DIGITAL HR AND THE FUTURE OF WORK: MODULE 1 LESSON 1

Impact with Digital HR:

Six Case Studies
Impact with Digital HR: Six Case Studies | DIGITAL HR AND THE FUTURE OF WORK: MODULE 1 LESSON 1
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Hello and welcome! Today, I’ll introduce you to digital HR. What is it
and why is it indispensable? In this lesson, you will walk through six
cases of companies that implemented digital HR, and see the ben-
efits that digital HR provided these organizations. You’ll also learn
how digital HR can drive a better employee experience. I’m excited
to showcase how you can use digital HR to amplify your HR service
delivery. Let’s get to it, shall we?
be dispatched to secure the person and provide emergency health
support if needed. The button was integrated into the HR system, so
that when the safety button was pressed, the direct manager was also
alerted. The manager could then check in with the advisor and make
sure they were okay. This is a great example of how digital HR can help
to solve real concerns, and provide a safer workplace. You can imagine
how this would be an important part of the employee value proposition
for these roles as well.

CASE 1: S.A. FINANCIAL SERVICES GUARD

CASE 2: U.S. FLIGHT ANALYTICS

Let’s look at a few companies that implemented digital HR and the

Now fortunately, not all digital HR tools involve armed guards. Another
results they gained. Our first case study is a financial organization in
great case of an intervention with real impact, is a US-based company
South Africa that provides financial services to people with limited
that implemented flight analytics. This company was able to predict
means in rural areas. Financial advisors visit their clients at their homes
the likelihood of its employees quitting the organization within the next
to assess their living situations. As you can imagine, these conver-
six months.
sations are not always easy. Clients sometimes live in impoverished
neighborhoods. South Africa has historically had a high crime rate,
But that’s not where they stopped. Because the company was able to
and saw an increase in gender-based violence, leading to some of the
measure the drivers of employee turnover, they were also able to iden-
advisors being threatened, sometimes even physically assaulted, and in
tify which interventions would help people stay. For example, if people
general feeling unsafe. As a result, some advisors left the organization
reached the top of their pay band, or had been in their role for some
and the company was struggling to attract new talent.
time but did not get a promotion or raise, a workflow trigger would alert
the manager. By giving employees more responsibilities or raising sal-
To deal with this, the organization implemented a safety button on the
aries, the company was able to retain its people for longer in a highly
advisors’ mobile phones. Once pressed, armed security guards would
personalized way.
Impact with Digital HR: Six Case Studies | DIGITAL HR AND THE FUTURE OF WORK: MODULE 1 LESSON 1
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HR INNOVATION Let’s start with Grolsch, a Dutch brewery that is part of the Asahi group.
Employees used to submit their preferred benefits using a paper form.
In both case studies you can see how digital can enable high-impact
This physical document was then checked by an administrator and, if
interventions that make people happier, stay at the company longer,
approved, manually added into the benefits system. Grolsch decided to
experience a safer work climate, and even, potentially, save lives.
fully digitize the process. This meant less work for the HR administra-
tor, fewer data entry mistakes, and a better experience for employees.
I call these applications of digital HR, HR Innovation. HR Innovation
Satisfaction ratings went up from 6.8 out of 10 with the old hard copy
happens when digital is leveraged to achieve strategic HR outcomes,
to 8.2 for the digital tool. That’s a 20% improvement!
such as employee retention, employee safety, and a stronger employer
brand, as you saw in these first two cases. HR Innovation also affects
engagement—think of the flexibility employees gain through automatic CASE 4: SOCIAL SECURITY SICK PAY
scheduling systems—building competency levels, for example through
Next, let’s look at a company headquartered in Europe. When employ-
targeted just-in-time micro-learning in the flow of work. It also allows
ees got sick, the country’s social security system would kick in and pay
for a higher quality of HR service delivery, and a more integrated flow of
the employees’ wages. This always involved a manual process in which
information that drives better decisions.
HR reached out to the employee for additional payment information,
which would then be forwarded to the payment provider. The company
In our first case, digital HR was leveraged to create a safer work envi-
automated this flow so that the employee received an automated email
ronment and create a stronger employer brand, while in our second
whenever they were sick, would fill in the details, and these details
case, digital interventions helped to retain people and build a more
would be forwarded immediately, resulting in a faster process that
employee-centric culture.
involved fewer chances of human error!

CASE 3: GROLSCH BENEFITS

CASE 5: SANTANDER ONBOARDING DATA
The next couple of cases don’t innovate HR but they do utilize digital for
Banco Santander did something similar. Once a new hire signed
a different purpose. See if you can figure out how.
their employment contract, it took the bank more than six weeks to
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incorporate and complete the new hire’s data in their systems. After
automating the process, the same workflow took only two days. This
not only created a smoother employee experience, it also meant that
employees didn’t have to wait to start working.
OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY
Now my question is: what do these three cases have in common, and
how are they different from the first two?
As you may have guessed, these examples are aimed at achieving
operational efficiency. In all three cases, HR was able to achieve the
same outcome more quickly – because employees entered their ben-
efits preferences directly in the system, because the employees’ infor-
mation was forwarded to the payment provider, or because a manual
process was fully automated, with fewer dependencies and without an
HR administrator being involved. Efficiency is usually measured through
savings in time and cost, or improvements in quality which lead to
fewer mistakes.
Operational efficiency, which often involves process automation, helps
HR to do the same work at lower cost, in less time, and with fewer peo-
ple involved.
Operational efficiency also includes better data quality and data
security. This is easy to understand: if data is not manually entered, it
increases the data quality through lower chances of human error, and
prevents potential data breaches. Digital HR can also help make organi-
zations compliant, for example through setting up automated deletion
of personal data, which is a requirement in legislation such as the GDPR
and others outside of Europe. This can also involve submitting required
data more quickly to tax authorities, for example, or by ensuring that
every worker has the right safety certificate. A European police force
I worked with would automatically send a reminder to both the offi-
cer and the head of the unit if an officer’s shooting license was about
to expire. These licenses required an annual exam, and without the
license an officer wasn’t allowed to carry their weapon on the street.
This meant if they took the exam too late, or failed the exam, they were
assigned “desk duty” until they passed. After implementing the auto-
mated reminder, virtually no officer was assigned desk duty again.
BUSINESS IMPACT
A third way digital HR can be leveraged is by enhancing business
impact. Digital helps create increased impact by further helping the
organization attain its business goals. Examples include an increase
in profitability, increase in market capitalization, and return on capital
employed, which is a measure of how efficient the company uses its
resources. Business impact also includes productivity, quality, cus-
tomer satisfaction, and better integration of HR and the business.
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Think back to the case involving employee retention. Because the
company was able to retain people, HR was able to support business
continuity, with fewer disruptions and time spent on recruiting and
onboarding.
I’ve shown you three ways in which digital HR can be leveraged. Let’s
see how they interact with each other and arrange them into a Venn
diagram. This diagram shows that each of the three elements, HR inno-
vation, operational efficiency, and business impact, are needed to cre-
ate a value-adding employee experience. Simply put: if digital is able to
deliver new or improved HR services, in an efficient way that supports
the business, it will create an exceptional employee experience.
This does not mean we always need all three components, and it is
important that you are clear on what outcome you are aiming to achieve
through digital, as this will help you build the business case of what
value digital will bring.
Let me give you an example. Say you create a chatbot that results in
moving candidates through the funnel more quickly. The improved effi-
ciency may be a great way to leverage digital. If this also turns candi-
dates into active promoters, that would also be a good outcome. We
call this a digital HR best practice, as, in this instance, it utilizes tech-
nology to hit key requirements for best talent acquisition practices: it’s
efficient, the improved efficiency creates a more engaging experience
for new joiners, the process is of higher quality due to automation, data
is easily tracked, and the workflow can be improved over time.
Similarly, if you create a great performance management system that
doesn’t save you time or cost but does lead to a better way of measur-
ing performance ánd helps drive results, that is still enough to justify
your efforts. We call that high-impact HR. And if your business is look-
ing to cut costs, and you’re able to automate HR self-service, saving
you millions of dollars a year, that could also be a strategic thing to do.
However, if you create an innovation that is aligned with what the busi-
ness is trying to achieve, in an efficient way, that is what creates a great
employee experience.
Impact with Digital HR: Six Case Studies | DIGITAL HR AND THE FUTURE OF WORK: MODULE 1 LESSON 1
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CASE 6: ROLLS ROYCE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE together, this showcases an organization that leverages HR innovation
to create business impact through operational efficiency. This is what a
Let me present one final case study showing how digital HR can be lev-
great employee experience is all about: balancing organizational needs
eraged to create a better employee – or in this case, candidate – expe-
with employee interactions in a meaningful way.
rience. The subject of this case study is Rolls Royce, an engine manu-
facturer. Rolls Royce is operating in a competitive landscape in which
And that brings us to the end of this lesson! Today, you’ve learned how
technical talent is growing increasingly scarce. Enabling the company to
six organizations implemented digital HR, and the benefits that digital
attract the best talent is one of the key ways in which HR is able to help
HR provided these organizations. You’ve also learned how digital HR
support the business as well as its growth ambitions.
can drive a better employee experience.

Rolls Royce started with a well-defined application process which

Digital brings many benefits, but in the end, it all boils down to creating
included various assessments. As part of this process, the company
an HR innovation that reduces effort and creates business impact. That
implemented chatAssess. ChatAssess is a chatbot aimed at creating a
was the focus of this lesson – and the focus of the rest of this program.
better candidate experience and moving candidates through the appli-
cation process more smoothly. After the implementation of the tool, the
You now know some of the ingredients you need to build a business
assessment completion rates increased tremendously, and the comple-
case for digital HR, and the various benefits of operational efficiency,
tion rate of business hires went up from 74% to a whopping 96%!
HR innovation, and business impact.

In this case, there is a clear business objective, which is providing

I do realize that some of the cases in this lesson may feel distant from
scarce technical talent that the business needs to operate and grow in
your day-to-day experience. This is because what you can implement is
new markets. In addition, the company was able to be even more selec-
a function of what you know. As you implement more and more digital
tive in who they hired because of the larger candidate pool. There’s also
innovation in your HR department, you will learn more – and you will be
a clear operational efficiency component, which is moving móre candi-
able to achieve more. The good news here is that you can start small.
dates through the funnel fáster. And there’s an HR innovation compo-
Think back to the Grolsch case, where the HR team digitized a paper
nent: instead of clicking through different web pages, candidates talk
benefits form. This is something you can easily hack together using free
to a responsive chatbot which creates a much better experience. Taken
Impact with Digital HR: Six Case Studies | DIGITAL HR AND THE FUTURE OF WORK: MODULE 1 LESSON 1
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online tools. The result is an immediate and positive employee expe-

rience, as well as time saved on HR administration. This goes to show
that some of the most impactful digital solutions start small.

That’s why digital HR is a transformation journey. It will take time and it

will take learning, but as you go through this program, you will – slowly
but steadily – build the skills and obtain the tools you need to further
digitize and innovate HR.