In this episode of the Workday podcast, Signify’s global head of HR systems, Jacqueline van Gerwen, shares how Signify uses innovation to better the lives of its consumers and employees.
Christina Johnson (CJ): In a world used to flicking a switch, it's easy to take something as simple as light for granted. We often overlook its potential for making people's lives safer and more comfortable, businesses more productive, and urban spaces more livable.
I'm Christina Johnson, and on this episode of the Workday Podcast, I'm delighted to be joined by Jacqueline Van Gerwen, global head of HR systems at Signify, a world leader when it comes to professional and consumer lighting.
We're going to be exploring how Signify creates a unified experience for more than 35,000 employees around the world, the ways it's innovating to meet the demands of a carbon-neutral world, and its commitment to making everyone's lives a little brighter.
Jacqueline, great to have you on the show. Thank you for being here today. For those of us who are still in the dark when it comes to the transformative power of lighting, could you tell us a little bit about Signify and your role in the company?
Jacqueline van Gerwen (JvG): Yes. Thank you, Christina. I think many of the people listening to this podcast will probably use our products in daily life, but they might not know Signify. Signify's the world leader in lighting. We are a standalone company. We separated from Phillips in 2016, and we have gone as a company through a massive transformation over the past years. Originally, we produced the traditional light bulbs that everybody knows. But nowadays, we sell modern connected products, systems, and services. And to mention some examples, we sell the Phillips Hue smart home solution. We sell solutions for smart cities so they can make the urban areas safer while saving energy. We help farmers with light recipes for indoor growth. And we also have 3D-printed luminaires made from recyclable materials that we sell. So a variety of products and services that we sell nowadays compared to in the past.
CJ: Okay. Fantastic. And could you tell us a little bit about your role at the company?
JvG: Yes. My role is something that people listening to this podcast will probably recognise. I'm global head of HR Information Systems. That means I'm responsible for the global tools we have at Signify. And of course, Workday is one of the important tools. I'm also responsible for the digital strategy for HR in Signify.
CJ: Okay. Fantastic. Now, with such a large workforce spread across 70 different countries around the world, what are the kind of challenges does that pose to you as a HR leader?
JvG: I think there are different challenges. Originally, of course, the challenge that we have is that we have both a manufacturing population and an office population, and those have different expectations. What we also have, if you operate in 70 countries, is that we have to deal with difference in culture. If you use Workday, you promote a lot employee self-service and manager self-service. And upon introduction, we learned that in some countries, that's easier accepted than in other countries. But I think what we also see over the past years is that there's also a difference in the digital readiness in the countries. There's, anyway, a huge difference in legislation around digitalisation per country. And we also see that the speed at which countries digitise really is different. And that means, for example, that our employees in China have different expectations from our solutions than employees in a European country like in Spain. So let's mention Spain as an example. And that means for global HR solutions where we try to implement global processes, global standards, we really have to try to find the balance and that can be challenging sometimes.
CJ: Okay, great. Thank you for going through that. So I know Signify's an organisation that's really committed to innovation. Right? So how does that manifest itself when it comes to HR?
JvG: In my view, there are different ways of looking at innovation. Of course, you have the bigger projects where you really make a significant step forward with innovation. Over the past year, we have been implementing Workday Prism and we really make that the one-stop shop for all the data for HR business partners, bringing data from other platforms, so there's only one solution they need to go to to find all the analytics and data they need. We also implemented People Analytics, which is the first real artificial intelligence application in our organisation. And it helps our HRBPs with identifying trends and anomalies in data. But I think that besides these bigger projects and innovations, we also need to make sure that we keep up with the smaller improvements. Sometimes smaller UI changes, smaller process improvements seem small but can really make a difference in the daily life of managers and employees. We are, for example, at the moment, simplifying our promotion process, and we really try to keep up with some of the Workday improvements that we think that can help the manager, like the important data widgets, which was recently launched.
CJ: Okay, amazing. Now, I know you mentioned AI, and automation and AI is like the big talk at the moment, isn't it? So what role does automation and AI play in your HR strategy?
JvG: Automation and AI are key pillars in our strategy. We started, for example, with RPA a couple of years back, introducing the first bots in our organisation. But we think automation and AI shouldn't be a technology push. It really needs to be meaningful and add value. And one of the examples I want to give, if you look at automation, our philosophy is really that we standardise, simplify, and only thereafter automate. Sometimes processes are complex, have a lot of waste in it. If you try to automate that, then the automation will be costly and the result for the employee might not be optimal. So we first try to simplify the processes, take out all waste, make sure it's really meaningful for the employee and only automate thereafter. And that's the path we see forward for artificial intelligence solutions as well. It needs to be meaningful and add value and not just driven by technology push.
CJ: And to wrap us up, we'll stay on the topic of AI. So what impact do you think AI will have on your industry and your role in the future?
JvG: Of course, AI will have an impact on our industry. It opens the door for new innovations, and we will use AI to streamline and digitise our internal processes and make them more efficient. And I do think AI really also will have a huge impact on HR. It will help HR business partners in the future to get rid of some of the standard admin operational tasks we still have to do nowadays. It will give them suggestions and support so they can focus more on the value-added topics. But I also think there's a challenge for HR because the HR community in general is not always the tech-savvy community. So I think the challenge for me heading the HRIS department is that we really have to make sure that we provide the HR community with solutions that are intuitive and solutions they can trust. And solutions they can trust doesn't only mean solutions that are compliant, but it also means that the solutions have to provide valuable insights, good content if you talk about gen AI and generating documents, really text that they can immediately use, advisors that they really can rely on. And I think that's the challenge for me. I think that's also the challenge for Workday to provide these solutions. And I'm happy to work together with Workday on their journey to come to those solutions and give them to our community in the future.
CJ: Well, that's fantastic. What a note to end on. Jacqueline, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been great to shine a light on the incredible journey that Signify is on. That's all we've got time for, but if you enjoyed the show, you can subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. You can also read more on the Workday blog. Thank you for listening and have a great workday.
The professional and consumer lighting provider Signify is no stranger to innovation. The Dutch company’s employees have been pioneering breakthroughs in the field for more than 125 years.
Today, Signify’s people are still busy innovating, leading the industry’s expansion into connected lighting systems and energy-efficient lighting solutions for climate-smart cities. They’re also innovating within the company. In a podcast recorded at Workday Rising EMEA in Barcelona, Jacqueline van Gerwen, Signify’s global head of HR systems, explained how transformation occurs in big and small ways across every department at Signify, HR included, to benefit the organisation’s 35,000 global employees.
“Sometimes smaller user interface changes and smaller process improvements can really make a difference in the daily lives of managers and employees,” van Gerwen says.
Looking ahead, van Gerwen and her team are focused on AI and ensuring the technology serves a fundamental human need. “Automation and AI are key pillars in our strategy. But it shouldn't be a technology push. It needs to be meaningful and add value,” she says.
Here are a few highlights of the conversation.
“We have to make sure we provide the HR community with intuitive solutions they can trust. Solutions they can trust doesn’t just mean compliant solutions. It also means the solutions have to provide valuable insights, advice they can really rely on, and good content they can immediately use.”
“Our philosophy is we standardise, simplify, and then potentially automate. Sometimes, processes are complex and have a lot of waste. If you try to automate those processes, the automation will be costly, and the result for the employee will be suboptimal. So we first try to simplify the process, remove all the waste, make sure it's really meaningful for the employee, and only after all that is done do we consider automating.”
“AI will help HR business partners in the future eliminate some of the standard admin operational tasks they still have to do today. It will give them suggestions and support so they can focus more on value-added topics. At Signify, we will use AI to streamline and digitise our internal processes and make them more efficient.”
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