FloraHolland’s HR department goes for efficiency
Over the past year, the HR team at FloraHolland has experienced a lot of change. Following a company-wide reshuffling, the organization’s HR Service Centre has been a reality since November 2009, and the team now supports all 4400 employees across the six branches in the Netherlands, from the Head Office in Aalsmeer.
FloraHolland’s flower auction in Aalsmeer is impressive, to say the least. With an area of one million square metres (165 football fields) it is the largest commercial building in the world. Every morning, twenty million flowers and more than twenty million plants are traded. Trucks, filled to the brim with gerberas, tulips, roses and numerous other sorts of flowers and plants, drive in and out, making the auction hall resemble an ants’ nest of colourful activity. FloraHolland’s office building is situated next to the enormous halls. The smell of fresh flowers wafts through the corridors, paintings of flowers line the walls – even the rooms are named after flowers. In the room ‘Anemone’, Tim Holtkamp, Joeri Keevel and Bart Wijnen tell us all about the big changes that FloraHolland has been experiencing over the past few months, and which have since led to the new HR Service Centre (HSC).
HR must improve efficiency
Two years ago, the six large flower auctions in the Netherlands were united under the name FloraHolland, which now has 98 percent of the flower trade. “Getting all these branches to work in unison requires a lot of effort,”tells Bart Wijnen, Project Leader at HSC. “When all employees work for one organization, it is rather long-winded to have six different HR departments. We decided that it was vital for us to start working more efficiently.”In 2009, FloraHolland began reorganizing the HR department. “In the past, every branch had its own HR front desk with its own HR employees. Consequently, anything concerning the recruitment policy was dealt with locally,” explains Bart Wijnen. “Once regulations like the collective labour agreement were set up, we took the plunge and made the decision to set up one central HR department in Aalsmeer.”
"If it appears in TOPdesk that there are a lot of questions about the pension scheme, then we will devote a newsletter to it"
The reorganization of the HR department brought with it much upheaval. “Increasing the efficiency also means that fewer people are required. HR employees at other branches either looked for another job within FloraHolland or went looking for work elsewhere,” tells Tim Holtkamp, Application Manager at the HSC. Still, he finds the atmosphere among the employees positive. “FloraHolland is a social company and working at the HR department, in particular, is very enjoyable; there is a good, informal atmosphere.”
Everything central with TOPdesk
The process of starting up one central HR Service Centre took place in six parts, one of which was to centralize all the HR data. “In order to be able to manage all data in one location, we really needed a service management tool,” explains Tim Holtkamp. Indeed, the implementation of TOPdesk was very smooth, he continues. “The IT department already worked with TOPdesk. For this implementation, many aspects of the working processes were already set out. TOPdesk was familiar with how our organization works, so we were able to follow on from the processes that had already been set up for IT. That saved a lot of time with this part of the implementation – and, as a result, we managed to make all deadlines.” The intensive collaboration with the TOPdesk consultant certainly also contributed to the smooth progress of the implementation, tells Bart Wijnen. “It was really nice to have one point of contact during the project – from start to finish.”
The HSC in practice
The HR team could not adopt the processes written for the IT department indiscriminately, as Bart Wijnen, Project Leader at the HSC, explains. “HR is a broad field, and the questions that you receive are not as easily to categorize as calls about defect printers, for example. Generally, they’re questions that combine a number of different aspects, which you can’t always respond to with standard answers.”As a result, the HSC collects all questions in TOPdesk and then distributes them across thevarious clusters. The current HR department comprises 12 clusters, each of which specializes in one area, such as the staff or salary records. The client is not aware of this subdivision; he or she only needs to send his or her queries to the HSC, where they will be forwarded to the right person.
"It was really nice to have one point of contact during the project – from start to finish."
Not everyone was equally enthusiastic about the set-up of the HSC, as help desk employee, Joeri Keevel, tells. “Such a restructuring is always difficult – and that also applies to the automation of HR processes. Many believe that, because HR concerns processes between people, it cannot operate using tools. Still, we’ve since discovered that certain things can be dealt with digitally.”
Everyone up to date
FloraHolland’s management team operates as intermediaries for their department. They forward all their employees’ queries and requests through to the HSC. “As a result, HR now operates on one level and there is more control over the complete process,” tells Bart Wijnen. “You are able to maintain an overview. If, for instance, it appears in TOPdesk that there are lots of questions about the pension scheme, then we will devote a newsletter to it.” TOPdesk also enables the management to remain up to date, as Tim Holtkamp explains. “Managers can see the status of their requests in TOPdesk. We have set it up in such a way, using authorizations and roles, that they are not able to modify their requests. They can’t access everything, but they are still able to remain up to date on what is important for them.”
The next step
The restructuring of the HR department is, for the most part, complete and, from May 2010, everything will have to be organized centrally. “Over the coming months, we are going to actually begin applying everything that we have recorded in the systems,” tells Joeri Keevel. “We have attended two training sessions at TOPdesk in order to acquire a better insight into our processes and have recorded a number of standard solutions in the system. Now we can really get started.”
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