All personnel statistics at your fingertips.
House of Logistics and Mobility (HOLM) operates an independent development and networking platform for logistics and mobility. On behalf of public authorities, HOLM connects businesses, academia, politics, and society to drive future-oriented topics, creative processes, and innovations in the fields of logistics and mobility.
50 Employees
1 Locations
Think Tank for Logistics and Mobility
The Starting Point
As a project sponsor and developer, HOLM actively promotes economic development for the state of Hesse. Through its partner network, it develops innovative networking formats and implements forward-looking projects at the state, federal, and EU levels.
HOLM strengthens the competitiveness of universities, research institutions, companies, and start-ups, thereby contributing to the generation of business ideas and jobs.
At HOLM, experts share their knowledge, drive developments forward together, and make them accessible to the public. The shareholders of HOLM GmbH are the State of Hesse, the City of Frankfurt, and HOLM e.V.
In the past, we had three people working on one personnel questionnaire. Now, since we implemented HRlab, there is only one person needed for the same task.
The Challenge
Why did you look for an HR software?
Since our founding, we have experienced continuous growth, and with the increasing number of employees, the administrative burden on the HR department has also grown. This led to the need for an appropriate HR tool.
When selecting a tool, it was particularly important to us to have a clear absence management system that allows us to see at a glance which employees are working from home or on business trips, a digital personnel file, an interface to payroll, and workflow management features, such as during the onboarding process.
Specific challenges that needed to be addressed?
Even before the pandemic, the company introduced the option of working from home on a temporary basis. This, of course, impacted all processes that were still paper-based at the time.
For example, for vacation planning, employees had to fill out paper forms, have them signed by their supervisors, and then forward them to the HR department. At that point, the data was manually entered into Excel, where formulas were used to calculate the vacation days taken and those still available.
Other processes, such as business trips and the associated requests, involved similarly high manual efforts. Therefore, we already realized before the pandemic that implementing an HR software would be beneficial for HR employees and all other staff. The pandemic then acted as an additional catalyst and accelerator.
As an interim solution, we initially handled many of these processes via email. However, even then, there was no centralized database for documentation, and we still faced the manual effort of data maintenance, along with the risk of transmission errors.
At the same time, only one person had all the relevant HR information, which not only made these processes highly dependent on that individual but also led to numerous inquiries, which in turn was time-consuming for everyone involved.
Why did you choose HRlab?
After getting approval from the management, we initially used a comparison platform to get a good overview of the providers in the market.
Beyond the basic features, it was particularly important to me to have very good absence management - especially regarding business travel management - and document templates.
Through an intense testing phase, both with the tool itself and in collaboration with the team behind the brand, I found that HRlab was ahead of other providers in two key areas: knowledge of their own system and the associated professional and service-oriented communication.
Moreover, HRlab was the only provider to offer comprehensive business travel management, which was further expanded to accommodate our individual processes during the implementation. This was, in hindsight, further evidence of how flexible HRlab is in responding to customer needs.
The Solution
How did the implementation process go?
Implementing a new tool is always challenging, as existing data must first be transferred and integrated. But HRlab ensures that the entire implementation process is well thought out and structured.
For example, we set up the basic configuration in the system during a joint meeting, leaving only the detailed settings on our side. And there were appropriate manuals and support for that as well.
In case of any uncertainties, we could always rely on quick feedback. These initial positive experiences continuously confirmed my decision for HRlab.
Standout Features Since Implementation?
We have been using the most important features from day one. What I also particularly appreciate is the digital personnel questionnaire, especially for new colleagues.
Before our time with HRlab, this was a paper-based questionnaire that new employees had to fill out and we in the HR department then had to digitize. The next step was for the tax office to store the data again for themselves.
Now, new colleagues are provided with the digital questionnaire, which is then sent directly to payroll via export. This reduces the workload for three people to just one.
Also, document templates for employment contracts and digital signatures, for example, for data protection documents, are super helpful. Likewise, documents are always automatically filed in the associated personnel file once they are completed.
How do your employees feel about HRlab?
Our employees are pleased that our processes are now more streamlined, and many tasks can be executed much faster and with less effort. This is especially true for our project managers who frequently go on business trips.
Employees also appreciate that they now can view vacation days and access their data, such as payrolls, digitally at any time. This, in turn, saves the HR department the time of distributing each payroll to the respective mailboxes at the end of the month.
Recently, we started using the HRlab mobile app, so vacations and sick days can be easily recorded or managed on the go. We are also looking forward to the further development of the app, especially for employees who are often on the move and rarely sit at a computer.
Open Requests?
All the core features are there and work reliably. One thing that comes to mind for evaluations: a preset report of our number of employees at a specific date in combination with the associated names would be helpful.
This way, we can better track who was employed at a certain time and under what conditions, also for year-over-year comparisons.
For sick leave statistics, an accumulated view would also be nice to see a trend at a glance, without being tied to time tracking. Although this evaluation exists, it is currently not accessible to us because we do not use time tracking.
Access from anywhere
Reliant data
Employee Self Service
Final thoughts?
For us, one of the biggest changes has been the transition from paper-based to digital processes. This makes us faster and our work more organized, as everyone knows what process step is currently pending, regardless of location.
All data is stored in one place and is reliably available there. Employees are increasingly working independently with the tool. We are gradually introducing additional features.
As a public company, we are also required to participate in all government statistics. In the HR department alone, this involves about six statistics per year. For this purpose, HRlab's reporting system is particularly helpful.