Essity unifies workforce management worldwide

Challenges

Essity had various workforce management solutions in place in different countries around the world, including a legacy UKG solution . Managing multiple vendors was difficult, business processes were not consistent across territories and many of the solutions in use were obsolete, unable to deliver the capabilities the company needed, including cloud compatibility, essential given Essity’s move to the cloud.

To modernise and reduce the number of solutions in use, Essity decided to use just one solution, across the organisation, for countries with simpler requirements, and another for those in which labour laws are more complex.

UKG Pro WFM

Essity selected UKG Pro Workforce Management for territories with more complex circumstances because of its ability to handle differing local laws in different countries. Furthermore, the company already had some experience with the solution, in Mexico. Beyond this, as Deepika Garg, IT Business Analyst, says, “UKG Pro Workforce Management met our global requirements, ticking most of our assessment checkboxes.”

The company has UKG Pro Workforce Management running at multiple sites in the US and Canada, as well as in Mexico and Chile. In Europe, the solution is live in the Netherlands and at the planning stage in Poland, with another 25 countries in the pipeline.

In the Netherlands, Essity is using UKG Dimensions to manage 1,400 employees, while in Poland there will be 700 on the system. In total the company is using the solution to manage 7,000 workers globally with 122 clocks. Over the next few years Essity intends to further expand the use of UKG Pro Workforce Management, ultimately using the platform to manage around 27,000 mostly blue-collar workers.

During the implementation in the Netherlands, a number of challenges arose. In particular, there was some resistance to the move to the platform from users who were comfortable with the existing point solutions that they’d got used to over the years.

Pappu Das, IT Business Analyst, explains: “This was very much a user adoption and change management issue. The solution itself is great, especially in comparison to those we had in the past. And UKG have been excellent on the support side, helping us find the right solutions to these challenges.”

Garg has similar praise for the UKG implementation team: “They were always willing to take the time to understand what we were requesting, and to create a suitable solution. Essity is a complex implementation, bound by union laws, rules and regulations. The UKG implementation team did a fantastic job.”

Results 

With operations in multiple countries around the world, regulatory compliance is a significant challenge for Essity. While some of the competing solutions rejected by Essity in Poland were not compliant with information security requirements, Garg and Das have found that simply having UKG Pro Workforce Management in use has served as evidence of the company’s commitment to compliance. A key reason for going ahead with UKG Pro Workforce Management in Poland will be that once the implementation is complete there, Essity will be compliant with EU labour legislation, the need to have an approved time registration solution in place, and in terms of information security.

UKG Pro Workforce Management is also providing the opportunity to unify and streamline previously scattered and disjointed processes. This has proven to be a significant benefit to the company’s operations in the Netherlands.

Das praises UKG Dimensions’ ability to present managers with insights and information by deep-diving and analysing the broad spread of data it collects across the organisation. “We recently undertook an internal audit – it was very convenient to be able to easily access the information we needed, on issues such as the percentage of overtime that had been approved, and that which hadn’t. It’s both quicker and more accurate than in our legacy system. UKG Pro Workforce Managements’ data views and reports are really helpful.”

The cloud-based, SaaS model employed by UKG Pro Workforce Management means Essity doesn’t need to worry about software updates, while the mobile integrations mean managers and workers alike can access the platform wherever they are, at any time of day. “When we presented the system to the Netherlands HR leaders and union forum, they were excited,” Garg notes. “It's ideal for workers to be able to see their timecards, apply for work-from-home or book a doctor’s appointment in the app.”

Would they recommend UKG Pro Workforce Management to other businesses like Essity? “Without a doubt,” enthuses Das. “I've seen complex solutions in multiple organisations all around the world which were just not up to the mark. UKG Pro Workforce Management has so many different modules available in one solution. Advanced scheduling, forecasting, budgeting integration – it’s all there.”