The best software for quality and risk management.The recruitment and onboarding process at AAE, Helmond-based high-tech machine manufacturer, has many steps, involving various people and departments. Several years ago, the desire was expressed to streamline this, including HR. Rick Jongen was allowed to devote his third-year internship to this and managed to put the entire workflow in Zenya. How he did it, he tells us together with Rob Fleuren, Manager ICT at AAE.
Rick has since graduated, but he still regularly walks around AAE: after his third-year ICT internship, he did his graduation internship in Sales as well as still working for AAE in his spare time. A special story, then, and if it had been up to Rob, Rick would have been more than welcome to join the company full-time after his studies. But Rick decided to further his studies.
During my first internship, the assignment was to automate the workflow around recruiting, selecting and onboarding new employees as much as possible,’Rick says. Rob adds: ‘we are growing significantly as a company, we hired about 100 new employees last year. The process from posting a vacancy to filling it, getting the right approvals and preparing everything for the new employee did not always run smoothly. It could easily take weeks, if not months, before everything was arranged. Now, it is arranged in a day, or even a few hours.’
From weeks or months to hours: that’s quite a time saver. What’s in it? For that, Rick first outlined the whole process. ‘A manager decides he needs (additional) new employees. The management then has to approve this, after which the request goes to HR. They put out the vacancy, receive applications and have to process them. Ultimately, if all goes well, a new staff member emerges from the process, they need to be registered and all the prerequisites such as laptop, badge, etc. need to be arranged for this. This of course depends on the position,’ Rick summarises the process briefly.
‘For the things that ICT and Technical Services have to arrange, such as that access badge, but also the laptop, access to systems and so on, we have to get approval from management,’ Rob says. ‘So there is quite a lot involved in such a process, and so automating definitely means efficiency gains.
We had Zenya in our sight for some time to fulfil our quality management requirements, so we brought them into the equation after Rick mapped out the process. We had drawn up some requirements and looked at which platform met as many of them as possible. That became Zenya FLOW.” Rob says.
We had Zenya in our sights for some time to fulfill our quality management needs, so we brought them into the equation after Rick mapped out the process. We had drawn up some requirements and looked at which platform met as many of them as possible. That became Zenya FLOW.”.”
Zenya was new for Rick. While he had some knowledge of this kind of system, he is not a programmer. Zenya works quite intuitively; if you have feeling for this kind of software, that is enough to get started with it. Once you figure out how such a workflow works, you can move on. And of course, sometimes you have to try, it doesn’t work and you have to start again. But after that, you get the hang of it.’
Since summer 2019, we have therefore been working with the workflow in Zenya FLOW within AAE. Whoever wants to post the vacancy creates a notification in the system and then the whole process actually starts automatically. First, the notification passes management. Further on in the process, when an application can be made via the website or an external party, for example, the application form also appears under the notification in the system. And the person who has to do something with this will automatically receive a reminder that he or she has to do something with the form. That’s how it goes with the whole process.
‘What we subsequently ran into was that the ICT and Technical Services departments often only received the request that things needed to be put in place for the new employee very late in the process. This only happened after HR had filled in all the details and had actually completed the process to that extent. Moreover, this also has to be approved by management again, which can cause additional delays. As a result, these departments were sometimes instructed to put it in order only after the employee had already started. So we asked Rick, in addition to his internship at Sales, to start working on this,’ Rob explains.
The solution? ‘Now, when applying for a vacancy, a notification about the application of these things goes along immediately. So management immediately approves both. After all, if you have the vacancy, you also know what the person will need. As soon as management has given its approval, the notification goes into the file. Once someone has been hired and the name, start date, etc. have been filled in by HR, this notification goes to ICT and Technical Services so that they can put everything in order,’ says Rick, who also set this up.
The brochure on Zenya FLOW shows you how this powerful incident management system can be applied so that your organisation can learn from reports.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 2020, about 1,700 reports further. About half of these are related to recruitment and onboarding. And so that has resulted in considerable time savings across AAE. Whether everyone is happy? Rob laughs: ‘I have not heard any complaints, so that is usually the best indicator.’ So the question of whether he would recommend setting up such a workflow in Zenya is immediately answered in the affirmative. ‘Rick is just a golden force, of course, but thanks to Zenya’s approachability, he has really pulled this off top notch.’ See, of course we love to hear that!
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