Johansson was the only person on the HR team for the governing body responsible for indoor and outdoor rowing.
She soon realised that the amount of manual work involved in keeping track of more than 100 employees and contractors was inefficient. The existing system resulted in unreliable data, and carried the potential for data breaches, as well as needlessly long recruitment processes.
“There was too much admin, and too much manual work for me, as the only one in the HR team,” Johansson told HR magazine. “Arranging interviews and everything else takes time. I had to get managers involved in recruitment, as I literally didn't have the time.”
She decided to make the switch to an automated, digital HR system. The need for an improved HR system was obvious, Johansson explained, so getting buy-in was easy.
“Once I identified risks – with compliance and data and everything else – I said: ‘We need to fix this’,” she remembered. “I had some legwork done already, and had rationale to show the key elements that needed to be solved. When it comes to legal data and financial risks, people tend to listen.
“When I carried on with sourcing the systems, and found that Personio really fit with our budget. It was a no brainer, so leaders signed off quite quickly.”
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It’s now been nine months since British Rowing digitalised its HR function, and the new system has helped the team better manage its data, saving 1.5 hours of time per job interview and up to 100% on recruitment costs.
Whereas previously, British Rowing used a recruitment agency, making the switch to a digital HR system has saved the money it would spend on recruitment.
Johansson reflected: “It takes a lot less time to go through the recruitment journey, and it can be standardised in the way that we speak to candidates and employees coming in.”
The savings from not using a recruitment agency have also allowed her to bring on another member of the team, an HR generalist, who is in charge of building out the HR software.
“She's now the Personio expert,” Johansson said. “I've handed over, so she has kept building the onboarding journey, creating all the recruitment journeys. She's become my ops specialist, and helps with the day to day, so I can pick up on all the other stuff that we also need to do.”
Digitalising the HR function has freed up time for Johansson to create an HR strategy.
She continued: “It's so much easier for me now to do a pay gap analysis, to look at diversity, to look at recruitment, onboarding and retention. All of that people data is really good, and informative for the senior management team to use strategically.”
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The digital approach has also allowed Johansson to focus on creating strong policies: “There's a lot of variability within people's working schedules, especially in the sports industry: we have people working on flexible times, with different schedules, and it increases the complexity of putting absence policies and procedures in place.
“I would advise anyone [going through a similar process] to pay a little bit of extra attention to that, because it’s something that can vastly impact so many different areas.”
This type of work, Johansson explained, is more interesting to her, and likely most HR professionals, than admin.
Addressing HR teams’ fear about being replaced by technology, Johansson commented: “You're not replacing people, you're replacing tasks. Let the system do the admin. You need to work smarter, because otherwise you're going to be stagnant, and that's not sustainable business.
“To me personally, I feel like the less admin I have to do, the better it is for me, because then I can go and do the fun stuff. That's part of my development.”
