VISION OF SOMETHING BETTER
To solve those problems, the company began investigating a much more integrated approach. “We wanted to implement a truly global solution,” said Steve Feilmeier, Koch Industries’ CFO, “something to help our HR team think like one capability instead of a fragmented, decentralized collection of capabilities.”
Leaders also agreed there was a need for stronger data security. Farther down the priority list, but still worth pursuing, were better training and development tools, elimination of duplicate systems and less reliance on paper records.
“On top of all that, we needed a scalable solution,” Malone said, “something that can work everywhere and anywhere.”
With those short- and long-range goals in mind, the search for a new system began.
DELIVERABLES
What the HR team wanted was a system that better served our key constituents: Koch businesses, employees, supervisors, candidates and the HR capability itself.
Ideally, the new system should help businesses integrate acquisitions faster, provide better insight into our talent and open roles, and allow greater access to employees and supervisors so they can make informed decisions.
Employees should be able to view important data — such as paycheck information — on mobile devices and have more transparent ways of tracking career opportunities with Koch anywhere in the world.
Supervisors needed easier access to employee information, better workflow and learning tools, and improved analytics to support their decision making.
For HR, the goal was a single system that could advance the transformation of the HR capability through better insight into talent and how to best deliver services to the businesses in a more strategic, scalable, and efficient way.
Delivering all these things would require a transformation of the way Koch HR operated.
OUR OWN BACKYARD
Thanks to Koch’s majority investment in Infor in 2017, the transformation team soon realized that the best option for achieving Koch’s HR goals might just be in-house.
Infor is a tech provider known for creating streamlined, easy-to-use enterprisewide solutions. It had a great track record and numerous happy customers. But just to make sure it could provide the right solution for HR, Koch brought in a knowledgeable third party — the consulting firm Deloitte — to verify Infor’s potential.
Deloitte not only saw great things in what Infor could do for Koch, but they also saw opportunities to leverage Infor’s capabilities at Deloitte. Although developing that potential took a bit longer than some had expected, by December 2, 2019, Koch was ready to implement the first phase of Infor’s global HR technology.
ONLY THE BEGINNING
When myHR went live last December, several key foundational pieces were put into place: the myHR portal (Koch’s user interface); Infor Global HR (software which makes a variety of self-service transactions possible); Infor Go (a mobile app); Get HR Help (case management and knowledge); Birst Reporting (a reporting tool); and a series of scorecards and analytics for spotting trends.
The transformation of Koch HR involved more than just new technology. Three new HR Service Centers were opened to support the global enterprise in Katowice, Poland; Bangalore, India; and Shanghai, China.
In addition, myHR content is now being provided in the eight core languages spoken by more than 90% of Koch employees globally: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin/Simplified Chinese, Polish and Spanish.
“All of this — and that’s quite a list — was just the first phase of our three-phase plan,” Malone said. “We wanted to start by building a foundational structure where all our employee information could be in one system.” Now that Koch has that foundation, Malone says, “we can accelerate the design and use of our leveraged capabilities (such as Talent Solutions, Compliance and Total Rewards), and strengthen the capability of our HR business partners.”
IS IT WORKING?
One of the key benefits of myHR is the way it enables self-service. Statistics compiled during the past five months reveal that employees are certainly taking advantage of those options. Since December:
- About 70,000 employees (more than half of Koch’s global population) have logged in to myHR.
- At least 20,000 of those logins were from mobile devices.
- More than 220,000 transactions have been completed using the new system (at least 65,000 of them compensation related).
- Knowledge sharing has increased: myHR online articles have been reviewed about 137,000 times.
- HR Solutions has conducted approximately 18,000 chats, helping resolve issues more quickly than ever.
“What we are seeing is that our employees, regardless of their role, were fully prepared to embrace this new world of self-service,” Malone said.
He also notes that employees are updating their personal information in the system. Supervisors are initiating compensation changes, submitting transfers and better managing non-employees. And Koch’s HR teams are now better positioned to strategically support their businesses.
“I don’t want to suggest that myHR is a silver bullet for every HR issue,” Malone cautions. “We’re not promising perfection here. But it is true that we’re already seeing a huge improvement in many areas. And as we roll out the next phases in our plan, things should only get better.”