How Ferrero is leveraging human experience for game-changing results

This on-demand webinar delves into how Ferrero has leveraged the human experience with technology, to win the digital transformation challenge and drive better business results, focusing on the implications of fast-paced technological evolution at work, especially in a global business scenario.

UNLEASH was thrilled to host Lorenzo Torresin from myMeta Software, and Giovanni Gregorutti who is Group HRIS Manager at Ferrero. Giovanni leads their forward-thinking business model, creating a new employee experience, driving digital transformation across its organization of 37,000 employees in 55 countries.

The session panelists discussed how technology has served humans in the Ferrero global family business, to optimize time for investing more in human-only skills such as “strategize to innovate”.

Watch on-demand to:

• Understand the difference between employee experience and the human experience at work and why it matters to your job
• Consider why UX evolution has been Ferrero’s greatest ally in simplifying complex business processes, enabling a wider hybrid thinking that fosters a future mindset
• Listen to how Ferrero’s HR leaders have fostered an environment that focuses on delivering a great human experience in order to positively impact business results

The shift from ‘Employee Experience’ to ‘Human Experience’

Speaking about Ferrero’s own journey, Giovanni considered that, “human experience isn’t something that happens out of the blue. In the case of Ferrero at least, there was a pretty long journey, we call it the ‘HR Digital Journey’.”

The three main time frames of their ‘HR Digital Journey’ shared during the webinar session are outlined here:

2007-2011: Aim to have a single HR system.

There was a realization within Ferrero of the need to have the “mastership” of HR data in a single HR system, allowing the HR team across the organization to master and maintain the data as a single source of truth. However, the single system approach failed because the system was not homogeneous. The HR professionals across the organization were not aligned with the system and could not see the benefits within their day-to-day work – they were still getting the same results, being able to pay employees on time for example, but having to perform more tasks and ‘clicks’ to get the same results. Despite this shortfall in planning, execution, and results for this initial stage in their transformation journey, it clearly laid the foundations for their future Human Experience success.

2012-2017: Fostered system integrations and introduction of an obsessive culture of HR data accuracy.

“We created many new custom solutions with a homemade, artisanal approach for the HR family to improve their process efficiency, as well as involving employees for the first time, to be able to use tools like performance evaluation and the organizational chart and basic self-service capabilities,” Giovanni explained. This step, he and his team knew, was just a transitional one, but would be instrumental in creating a digital awareness around the HR processes and the opportunities that technology could enable that excelled the realms of Excel spreadsheets and bygone processes. 

2018-Present: Introducing a new company-wide strategy based on organic growth and acquisitions.

The large-scale growth plan, set out by the organizations’ leadership team, required very effective HR platforms, which led to the decision to transition its systems to the cloud. “Ferrero also introduced a new organizational governance model,” Giovanni told the audience, “that required the maintenance of a very flexible HR platform to effectively manage the relationship among the organization.” Ferrero had also been growing their HR data accuracy with the plans implemented in the previous years, enabling them to have strong foundations within HR to work from. The final lever for driving Ferrero’s Human Experience success, Giovanni believes, was starting a program, “that puts all employees at the center of the organization, providing individuals the opportunity to develop their career within Ferrero, in collaboration with their line-managers.” The big aim for Ferrero, was to digitize each step in the employee journey, whilst also enabling the opportunity to streamline, reshuffle, and review the HR processes with the various HR functions involved, as well as the employee voice, as a collective.

Focusing on the human

Giovanni explained to the audience that the human component was the exact reason for starting their digital transformation journey in the first place. Ferrero’s leadership realized they needed a step-change.

Our transformation journey was driven by a vision to transform the employee experience, but also to leverage the by-product of experiencing more efficient HR processes.

One of the fundamental ways to truly put the human experience first is by doing so literally – “Through their brand new group intranet that presents a specific section for each employee, they demonstrate a circle. In the middle of the circle is the picture of the employee, and all-around their photo there are different small circles that each represent a tool or a process available for the employee to develop their skills and competencies and their career at Ferrero.”

Having a human approach is almost certainly providing a differentiator to Ferrero, and any organization leading the way on this, especially when considered in the context of current competitive labor markets.

How is Digital Adoption software adding value for a truly excellent Human Experience?

Giovanni and his team partnered with myMeta Software to make the new HR processes and tools understandable and usable. They use the software for two different purposes.

Firstly, they use the software proactively for performance evaluation, as any user – the employee, the line manager – can activate the Digital Assistant to access a step-by-step guide through each moment of using the system.

The second way they are leveraging myMeta Software is in the salary review process. As an example, Giovanni explained, if a line manager accesses the salary review functionality the Digital Assistant pops up and automatically drives the user through the right steps. Through this, Ferrero has been able to guide their line managers through this process to manage the salary adjustment for all involved employees.

Ferrero’s recipe that led them to digitalization success:

• A clear business purpose
• Senior-management sponsorship of the transformation projects
• A digital-savvy HR leadership
• Cross-functional and cross-regional stakeholder involvement in the project
• An obsessive focus on HR data accuracy and quality
• Involving employees and line-managers throughout the journey
• Enablement of self-service by integrating a Digital Assistant with myMeta’s Digital Adoption Platform