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Case study Meta4 : Harmonizing HR within Pepe Jeans

Setting harmonization into motion

Due to their international expansion strategy, Pepe Jeans needed to manage everything related to human capital management in a unified way—right from the more administrative functions through to the more strategic ones dealing with talent management of their employees. At Pepe Jeans, each brand was in charge of managing their teams, which caused increased work load for the HR department.

Besides relying on independent structures, this increased the complexity of unifying criteria and extracting information on the workforce automatically. On top of all this, the company desired to roll out group-wide policies and to strengthen corporate culture as well as simplify HR reporting.

Harmonizing HR processes at the international level

Against this backdrop, the company set out to harmonize all their processes involving human capital management. The harmonization plan for their HR policies contemplated three key objectives. First, to create a corporate department that could pool all their employee data in real time. Second, to analyze the HR policies applied in each country in order to break down the details, value the more effective and efficient policies, and institutionalize the best ones for both the company and employees around the world. Third, all this should be supported by a single technology tool which would enable them to roll out their HR policies worldwide.

“We were looking for a technology solution that could deliver consolidated employee data and help us control and save costs. Equally we also needed to create a corporate HR department to focus on implementing strategic HR policies and strengthen corporate culture throughout the group,” said Ramón Armorós, Corporate HR Manager at Pepe Jeans.

On harmonization of their compensation policies, along with other issues the company’s goals were to bring into line compensation policies based on salary scales and reviews, bearing in mind both the employee’s job and the salary/country quota (as the cost of living is different in each country).

The purpose was to enable the Headquarter to receive all requests from countries, and then centrally authorize relevant changes and updates across the board.

Benefits were also adjusted according to levels and the bonus system was merged into the same model for all brands and countries. To adapt to an ever increasingly competitive and dynamic market, the commissions system for outlets was redefined to orient sales teams to reach targets, rewarding effort and team work, and roll out travel policies common to all employees of the group.

More multidisciplinary teams are also being formed through more suitable training plans and optimized outlet planning and organization. As far as recruitment policies go, Pepe Jeans has created common requirements for specific posts in all countries, such as education, experience or the level of English. At the same time, each work center enjoys full autonomy in their hiring processes.

In this collaborative environment, Pepe Jeans has also defined a single review form for performance appraisal management, so the company has the same interviewing and feedback system worldwide. Lastly, with the aim of unifying their communication policies to disseminate the same messages throughout the organization, Pepe Jeans has adopted a series of measures including the implementation of Employee Self-Service as a company-wide communication channel.

PeopleNet Cloud HR, a sound choice for internationalization

After a selection process where the main technology providers of the market competed against one another, Pepe Jeans finally chose Meta4 PeopleNet Cloud HR—a solution specifically designed to cover the needs of multinationals—to manage personnel administration, organization management, recruitment, training and performance appraisal for nearly 3,000 employees spread out in their 300 sales outlets in 19 countries worldwide.

Among other features, the Meta4 Global HR solution offers companies the security and flexibility required for allowing HR professionals to unify processes and access to all information on their employees anytime and from anywhere. Besides unifying processes, thanks to the Meta4 cloud mode, Pepe Jeans has accomplished lower operating costs and technology maintenance. The company is assured evolution, functionality and maintenance of their solution as well as the capacity to implement transparent HR policies common to all countries, while respecting the local legal specifics for each one of them.

Moreover the Meta4 cloud mode enables the company to consolidate and automate all their employee information, plan local and global costs, and make the most of their intellectual assets for greater competitive edge and agility in decisionmaking.

The Meta4 solution also adapts perfectly to the organic growth of Pepe Jeans as it enables easy configuration of how to manage new countries and it ensures HR processes are standardized.

Thanks to Meta4 Employee and Manager Self-Service, Pepe Jeans can systematize and automate administrative processes of the company and improve communications between management and employees. The portal, accessible to all employees, reduces the time spent on calls and trips, and decentralizes the HR department’s activities, as the employees themselves can process their own vacation and training requests, and consult and modify over the web all their own information on payroll, account number or postal address. This way, HR managers are freed up of such administrative tasks to concentrate on planning actions in line with the company’s strategic goals.

Ramón Amorós, Corporate HR Manager of Pepe Jeans concludes “The Meta4 Cloud platform allows us to harmonize our HR policies, control our budgets, as well as exploit and analyze information on all our employees, making it easier for us to align with defined corporate policies in different regions and countries where we are present.”

About the company Pepe Jeans

Pepe Jeans London was founded in 1973 at Portobello Market (London) where its founders, the Shah brothers, customized original jeans. Once successful, they became owners of several shops, becoming market leaders.
- In the 1980s Pepe Jeans launched their international explorations, first in the United States then Europe, where they quickly became one of the major jeans brands in just a few years.
- Today the brand is present in Asia and Latin America, and in 2012 they took direct control of distribution in India and USA, attaining 100% worldwide presence.
- Pepe Jeans a leading brand established in over 60 countries across all 5 continents and with a turnover of 450 million euros in 2011. Among their best known brands are Pepe Jeans, Tommy Hilfiger, Hackett and Coach and over 3000 employees are spread across 300 sales outlets in 19 countries.

www.meta4.com

 

 

Publi-reportage - //20