Digital HR Processes That Move the Whole Company Forward

The Turck Group has evolved into a global player over a period of more than 50 years of continuous growth – a development that has created both strategic and operative challenges for the HR departments at all of the group’s locations. Personio was deployed at the group’s sales and marketing headquarters to provide strategic and operational support.

The idea was to reduce or streamline repetitive transactional activities with no direct value generation in order to leave more time for value-adding strategic activities. Furthermore, Personio was to improve process quality. After all, “if you digitalise a crappy process, then you’ll only get a crappy digital process,” as Daniela Leppler, Head of HR at Hans Turck GmbH & Co. KG, quotes the former CEO of Telefónica Germany.

In growing organisations, it is particularly important to establish sound HR processes, as employees and managers will reject or ignore technology if it creates more work instead of facilitating existing tasks. This can be disastrous for HR and difficult to remedy. Comprehensive information and training for the executive and managers, and the ongoing involvement of the works council, therefore play an important role in laying the groundwork.

HR is tasked with delivering strategic HR work in order to meet the constantly evolving requirements. Firstly, this means having efficient processes and secondly, digitalising and automating these processes. However, it also means being able to develop data-based planning and using this as a basis for decision-making while at the same time keeping an eye on individual employee needs.

This is where workforce analytics provides crucial support. Personio makes HR developments such as staff turnover and demographic changes instantly accessible and transparent through a range of reports in order to enable HR to report on selected KPIs and develop appropriate initiatives in the future.

Again, it is essential that this process is well thought-out in advance. After all, reports can only provide a solid basis for planning if those who use them know which KPIs are useful and what sort of timeframes they are able to deliver helpful insights.

Apart from reporting, it was also important to bundle numerous processes within the tool: applicant management, onboarding/offboarding, master data administration, target agreements, etc. All of these processes can be customised, which was another decisive factor for the client. For example, Turck keeps fine-tuning its onboarding and offboarding processes, adding and removing steps as required.

While flexibility is one thing, user friendliness can be quite another. An HR tool needs to facilitate not only the work of HR staff but also that of managers and employees, and it should therefore be easy to use. The executive and works council emphasised the need for the tool to comply with current data protection regulations, requiring the data to be stored on servers in Europe.

Mapping analogue processes to the digital world is nowhere near enough. Throughout the implementation of Personio, HR kept grappling with issues such as: Are we doing the right thing? Do we have the right processes?

Take an example from applicant management: The manual sending of rejection emails was to be replaced by an automated process. However, process quality was also to be improved at the same time, meaning that there should be a) clear and b) fully transparent guidelines on the nature and timing of feedback provided to applicants. Personio shows which applicant is at which stage of the process at any time and eliminates manual tracking, whereas the company previously used Outlook or Excel to keep track of correspondence.

Managers also appreciate that processes and responsibilities are now set out more transparently, allowing them to access and even edit information at any time, depending on their access rights. Both managers and HR employees need to send and reply to fewer emails.

Heads of sales, for example, manage very large departments where it is easy to lose track of employee development. Personio makes it easy for them to access the information they require, from length of service through to the achievement of targets and to edit it as required. HR is also able to check the status of individual processes or employees at the click of a button.

When a new HR management head took over about 18 months ago, one of the priorities was to urgently implement a new tool. While HR had previously focused on recruitment solutions, the new Head of HR wanted a tool that also allows master data management and many other areas to be digitalised. The decision to choose Personio was easy, as the tool not only combines all of these functionalities, but is also customisable and user-friendly.

HR and organisations only benefit from a tool if both managers and employees understand it and are happy to work with it. This is why HR carefully considered and communicated who was to receive which training and what employees could expect: The employees were to enter the data and that data was to be maintained by HR; there will be different levels of access rights; there are HR reminders people will receive, etc. The system was introduced successfully, and the feedback has been very positive ever since.