Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) is a not-for-profit organization funded through a wool levy paid by Australian woolgrowers and a matching contribution from the Australian Government. AWI works with the entire wool supply chain, from farm to fashion. Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, AWI has 145 employees in 12 countries across Asia, Australia, Europe, and the USA. In 2014, AWI implemented an Australian payroll and HR software solution to help them manage employee data and paid leave for their employees outside of Australia. However, they didn’t use its payroll features because they were using different payroll providers for each of their global sites, which impacted its functionality. This meant that each time there was a system update or upgrade, AWI had to pay external consultants to customize the system, which was costly and often resulted in a loss of features and functionality. AWI wanted to find a new HRIS that was global, fully customizable, and able to support time off worldwide. They found all that and more in Bob.
Managing time off was a complex task
Managing time off was a huge task for AWI. Their people work from 12 countries worldwide (Australia, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Turkey, the UK, and the USA), and each of those countries has different leave policies. While AWI’s previous HRIS could support global time off, the ability to run reports on this data was limited to non-existent, so their HR team of two had to run these reports manually, which was very time-intensive. AWI needed to find a system to ease the process and reduce the stress of managing time off across their global sites.
Supporting annual leave across their global sites
Bob’s Time Off feature has removed the pain of managing time off for AWI’s HR. They now have the leave allowance for each region localized within Bob, so it’s easy for HR to input and track leave for their people across their different sites.
And, with all the time off data available in Bob, HR no longer needs to take responsibility for running leave liability reports across the company. This lengthy process used to involve sending a monthly email to all employees asking them to update their leave. After that, HR manually calculated the leave taken, accrued, and end-of-the-month balances for the month-end and year-end for every employee, which was time-consuming and painstaking work. Now, all the data is readily available in Bob, and HR has empowered the local finance managers to take responsibility for their site’s leave requests. This shift in responsibility has been a game-changer for AWI’s HR, saving them a full day and a half of work every month, not to mention a considerable amount of stress.
Seeking a flexible and customizable HR platform
Having endured a clunky HRIS that didn’t fit their needs, AWI understood that the ability to customize their HR platform was a must. They wanted to find a flexible platform that supported their core HR processes and that they could truly make their own.
Building processes that reflect their company culture, from onboarding to performance management
Bob’s flexibility and customizability enable AWI to build core processes across the company that reflect their unique culture while offering a more personalized and streamlined experience for their people.
Starting with onboarding, AWI’s HR uses Bob’s task lists to create tasks for all relevant stakeholders in the company—from managers to IT to Finance—that ensure new hires have everything they need in place for their first day at work.
Daniela Giorgiutti, General Manager, People & Culture at Australian Wool Innovation, explains, “Bob has helped us to streamline our onboarding process using task lists. Once we set up a new employee in Bob, there are various task lists directed to different teams, such as IT, to say, ‘hey, such and such is starting on this day.’ The manager gets a similar task list so we can ensure they speak to each other to organize equipment and systems access. Finance might also receive tasks about system access and whether they need a credit card. So, all the key people start talking to each other, and it’s not just HR with a form and having to do it all, which has freed up a lot of our time.”
And it doesn’t stop there. With Bob, AWI has also created a customized performance review process that embodies their company culture. They’ve added a question to the self-review section on their ‘Woolgrower Test’ that addresses the company’s unique value proposition.
It reads, “I take into consideration the Woolgrower test and its principles in my decision making as part of my role.”
Being able to tailor their performance reviews by adding their own questions that reflect their core company values helps AWI differentiate itself and stay true to its mission.
Creating a sense of community across a dispersed workforce
With their people working across 12 countries worldwide, many of them from small offices with few employees on site, AWI wanted to find a way to help create a sense of community and build a warm company culture for their people.
Using Bob for company news and announcements
Bob’s homepage now serves as AWI’s central information hub for their people working across time zones, helping them to feel connected to the company and enabling them to get to know each other in a more personal way. HR loves posting Shoutouts to announce new employees, welcome them to the company, and say farewell to those leaving. They also post photos of all the new babies born and good wishes for their parents during their maternity or paternity leave.
AWI also uses Shoutouts for celebrating their top learners on LinkedIn Learning—a perk offered to all their people to encourage learning and development. HR posts a quarterly announcement highlighting their top learners and provides information on the top courses, the number of videos viewed, and hours of content watched, helping to keep the momentum going across the company.
And, when there is an upcoming public holiday in one of their locations, it’s posted on Bob, so everyone knows about the office closure. Previously, these announcements were sent via email, but now everyone knows that Bob’s homepage is the place to get their news.
Main takeaways
- AWI has saved 1.5 days per month of admin time by using Bob for calculating time off across their global sites.
- Bob’s flexibility has enabled AWI to create core HR processes that reflect their unique culture.
- Bob’s homepage provides AWI’s people with a centralized information hub for all company news.
- Bob has helped AWI’s dispersed workforce to create a sense of community among their people.
