As an engineering-led, supply-chain-enabled contract manufacturer, Jabil is the brand behind the brand, manufacturing products for more than 400 of the biggest companies globally. From components in electric vehicles and complex injectable healthcare devices, to solar inverters and consumer electronics, Jabil’s global footprint spans over 100 sites in 25+ countries. The company's mission is to be the most technologically advanced and trusted manufacturing provider.
The challenge of fragmentation.
For a company that grows organically and through acquisitions, averaging two or three a year, fragmentation was causing headaches for the Jabil HR team. It was operating with seven disparate HCM platforms that were not communicating, leading to siloed data, inconsistent processes, and massive inefficiency.
“We were broken from an HCM standpoint,” explains Gary Schick, SVP, CHRO at Jabil. “Everyone had their own systems. And as you can imagine, that's a lot of different processes, a lot of different procedures. A lot of inefficiency.”
The leadership team recognized that to support the future growth of technology and employees, they needed a single, unified foundation.
Standardizing for success and scale.
Jabil consolidated its seven legacy systems into a unified platform with Workday Human Capital Management. The initial deployment for 240,000 workers across 35+ countries was completed in a record 17 months.
The move delivered immediate and significant returns. Jabil saved over $4.5 million annually simply from decommissioning systems. Beyond cost reduction, the platform allowed HR to finally standardize critical processes globally, including recruiting, compensation, and talent management. It also ensured bringing new team members and sites into Workday through acquisitions was seamless.
The shift enabled HR leaders to focus on the employee experience while automation gave them greater insight into the talent review process and better visibility than ever before. Prior to Workday, the company only assessed their top 100 leaders for succession. Today, they have over 12,000 data points on succession planning, ensuring they are building the next wave of executives and managers.
Automating with the Workday platform is reaping rewards. “We've been able to fully automate our talent review process, which has allowed us to have greater insights into skills data and career interest data on our workforce. Now, we're able to promote internal mobility within the organization,” says Hassan Shamseddine, Senior Director HR Operations & Technology.
And employees are benefiting directly with a revamped service award program, automated in Workday. The integration identifies eligible employees, notifies them, and facilitates the certificate and one-time payment distribution. This has resulted in more than $300,000 in annual savings.
Intelligence skills that build what’s next.
Jabil’s next evolution is squarely focused on skills and talent development, ensuring the company supports existing and future candidates with growth opportunities.
And automation and AI is creating new and expanded roles. “We're focused on developing people with certain skills who can grow or learn into these new positions,” says Schick.
Workday Skills Cloud is helping Jabil answer the fundamental question of when to build, buy, or even borrow talent. By leveraging the Workday platform and Workday Prism Analytics, Jabil can identify skill gaps in their current workforce and focus on upskilling them for the future. This has enabled them to reduce time for global headcount reporting by 99%.
Crucial to this skills strategy is the integration of Workday AI across the talent lifecycle, particularly in acquisition, management, and learning. “Our AI strategy has been to leverage our enterprise applications to help drive our AI roadmap,” says Shamseddine.
“The human-centric quality is incredibly important. AI can provide the recommendation, but the human needs to be in the driver’s seat to check the outcome and make the staffing decisions,” says Shamseddine.
For Jabil, the partnership with Workday is so much more than driving efficiencies and cost savings. It’s about providing the foundation for continuous innovation. "Jabil appreciates its partnership with Workday. Together, we're going to move forward faster, and we continue to be successful,” says Schick.
Human-centric quality is incredibly important. AI can provide the recommendation, but the human needs to be in the driver’s seat to make the decision.
Senior Director HR Operations & Technology