If you want to be customer-centric, you need to be employee-centric first. That’s the ethos of Telenet. As the largest provider of cable broadband services in Belgium, Telenet’s goal is to help people stay one step ahead in the digital age. It strives to put the customer first. And it knows the best way to do this is to build an employee-centric workplace. But where to start?
Historically, Telenet managed its employees’ career paths via an ERP system. However, employees struggled: they found the system confusing to use, and didn’t understand how it helped move their career forward.
Telenet’s HR team soon realised the ERP was failing to help staff take ownership of their career progression. They wanted to shift the focus to talent management and support employees to be the best at what they do!
We were looking for a tool created for the employees.
Telenet needed a solution in line with its employee-centric approach – easy to use and built for employees to reach their full potential. Which is where huapii came in!
Telenet employees rated ‘personal growth’ as very important to their worklife. The whole organisation was going through an agile transformation, and leveraging the internal potential in the company was key to its success. But that was proving impossible with the current system as employees were not empowered.
In huapii, Telenet found a platform created to support employees in their development, skills and career. As Joke confirms: “From the first meeting, huapii looked at growth and how it aligns with our vision.”
With the right platform, employees can ‘own’ their growth by displaying their skills, revealing their strengths, and discovering their weaknesses in order to work on them.
As Telenet was already using other tools, integration was key. A connection with Telenet’s skills engine has been set up to provide employees with suggested learnings to contribute to their development. And for this development to gain traction, employees needed a 360° view of their strengths and development areas.
With our platform, Telenet employees can now ask for feedback from their colleagues, managers, customers and even suppliers. Today, continuous feedback has become an essential ingredient across the entire organisation to support continuous learning.
One of the most important things for Telenet was simplicity. That’s why Telenet’s IT team, their external partners, and our developers worked together to ensure all systems were integrated while keeping everything easy to use.
Telenet started the project with a pilot and involved employees from the start in the creation process. Employees were very enthusiastic about being involved in the co-creation with the project team. And getting employee feedback from the beginning added enormous value.
By using workshops, Telenet was able to share its vision and have discussions on how employees could personalise the platform to make it their own. What was important for Telenet in this process was to listen and involve different parties in the discussions, get feedback, and apply the lessons from each phase. That’s why the project team tested the platform with different teams, made adaptations to best meet employees’ needs, and gradually onboarded more staff.
“As a partner, huapii is good at adapting and challenging us when needed.”
Our change management approach was very well received by Telenet’s HR team. Huapii’s customer success team was there to help, challenge, and share best practices – and move the process along to a timely conclusion.
And what about the response of employees? It was positive! Switching to a user-friendly tool was warmly welcomed. Employees were encouraged to think about their skills, development areas, strengths, and career goals.
When employees mapped their skills, they were able to gain clarity on their own particular talents, and plot their onward career path within Telenet. This had a positive impact on internal mobility and Telenet’s talent pipeline.
We asked Joke to describe huapii in three words.
As huapii was developed with the input of 26,000 employees, user feedback is at the core of the platform. Our platform is very intuitive. That makes it very natural for employees to navigate!
Our customers are our partners. We have a process-first mindset, where we will make sure we understand the process before diving into the platform.
Simple is savvy! We understand that on a very busy working day employees do not want to spend too much time looking for things. We keep our tool simple so everyone can use it effectively.
How can we help managers to prepare their team with the right skills for the future? A first step is to ensure managers know which skills they have in their team and start talking with their employees on how to develop those for the future.
SKILLS DEVELOPMENT 9 out of 10 leavers would have stayed if their employer had invested more in their skills. The skills profile in huapii enables each employee to become ambassador of his/her own skills matrix and position that openly into the organization. Bart Van Bambost CHRO at Nipro Europe Group Companies Find skills within your
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I always found a way to get or to create for myselfs jobs where I could achieve my life’s purpose: connecting with people and helping them grow (while growing myself).
After studying general management and HR in Lyon, I joined Solvay where I had several rich & diverse HR experiences. I worked in Lyon, Brussels and Paris, to finally come back to Brussels and accept the challenge of creating and managing Solvay’s Digital Studio flagship.
Being an intrapreneur leading an innovation incubator, taking part of creating a new ways of working platform that transformed the company culture and HR woke up my inner intrapreneur and made me jump into co-founding huapii!
Today at huapii I use my HR and change experience to make the workplace a developing and empowering place to be.
