Fuelling a Cosmetic Revolution With Efficient HR

Prior to using Personio, LUSH was working with several tools that got them some of the way, but there was still room for improvement. While some areas of HR were covered, e.g. by a time-tracking tool, other tasks, like reporting, still ate up a lot of their time. What they were missing was a holistic system capable of automating all their workflows, across their entire landscape of HR tools.

As Kristin, Senior HR Manager, explains, “There were a lot of steps and overall, HR data was only accessible through our monthly payroll report.” As a growing company with an office, members working from home and a collection of retail locations, what the team needed was an HR solution that would help reduce time on manual tasks. They needed something that could support their culture by including and empowering employees across the entire organisation.

Given a lot of manual work and not enough access to information, the team at LUSH got to work seeking out a new, holistic solution. “We looked for a system that could include time tracking, absence management, recruiting, analytics… All of those things in one,” Kristin mentions.

This was especially important when it came to having one system in place that the entire company and every employee could access and use. This would help foster an environment where they could support each of their retail locations from the very start.

In addition, they also wanted the added benefit of working with a product that was constantly improving. The opportunity to work with a customer success manager was also important so the solution could grow with their changing needs. Ultimately, as Personio’s People Operating System matched LUSH’s vision for empowering employees, on top of matching all of their other requirements, the decision was made.

Since deciding for and implementing Personio, the solution has become a mainstay in Kristin and the team’s daily routine. As she puts it, “I always have Personio open. When employees call me or if I need to go into a meeting, I always have a look at Personio first and check the numbers or draft reports. I am always using it from when I start my day to when I finish.”

Having access to that information has become a huge plus. Personio offers the team instant access to the employee information they need, and the numbers behind them, but it has also helped unite their office location with the various retail stores.

One of her favourite parts is Personio’s templates feature, which streamlines their documents and makes it easier to share policies and send out employment contracts: “The template feature helps us save so much time and has made processes so much easier.”

Then there’s recruiting: “Recruiting has definitely improved tremendously. Beforehand, we did recruiting very manually and often very ad hoc — nowadays, we can direct applicants to Personio and we can use that data and support shops with recruitment support,” Kristin outlines.

She continues, “Personio is often the first point of contact for many people when they apply through the system, so the whole candidate journey is from Personio. When we transfer that data when they become an employee, then the onboarding journey starts in Personio, too.”

Personio has also helped match LUSH’s culture by having every employee actively use the system: “All employees have access to Personio and are also empowered to use the employee self-service tool. They request absences, keep in contact with managers and use public profiles to check in with colleagues… They get an overview of the entire company without needing multiple tools,” Kristin notes.

As part of their experience with Personio, Kristin and the team at LUSH have access to their very own customer success manager to help ensure that they are always making the most out of the Personio product.

“We meet bi-weekly with our customer success manager Max and have a really close relationship… What we really value about them is that we can always speak up and come up with new ideas and they help us bring them to life.” That spirit of innovation and collaboration is super important to the team. “We can bounce ideas back and forth and that really makes the relationship special for us.”

In Kristin’s work, it is especially important that whichever HR solution that LUSH chose needed to match their innovative, forward-thinking and inclusive company culture.

In her own words: “Diversity and inclusion is a very important part of our culture. Using Personio, we decided to offer every employee the opportunity to define their pronouns. This way, people know how to address other employees in a way that is comfortable for them.”

The way that Personio was able to not only offer this opportunity, but to do so in a way that was easy to implement and user-friendly for each employee is exactly what Kristin appreciates about working with the product.