Dongwha has a long history of digital innovation. It was an early global ERP adopter and the first in its domestic industry to develop its own smart-factory platform. But more than technology, Dongwha is all about people. Its vision is “Creating happiness, respecting people, and building partnership.”
“We believe that business can only grow when people grow,” says Don Yu, head of HR. “We wanted to understand, analyze, and improve our employee experience from hire to retire. But the HR system that came with the ERP software made it difficult to do that. After a year and a half of evaluating various solutions, we chose Workday because it was the most open and extensible platform to help us use HR to create a culture where our people are empowered to improve business performance.”
Supporting an “ambidextrous” organization.
For 70 years, Dongwha was a stable, industry-leading business in Korea. But in 2019, it challenged itself to find a future-growth engine. It chose the aligned but unknown domain of secondary battery materials. As a result, Yu says that Dongwha is now an ambidextrous organization. “On one hand, we are focused on maximizing productivity and efficiency of our existing businesses. On the other, we are growing new businesses, trying to turn them into stable revenue generators.”
Workday is helping Dongwha achieve both goals. “We have digitized and automated HR processes for our executives, managers, and employees. In our core businesses, this supports the use of predictive analytics to drive data-based HR decision-making,” explains Yu.
“In our growth businesses, we leverage the flexibility and scalability in Workday to respond to new business requirements with agility. For example, we can rapidly adopt changes in HR policies and apply new HR processes flexibly to keep pace with business growth.”
As more HR data gets accumulated and analyzed, we expect to drive changes in how we work across the enterprise.
Head of HR
Creating a personalized employee experience.
Yu says that achieving sustainable growth in Dongwha’s new business areas requires HR to recruit and develop a different type of talent—employees who must be folded into Dongwha’s distinctive culture while still respecting their diverse needs.
“We want to drive their internal motivation and achievements based on the group’s core values of autonomy, collaboration, and transformation. But we also need to personalize the employee experience.”
Yu sees Workday as a massive enabler to achieve this goal. “Workday automation means the HR department has been able to move away from traditional administrative tasks and is now focused on supporting our employees at every stage—through recruiting, evaluation, development, promotion, and retirement.
“Also, by leveraging Workday HR data, we can understand our employees at a deeper level and motivate them better,” Yu continues. “For example, rather than resorting to individual experience-based decision-making, managers can accurately understand each employee’s skills and growth plans to make timely, informed decisions.”
Dongwha is also using employee experience data to drive self-initiated and highly supported career development. “Workday analyzes employees from multiple dimensions to support career planning and ensures relevant learning based on an employee’s skillset.”
Workday, more than any other HCM, provides a personalized employee experience.
Head of HR
Augmenting human capability with analysis and prediction.
Yu is excited to see what new capabilities Workday confers as HR continues to grow and improve powered by AI and machine learning (ML).
“With Workday AI and ML capabilities, we can derive insights based on analysis of the aggregated HR data and learn to perform and suggest various analyses, classifications, evaluations, and decisions. This is about moving beyond just identifying what happened and why, to telling us what will happen or how it will happen, so we can move ahead of the curve.”
Ultimately, Workday means that HR can contribute to business performance.
Head of HR