For such a large organization, KION has a remarkably straightforward attitude to the role of technology in the business.
In the words of Dr Sylvia Bröning, senior director of Global HR Solutions, “When we use technology, it’s very important that we can simply make our processes leaner and more efficient in such a way that the entire company can work more efficiently, not just the HR department.”
Leaner processes drive efficiency improvements on a global scale.
This was the motivating factor in 2018 behind the decision to implement Workday. “We wanted an off-the-shelf product—a cloud solution that is really able to grow with us,” Dr Bröning says. “The ultimate aim was very much on integration, and creating a global process and having all our data in one place.”
Workday supports our digitization strategy of always becoming more digital, all the time achieving greater globalization and better integration.
Dr Sylvia Bröning, Senior Director HR Solutions
Globalized processes for maximum integration.
As a highly distributed company with a global footprint based around two core segments—industrial trucks (manufacturing the forklifts that are the heart of the business) and supply chain solutions—KION is a complex organization.
“Our two segments were operating on a slightly different modus operandi, and it was important to us that we could adapt, integrate, and support these while still remaining global,” says Dr Bröning. “Our strategy is to use digitization to globalize our processes across the organization, with a particular focus on more integration. By keeping our processes global, we are always in touch with teams across the world. And we have developed a governance structure to ensure this is always the case.”
For KION, HR technology helps ensure the company’s people information is all in one place. As Dr Bröning explains, “We were really at the very beginning. At KION, there was no global HR system, so the level of digitization in HR was very low. We had Excel-heavy processes, everything was paper-based and very manual.”
Process optimization for enhanced usability.One area in which Workday Extend has proven to be particularly valuable is process optimization. According to Dr Bröning, “It’s especially important in areas like streamlining processes and, above all, usability.”
Dr Bröning cites the example of the company’s work councils, of which some 200 look after the interests of the 10,000 Germany-based KION employees. “First of all, we used the transactional elements of Workday to support us in digitizing the consultation process, but as many of the work councils do not use computers every day, this turned out not to be the best approach.
“So we used Workday Extend to create an advanced new digitized approach that is simplifying and streamlining the process for them, making it far faster and easier for everybody to use,” Dr Bröning continues. “We will keep adapting to what is happening outside the organization and, thanks to the technology in place, we are now able to do this much more efficiently and effectively than before.”
Dr Bröning concludes, “Since initial implementation, we’ve continuously added to the solution by using Workday Extend to create new functionality. As a result, we now have a solution that evolves with us as we change and mature as an HR department and as a business.”
It is very important that we can make our processes leaner and more efficient not only for HR, but also for the company as a whole.
Dr Sylvia Bröning, Senior Director HR Solutions