Smooth Global Processes for an International Company

A growing company with employees at eight locations all around the world – that sounds not only exciting, but also like a lot of organisational work for the HR department. “The EQS Group grew enormously between 2017 and 2018, and we really pushed our internationalisation at the same time,” says Laura Santeusanio, Global HR Director of EQS. “Our previous HR processes were not really adequate for meeting our expanded needs.”

Until then, the Group’s data management had involved lots of different Excel spreadsheets. If the HR team wanted to find employee information, they needed to spend a lot of time searching through files that were not stored in one central place. Definitely not a sustainable approach to global processes. That’s why the EQS Group recognised that change was needed.

The EQS Group was in fact one of Personio’s very first customers and had already been using a basic version of this HR software since 2015. But the group needed comprehensive support in all areas of HR if it was to harmonise internal processes and unlock the full potential of its teams.

“We were already impressed by Personio’s applicant management functions. That’s why there was really no question that we wanted to keep working with this solution,” explains Laura. She took ownership of the project and played a lead role in implementing it, starting in Germany in 2018 and then rolling the solution out internationally in 2019.

“We still needed a bit of support from Personio when we implemented the software in Germany,” Laura says. Throughout the process, she really enjoyed the support provided by her key account manager Antonio, who she communicated with regularly. But the HR team’s learning curve increased rapidly throughout its rollout of Personio in Germany: “We were able to handle the international implementation essentially on our own.”

Personio has become the core tool at the heart of all of the EQS Group’s HR processes, from recruiting to absences, onboarding and offboarding. Now it’s easy to gain an overview of employees at any of the group’s offices. “We’re finally able to access all employee data from a central location, whereas before data was scattered across different files,” says Laura.

The EQS Group was also able to set up its internal processes to reflect its standing as a medium-sized company with a global reach. “Both the continuous development of functions within Personio and the flexibility of the available functions are important to us, because different offices have different processes. Personio makes it easy for us to reflect local differences in onboarding and offboarding, for example,” explains Laura.

And there are time savings, because processes don’t take any longer than absolutely necessary: “It doesn’t take us any time at all to handle processes such as tracking leave, and we’re therefore able to focus on issues that are strategically more important,” Laura adds. She and her team are currently expanding the professional development options offered by the group and revising its staff review processes, for example.

Applicant management was one of the first functions EQS implemented and the EQS team still greatly appreciates it. After all, if you need to fill several positions every month and provide recruiting support to international offices, processes need to be seamless.

Having applicant management implemented centrally saves the HR team a lot of work: “We no longer need to send resumés backwards and forwards between HR and the local team leads responsible for recruiting, and we’re so grateful that we no longer have our inbox overflowing with 300 applicant emails every day.”

The EQS Group also uses the notes function extensively, where colleagues involved in the recruiting process are able to document their thoughts and communicate about individual applicants. The EQS Group now has solid hiring processes that will continue to support its future growth.