Ericsson, in the course of formulating new ways of working kept in mind the objectives such as globalisation and standardisation of processes. Globalisation of processes would contribute to the centralisation of command and control of process encouraging compliance at a similar level; while standardisation reflect one flow of work and similar functioning across geographies to achieve HR service delivery.

The challenge

The challenge in implementing this vision was to manage change and pacify resistance to new ways of working. Business needed real time data. The objective to create talent analytics was to provide Tracking, Visibility, and Reporting advantages to the service delivery vertical.  Biggest challenge of devising analytics under one platform was the cross border competence movement which business relied-on while pitching new case or other acquisitions. The analytics had to be designed in absence of the expertise, and hiring needed modifications – recruiting talent with analytics as core competency, aligning internal departments which had access to different data, user-friendly connotations to analyse trends, designing an end-to-end data feed, reworking on the Integrated Talent Management tool, many functionalities needed introspection, new tools to manage analytics, and combination of various data points into one stream.

The chosen approach

The plan was divided in phases, implementation also happened in phases giving the company time to introspect what they were doing. VB based Manual reporting helped the organization to come at a single platform of performance index in all Region/BU/GF. This helped in streamlining the global tools and information flow generating standard reporting. Phase 1 of Manual Reporting was consolidation of data from the available tools which was done to devise automated systems. Automated Reporting was channeled through the available tool source and then planned again when the migration to Integrated Talent Management was implemented. The implementation of the global process helped in the standardization of reporting metrics and also the view to the Business and HR for informed business decisions. Calculation and the methodology right from data extraction to usage was documented to make a singular knowledge bank. The plan was if this entire mechanism would be transferred later to a singular COE (center of excellence) the transition would not be impacted. Phase 2 was Centralization of all requirements and becoming the delivery arm for all SME vertical. This helped in equipping them with vital stats for business consulting. The TA GSSC became the delivery excellence arm for SME vertical and greater dependencies were created through efficient statistical deliveries. The central recruitment delivery team was an assurance to handle more complex data proactively. The final phase was audit and compliance to ensure process adherence and generate health metrics as process improvement mechanism, and change management and training the Business to make informed decisions.

The impact 

The effects were seen on various fronts such as large ticket operations transaction moved to Talent Acquisition Global Shared Services Centre (TA GSSC) when the capability to automate was proved. New tools have been designed to align the process with access-based in-house tools developed to send triggers, merge data from the region TA as well as the vendor and provide effective dashboards for business. This has resulted in 50% efficiency creation and reduction of timelines by 25%. Automated reports and quality metrics based discussions with Region/BU SME further reported excellent arm support built for governance with HR stakeholders and Business. More than 250 reports were published at repeated frequencies and ad-hoc report generation turnaround time reduced drastically. In-House Hiring Survey mechanism built to assess the recruitment health on a real time basis. The assessment questionnaire guide was automated using a tool to code separate job roles under identifiable headers. This helped the hiring process with guides to assess the job roles based on competence defined under Career Competence Model. Post standardization, hiring time has reduced by 20%. Process adherence rose from 4% to more than 90% through automation and standardization of process. Better visibility of analytics has helped in moving the work to desired hands. Recruitment operations moved to TA GSSC without change in headcount. All these initiatives are in-house in addition to the reporting macros and with no added cost, in terms of resources or in terms of tools or vendor operations and maintenance.

TA GSSC also has started a real time survey check on quality of recruitment and customer satisfaction per candidate from the Business. The results are real time and the company stand at 4.1 on a scale of 5 on various parameters identified in consultation with business. Ericsson is also planning to design this exercise further into the ways of working and design analytics to a deep dive into behavioral pattern during recruitment and the trend of feedback giving an insight into the cause and effect of the process. TA GSSC also is planning to act as a Centre of Excellence in analytics for not only the TA SME vertical globally which it is doing as of now but also for the various stakeholders aligned at various stages of a recruitment life cycle. It is also working with Global Reporting team on some demos of external tool where reports can be hosted for greater visibility across the organization.