When your company has 300,000 employees across multiple continents, onboarding new employees can be challenging. Consider Hitachi, the global conglomerate that manufactures household products, large-scale infrastructure such as railway systems and renewable energy products.
Its HR teams were spending countless hours on menial work due to poor processes. New employees were filling out paper forms. Security access took days to get approved; phones and laptops took weeks to be delivered. Worst of all, some potential employees were withdrawing their candidacies because of the poor onboarding processes.
So, Hitachi tasked its IT department with developing a private, custom AI system to improve the process. Thanks to the new technology, HR professionals now spend 40% less time bringing in new hires, employee satisfaction with onboarding has improved, and the company is losing fewer candidates.
See also: Why many AI in HR projects fail—and how Hitachi got it right
Hitachi isn’t alone. Manufacturing companies globally are turning to technology to bridge the needs of corporate production and their workforces.
Unilever recently overhauled its recruitment process by leveraging AI and gamification, introducing a digital recruitment platform that includes video interviews and uses online games to evaluate candidate skills. This transformation increased diverse applications by 16% and cut the hiring process from four months to just two weeks.
Despite these success stories, integrating HR technology into manufacturing environments presents distinct challenges. Unlike traditional corporate environments, manufacturing facilities are high-paced, shift-based work settings where employees often lack regular access to computers or even personal devices.
And night- or graveyard-shift workers may not have the liberty—or willingness—to attend lengthy onboarding or training sessions when they weren’t working. They also will not have easy access to the company’s HR department, given its typical 9-to-5 schedule.
This is why corporate HR departments need to ensure that technology provides production employees with self-service tools and other ways of engaging. Many companies are turning to smartphone apps, which let all workers access HR portals at any time and from any location. Others, including Toyota, are turning to on-site solutions that do not require employees to use their own devices.
Preboarding and self-service kiosks
In its North American plants, Toyota recently introduced a pre-employment onboarding process for incoming workers that shares policies, collects personal information and sets up document e-signing before the employee’s start date. The plants also installed employee self-service kiosks where factory workers could get their pay, benefits and schedule without a personal computer. The measure improved the delivery of HR services and workers’ satisfaction without slowing production.
Another effective strategy involves customizing and providing access to the technology based on roles. For example, corporate employees may require access to sophisticated performance management tools, whereas production employees may benefit more from basic scheduling and time tracking features.
Don’t rush the HR technology rollout
Introducing new HR technology in different manufacturing plants presents another dimension of complexity, since each site can have its own labor relations, legal framework, compliance requirements and business operations.
Launching in stages can be an effective solution. By starting in one or two production facilities, using pilot programs to identify stumbling blocks and making fixes before expanding across the entire company, it is easier to adapt to the company’s full network.
Some companies have successfully adopted a different solution for following corporate policies while meeting site-level needs. With this approach, organizations manage HR functions centrally while manufacturing plants and regional offices can customize some settings to meet regional legal requirements and manage work best in those locations.
See also: How an HR transformation is molding the new United States Steel
However, it is unfortunate that many companies assume that only the HR teams and required functions should drive the technology development and lead the way in the adoption. Smart companies involve key representatives from many divisions to ensure specific needs are addressed.
Cisco provides an excellent illustration of the benefits of this approach. When the conglomerate decided to implement AI-driven recruitment and workforce analytics tools, it included representatives from HR, IT, data science and key business units.
HR tech transformation takes a team
Instead of allowing HR to drive the change alone, hiring managers, department leads and technical teams were all engaged in the process, too. The company consciously prevented HR from leading the change alone because it wanted to meet the needs of all departments, not just HR.
Large-scale HR system implementations cannot be effective without a deployment strategy that involves preparation, participation of all interested parties and evaluation. Beyond the initial rollout, consistent system evaluation and feedback are crucial to help spot potential problems and make changes to the HR processes.
As technology continues to evolve, manufacturing companies must remain agile in their HR strategies, ensuring that their workforce remains engaged, their processes streamlined, and their business operations optimized for long-term success.
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