A new digital platform to manage employee relations issues secured Wickes Building Supplies the Digital HR and Technology Award at the 2023 Personnel Today Awards.
Our judges were extremely impressed with the way the specialised digital ER platform was delivered, and the business benefits it has helped achieve. We take a closer look at its winning entry, and those of our other finalists.
WINNER
Wickes Building Supplies
Wickes is a home improvement retailer with more than 230 stores and over 8,100 colleagues. In 2021 it demerged from Travis Perkins Group and became a PLC. At the same time, it created a new HR shared services team, which included employee relations. This aimed to improve on a number of things: a lack of understanding of the business’ needs; inconsistent advice and a lack of trust in the service; managers lacking confidence in their abilities, poor case management and difficulty in managing documentation.
The company recruited a centralised ER team that would align advisers more closely with the business and provide training and coaching, as well as build confidence. It partnered with AdviserPlus, which offers a specialised digital ER platform that can help with the efficient and compliant management of cases. MyER was implemented with Wickes branding and was focused on five pillars: simplicity (managers are led through the process); efficiency (documents are accessible at every stage); engagement (user-friendly platform); assurance (managers feel more confident they are treating colleagues fairly); and analysis (data and insights).
Tribunal claims against the company have reduced by more than 50% and the average cost of claims has fallen from £14,500 to £3,100. Managers using self-service has led to a 30% reduction in planned ER team headcount and the team can spend more time on coaching managers in skills such as investigation and mediation. The time taken to produce tribunal bundles has reduced by 70%. Managers have commented that having everything they need in one place has improved their confidence and helps them to keep up to date with employment law.
RUNNERS-UP
Bagnalls
Bagnalls is a commercial painting contractor with 13 branches, employing around 630 people. It wanted to better understand its people data, engage better with new recruits, and improve company-wide communication. Many larger customers ask for diversity information as part of the tender process, and this was something it often felt unable to provide.
Personnel Today Awards
All our 2023 winners revealed
View the 2023 photo gallery
The Personnel Today Awards 2024 open for entries around Easter
Sign up to keep updated
The HR and IT teams at Bagnalls worked together to create four apps that would support these aims. These include a new starter app which gathers basic identifying information, equality and diversity data and incorporates essential training; an induction app that houses the latest versions of key documents and certificates so HR has full visibility of where employees are in the onboarding process; an absence app to record sick days and upload fit notes; and a leaver app meaning branches can more easily communicate with those that are leaving, including a questionnaire and appropriate payroll actions.
The company believes the apps have revolutionised its capability to capture valuable data and analyse key trends – it has been able to set diversity targets and can now monitor progress. The absence app means it can compare behaviours and intervene where necessary. Because they were developed in-house, there are no ongoing upgrade or licensing costs for the apps, and Bagnalls estimates this has resulted in at least £10,000 in annual savings.
Dishoom
In 2021, restaurant chain Dishoom needed to reopen its cafes all at once, which required reskilling around 1,800 employees that had been on furlough for a number of months. It implemented a learning management system at scale, creating micro-learning content and skills-based training to ensure everyone was 100% compliant and ready for service.
One of the challenges was creating a digital learning approach that would incorporate Dishoom’s ‘Seva’ mindset, meaning employees bring their whole selves to work. The in-house team built a new version of its already successful learning library. This included a new homepage which would give users quick access to the areas they needed most, a ‘mega menu’ that would simplify navigation, effective search indexing, easy routes to food and drink menus and cafe resources. Behind the scenes, the new library would enable the team to build better email campaigns, receive detailed analytics and save time creating learning campaigns.
Since the second version launched, more than 1,800 minutes of content have been watched, 600+ videos have been streamed, there have been more than 30,000 page views and over 80,000 visits to the website. It has helped to reduce new starter turnover by 20% and improve net promoter scores from customers thanks to targeted learning. Designed, developed and maintained by the in-house learning team, this comes at a cost of just $27 a month.
Lenovo in partnership with Mentor Group
Mentor Group is a digital-first, sales enablement company focused on the technology industry. Working with Lenovo, it designed a new, immersive training programme using virtual reality technology. The aim was to provide a more meaningful and real-world training experience that could be delivered at scale. It wanted to shift the sales force in a new direction, focusing on smarter use of technology while at the same time building soft skills.
Using VR technology helped to secure time in managers’ busy diaries, there was less distraction and delegates could feel the full emotion in all the scenarios presented. The programme comprised the virtual and real, with headset technology being used alongside a leadership coaching programme. Scenarios were scripted with multiple engagement avenues and outcomes, before being recorded with current Lenovo staff to add authenticity. Using VR was cost effective because it meant the programme was more scalable.
The training has made a notable impact, with a 38.3% increase in confidence after the programme, an 8.5/10 average impact on job role success, and praise from senior managers that the training met key objectives. The VR training has now been expanded to a wider Accelerator programme, providing an end-to-end training plan for Lenovo’s sales teams.
Snowflake in partnership with Benefex
Snowflake is a rapidly growing software company with employees in 15 global offices. Its previous benefits process was inconsistent, with different systems in place across different locations. It was also manual, so keeping it up to date was onerous and repetitive. It needed a digital platform that offered a centralised and consistent experience for its tech-savvy workforce.
It worked with Benefex to create a platform where employees could find all the information they needed on benefits, company policies and wellbeing programmes. The Snow Globe platform provides real-time analytics so Snowflake can track uptake and costs. The roll-out was phased according to different priority groups, meaning the largest and most administratively burdensome countries could be updated sooner.
In a recent survey of employees, all of the new Snow Globe users said it was easier to find information, and all said submitting their benefits choices is an easy process. There were new launch emails, new hire emails and follow-up communications to support the roll out, as well as a launch presentation for every country as it went live. The new platform has eliminated manual processes and there has been a 61% decrease in case volume as many queries are dealt with via self-service.
The Perfume Shop
The Perfume Shop wanted to run a proof of concept on intelligent automation – using robotics and AI to complete repetitive tasks – with the people services team to see if it could be rolled out across the business. It chose to do this with the recruitment and onboarding process, which while partially automated, still incorporates a number of manual steps that can be time consuming for the team.
The company worked with Blue Prism on a 12-week project that would remove unnecessary and repetitive tasks. The ‘digital worker’, known as Popee, was designed to feel like part of the time with her own avatar that was used in communications. When making an offer to a new recruit, Popee logs in and enters the details into the HR system with any relevant attachments. Once the offer is accepted, it changes the status to hired and a workflow is triggered for reference requests and other requirements, and new starter details added to the HR system.
Ninety per cent of the onboarding process has now been automated. Since the proof of concept, The Perfume Shop has also implemented digital workers in six other processes in the business. The people team has been able to facilitate the change management and upskill departments throughout the journey.
Wilson James
Services company Wilson James operates in a number of sectors including aviation, security and construction which are facing difficulties in finding staff and dealing with supply chain issues since the pandemic. In 2022 the business grew to exceed 6,000 employees but faced scaling challenges and wanted to ensure its values remained at the forefront.
It made significant investments to upgrade its recruitment process to improve the candidate experience, make jobs easier for recruits to navigate and the benefits system more transparent. It also overhauled its employee assistance programme (EAP) by partnering with Vivup. The aim was to provide a more proactive set of tools for employees and managers to support times of stress, with resources such as mental health counselling and emergency assistance.
Recruitment has improved since implementing strategic attraction and retention programmes, helped by a new employee portal in 2021 and more visible access to employee benefits and the Vivup platform. The portal has achieved more than 95% adoption and a one-month snapshot of Vivup showed 900 active users. These improvements are early steps on a wider digital transformation journey and have already saved the internal HR team 2,000 man hours through process automation.
In association with
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
