategy from the rooftops, as we already get copied too often, but our next step will be to build a global alliance.

We want to build a Team of Teams, a networked organisation of companies, a flock of people active in people engagement services. It allows us to become an end-to-end trusted advisor to our clients.

Are you an agency that wants to claim the employee engagement category in your market, likes our formats, and wants to implement them in your market? Let’s chat!