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EBARA Precision Machinery Europe

Smooth salary management across eight countries

Industry: Manufacturing

About the company: EBARA Precision Machinery Europe (EPME) is a subsidiary of the Japanese EBARA Corporation. EPME operates in eight countries to supply vacuum and exhaust gas dewatering systems, particularly to the manufacturing industry. The company is growing rapidly, with many working in engineering, service technology, application and sales.

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Zeynep Spinelli
Zeynep Spinelli

HR Generalist

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Before Personio: a manual nightmare

At EPME’s headquarters in Germany, HR Generalist Zeynep Spinelli is responsible for HR teams in both Germany and the Netherlands: "There are seven people in the HR team, who are spread across our European locations. Each look after several countries.” The team's tasks cover the entire spectrum of HR admin.

"Before Personio, there were numerous pain points. In fact, we didn't have any efficient processes. Personnel data was recorded in Excel lists and processed in SharePoint and employees had no access to their data,” explains Zeynep. Data transfer was an extremely slow process: “Printed documents were sent back and forth by post between departments and countries. These were particularly time-consuming. Employment contracts were also sent like this, which cost us a lot of time and money," Zeynep recalls.

"We now have all our data in one place and can find everything immediately and transparently." - Zeynep Spinelli

HR work before Personio was a nightmare, partly due to the lack of an employee database. "Data maintenance happened in Excel and was error-prone and time-consuming. This was particularly evident in my monthly headcount reports for Japan. It took me weeks to collate the information from all the countries we operate in," says Zeynep.

The contact HR had with the majority of colleagues on the service and engineering teams was particularly ineffective. Sick notes were sent by email and Zeynep had to document every detail in the email system: "The volume of emails was enormous and we received a lot of calls that we had to follow up on, but we didn't have the right software to do it," summarises Zeynep. "In a nutshell: due to a lack of time, we were only managing HR tasks." The team needed to quickly find an effective HR software to enable them to focus on strategic HR.

55%
higher HR productivity
70%
more efficient compensation management
75%
more efficient onboarding and offboarding

“Both new employees and management really like our onboarding process now.”

Why they picked Personio: Multilingual and ISO-certified

Zeynep knew Personio from a previous job and was closely involved in the implementation and integration of the software there in July 2023. But why did the rest of the team at EPME choose Personio? "Three aspects won us over: as a supplier, we ourselves are bound by strict ISO certificates. Personio offers us absolute data security in accordance with ISO/IEC 27001 and our data stays only within the EU.” 

It wasn’t the only aspect, however. The team appreciated how the software is available in nine languages: “For us as an international player, this is a real advantage because employees naturally always feel more comfortable in their own language.” Finally, it was imperative that they were able to move away from their method of mailing important documents between countries: “The digital signature was a must for us," explains Zeynep. 

Life with Personio: Higher satisfaction and faster reporting

What is the biggest advantage for their HR team? "We now have all our data in one platform and can quickly find everything we are looking for," says Zeynep. With the help of the document templates created in Personio, such as employment contracts, the HR team can now also easily work on behalf of employees in different countries.

Thanks to Personio, Zeynep and the HR team at EPME now have significantly more time to focus on strategic company topics such as employee satisfaction: "This ranges from salary benchmarking to negotiations on attractive, country-specific employee benefits."

The automated onboarding process via the HR platform also ensures greater satisfaction among new colleagues and saves HR a considerable amount of time: "We are around 75 % more productive here." Zeynep now creates her monthly headcount reports for Japan with one click and just a few seconds, because all the data is stored in the platform as a single source of truth. It used to take one or two days. Annual HR reporting used to take Zeynep a week, but now it only takes half a day.

But it's not just HR that benefits from Personio's employee self-service: employees can use the Personio app on their smartphone to customise their own data, upload documents and clarify their attendances and absences. Annoying email back and forth is now history. 

Clearer, faster compensation management

EPME has been using Compensation Management since December 2023: "We didn't have a compensation management system before. The data for the annual salary reviews in March was recorded in Excel spreadsheets and circulated between managers and HR.” It was a drawn-out process:

“There were time-consuming discussions, followed by the standard letters for employees, the content of which had to be checked again. March was always a real nightmare for us, the time pressure was enormous," Zeynep recalls. Previous to this, Zeynep and her colleague had to put in a lot of overtime in order to complete the pay review process for their 200 employees on time.

"Compensation Management with Personio has made us 70% more efficient." - Zeynep Spinelli

In 2024, this was no longer an issue, thanks to Compensation Management. EPME has just gone through a completely digital annual salary cycle with Personio and satisfaction immediately reached a new level.

"The managers in particular were delighted," reports Zeynep, "because they no longer had any stress. They were able to adjust salaries directly in the tool based on an allocated departmental or country budget.” 

Zeynep continues: “The process is much shorter as a result. Everything was already finalised by mid-March. We are around 70% more productive. Gone are the days of overtime, which used to be quite common in order to complete all of our tasks."

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With Compensation Management, salary adjustments have become much easier. People managers can suggest, adjust and approve changes efficiently, across borders in multiple currencies, without additional emails or spreadsheets. - Zeynep Spinelli

“Employees now simply get the information about their new salary directly from their Personio employee profile. There’s no need to write an email or do a mail merge to get a letter,” says Zeynap, who is delighted with how much easier the work has become:

“Everything was automated and error-free. And the front end is as intuitive and self-explanatory as online banking, so there is no additional training is required. This is how compensation management should be," summarises the HR generalist.

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