NIRAS outlines and designs tomorrow's society
In 2017, NIRAS merged with another company to bring together close to 2000 employees. Each of the companies had its own way of managing HR data and neither had a fully digitalised HR system in place. Further, the merger triggered a much-needed conversation about digitalisation and globalisation in general, especially in the context of their strong international growth.
After evaluating eight providers, taking eight months in their selection process, NIRAS eventually chose CatalystOne as their provider. At the same time, they implemented a new digital ERP system as another step towards the goal of digitalising the company’s internal processes.
NIRAS’ values and goals are geared towards becoming the next generation consultancy. This includes being transparent in a global market.
“You can’t do that without your systems supporting it,” says Anne Agerholm Francke, Head of Department, HR and Payroll Administration. “We demand a high standard of work, so we expect equally high-standard systems to back this up.”
Digitalised compensation management was an especially high priority for NIRAS. Prior to implementing the CatalystOne system, compensation records were handled by a spreadsheet, which didn’t address transparency issues and wasn’t scalable. Now, with “MyNIRAS” – their name for the digital system – employees no longer need to contact HR for minor details; instead they can look up information themselves. This has freed up HR staff to work more strategically and look into better reporting and data insights.
"HR is working in a different way now."
"We’re working more strategically and globally"
- Anne Agerholm Francke,
Head of Department, HR and Payroll Administration.
“HR is working in a different way now,” says Francke. “We’re working more strategically. We’re continuously rolling out MyNIRAS to more countries which has led to a culture shift across the whole organisation.”
But she has found that though employees interact less with HR over minor routine things since the change to a digitalised system, they now have more time and opportunities to have meaningful interactions. Meanwhile, HR staff time is freed up to help with further implementations and cultural change, as well as finding ways to put all the new data to good business use.
“As HR professionals, we see our employees as customers, so we expect the same high standards of ourselves as we offer to our customers,” says Francke, “and you can’t focus on the good stuff if you’re busy with manual load.”
