interaktiv gGmbH

Becoming the Most Innovative Provider Thanks to Digital HR

Industry: Education & Research

About the company: As a social services provider, interaktiv focuses on three specialist areas: full days at school, competitive and popular sports as well as social welfare and social integration assistance. The sports- and exercise-oriented provider in the social services sector sees itself as an organisation to support children and young adults with a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds and talents in the best possible way.

Interaktiv Hero Image
Robin Seidel-Doetsch
Robin Seidel-Doetsch

HR Manager

interaktiv Logo

The Challenge

Up until 2020, digital HR was virgin territory for interaktiv gGmbH. Work contracts were stored in binders, and recruitment was done manually in an impromptu fashion. This led to extremely time-consuming, manual administrative work for HR, which ended up riddled with errors. This was a no-go for the new HR manager, Robin, who was specifically looking for a holistic digital solution to professionalise HR work at the company.

As well as employee management for 850 employees, it needed to be able to cope with all the higher-level processes such as recruitment, onboarding and offboarding, and digital employee files and also be scalable.“There was a huge gap between aspiration and reality – to become the most innovative social services provider, we needed a functional HR department,” explains Robin.

We did not even have standard email addresses for applications. It was not sustainable.

The plan to grow from being a regional provider in North Rhine-Westphalia to a nationwide operator by 2025 was another reason to take action: “We want to have up to 3,000 employees by then. Considering the skills shortage in the social sector, this is a mammoth task that we can only tackle with strategic, digitally-focused recruitment. Only then will we be perceived as a future-oriented provider.”

  • Work contracts only available as hard copies

  • Up-to-date digital recruitment strategy not possible

  • Many different billing models

  • Lack of onboarding processes

850
850
current employees
42
42
school locations
2000
2000
new employees planned

The only way for us to step into the digital future was with a holistic and digital HR solution. Otherwise, we would have been standing in the way of our own progress.

The Decision

“I knew about Personio from a previous job and got in touch with them for the first time at the Zukunft Personal trade fair in Cologne. Of course, we took a close look at several candidates. It was very important to me to find a holistic HR solution – one system that could offer everything from digital employee files and attendance tracking to HR processes.”

Deciding in favour of Personio was contingent on the software being able to communicate with DATEV – which Personio could. “Above all, it was Personio’s level of personal communication that won us over. Our CEO, Bastian Schlierkamp, and I immediately sensed that the discussions were not just about selling us a product. There was always a very constructive focus on our targets and requirements,” says Robin.

Personio’s professional experience with other social services providers was also decisive. The level playing field that Robin had sensed continues to this day. “It was not just the content and technical side of the product that persuaded us. I can simply say that Personio as a company is a great fit for us, and for me, that is what makes it work at the end of the day.”

Interaktiv Office

A Successful Implementation

Personio has been used at interaktiv since May 2021. The implementation process involved overcoming some tricky issues. As interaktiv had previously worked on an analog basis, there was in effect no digital database. Documents had to be compiled and then digitalised. This may at first seem to be a very time-consuming process, but Robin believes it will pay off over the medium term.

It was also essential to convince managers and employees of the software’s advantages, make them aware of what digitalisation could offer and to get them on board. Internal communication campaigns paved the way – with information on Personio provided during the work day, individual sessions with managers and targeted training for the workforce.

Of course, this kind of software has a price – but it is money well spent.

Even after the implementation, Robin has remained in regular contact with his customer success manager in order to continuously optimise the existing HR processes. They analysed the data generated and usage behavior together to discover potentials and identify strategies.

The Result

How has day-to-day business in interaktiv’s HR department changed? “We now work in a much more structured and organised way,” reports Robin. “All the data is now finally in the system – from attendance tracking for the different employee roles and absence requests to sick notes and the application process."

"We can now send managers automated reminders to carry out performance reviews or engage with candidates. All of HR’s day-to-day operations are now much simpler and are clear for us all. I am now very relaxed about the increase in employee numbers that is on the horizon. With this software, everything can easily be scaled up.”

Robin also sees it as an important achievement that HR processes can be dealt with remotely from any location now that the HR team has been equipped with laptops. The feedback from employees and managers has been positive – the former have noticed that working with HR has become simpler, and the latter are now able to control HR development in their teams at different locations efficiently, at the touch of a button.

Robin and his team are using the working time they have gained to optimise existing processes. “Personio helps us reflect on our own workflows – because digitally mapped processes are unforgiving. They make it clear that things had previously been unnecessarily complex. Personio’s flexibility allows us to quickly readjust and optimise our processes. This offers great insights for us in HR.”

Although the system has only been in use for a few months, Robin is pleased to confirm that Personio is already making a strategic impact. “We want to be a truly innovative provider. Personio is the perfect digital solution to help with our further development. It allows us to present ourselves as a much more individual and professional social services brand in what is an extremely competitive candidate market."

“I can think of two right away. I am blown away by the document templates that allow digital work contracts to be automatically filled out and then signed electronically. That has a real wow factor,” says Robin. “And secondly, the whole recruitment process has worked perfectly from day one. That is crucial to our future growth as a business.”

Overall, interaktiv’s HR manager sees himself as being well on the way to becoming a “numbers-oriented HR manager,” and this is all thanks to his intensive involvement with Personio. In addition to the headcount, the full-time equivalents (FTE) are particularly important to him and he can calculate and view these at the touch of a button.

This is also the case for the development of candidate numbers, information on the different application channels and the ROI of his recruitment campaigns. “We are just starting to work intensively on our reporting. And that is something I expect will provide a great deal of momentum for the future of our company.”

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