Effective HR policy by Peter De Waegeneer, Barry Callebaut

Peter De Waegeneer and Lien De Cnop, respectively Human Resources Director Europe and Head of European Support Service Centre with Barry Callebaut Belgium nv, are responsible for the European HR management of the multinational. They form the perfect team with years of experience versus sprightly enthusiasm, both focussed on the same objective. In the visitors area on the top floor of one of the offices, with a fantastic, nearly 360 degree view over the production site and the green environment, they share their European story. “Four years ago, together with an external consultant, we analysed all HR activities within our European offices: who is doing what, how long do processes take, what systems are being used, etc. Several highly useful conclusions were drawn and rendered into a three year plan in order to effectively improve the efficiency and service delivery of our HR department. Lien has been involved full time in this project since the beginning, the other team members part time on top of their other activities.”

Entrepreneurship

The European challenge was not to be underestimated: nearly every European country had its own personnel management, that within one country, could even differ entirely from one production site to the next. “Manual work prevailed”, remembers Lien. “Result: if you required figures from a certain report, it was all extremely time consuming.” Protime was resolutely chosen for time & attendance. “This was determined by the experience we have with Protime in Belgium, due to the functionality and possibilities. Today, we work with Protime in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in UK, in France and in Switzerland. Other offices are likely to follow in the near future. Our aim is, at some point in time, to have one time and attendance platform in both West and Eastern Europe : Protime. Why? One of our company values is entrepreneurship which we encourage to our employees and is something we also like to be to our customers. Protime approached us and said: “Perhaps we are able to think along with you in this story as we ultimately also have plans to expand internationally with our package.” Of course, we also considered solutions used in other countries; however, in all our offices where Protime was implemented, we received the same feedback: 'This is ok', 'This is user friendly', 'This contains the functionality that we would expect, there are no teething problems, no bugs, it is well supported, questions are answered, it has flexible parameters'.”

Everything is possible...

How do Peter De Waegeneer and Lien De Cnop look back at the last three years? “The main advantage of Protime for us is its flexibility. The set-up differs in some of our European factories: some use Protime only for production, other locations calculate the cost price of products based on time clocks, indicating the time that a shift has worked on a certain run. All is possible.” “Currently, we prefer to run Protime on our servers, however, the SAAS (Software as a Service) solution may be of interest to us in the future”, adds Peter De Waegeneer. “I mainly see many advantages in nominating one point of contact for the support questions of all European HR employees. Lien is able to help the other offices with reports, technical questions, new programming... In England, we have recently moved from weekly payments to a monthly cycle. Lien and the local HR employee successfully made this switch on their own. We do not need to ask Protime for assistance in such matters. And therefore, we do not need to worry about an invoice either (laughs).”

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• Barry Callebaut