Company Profile

Established in Milton Keynes in 1995, gedas United Kingdom has rapidly become a leader in designing efficient, flexible business systems for its clients, primarily in the automotive and discrete manufacturing industries sector.

A member of the Volkswagen Group, gedas offers advice, planning and support for customer relationship management (CRM), outsourcing, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM).

gedas' commercial expertise allows customers to significantly improve their processes while adding real value and ensuring return on investment. The Group has offices in 55 locations in all major regions and key strategic markets. At present, some 5,200 employees work for gedas worldwide, addressing customer needs and successfully designing, shaping, implementing and supporting solutions.

The Issues

gedas UK has recently made some sweeping cultural changes. It has moved to a world-class building in Milton Keynes, the new home for its 330 UK employees. It has also fostered a number of Human Resources initiatives designed to drive the company forward and help to cultivate its valuable IT talent. Workforce programmes include implementing an e-learning programme to keep cutting-edge technical skills up-to-date, providing a flexible and remote working policy and creating a reward recognition system. It has also launched a new flexible benefits scheme powered by 4th Contact.

The company has a heavily-influenced automotive heritage which has meant that most employee benefits were typical for the motor industry, primarily cars and fuel. There hadn't been the opportunity to offer a benefits portfolio that suited company needs to attract the right information technology talent.

Of course, attracting employees with the best IT skills is a challenge and gedas needed a strategy that aligned with market forces. For instance, it is of great importance to the HR team to convince contractors to convert to an employed status. gedas' tactic, therefore, was to help address this through a persuasive flexible benefits offering.

Barry Hoffman, Head of Human Resources for gedas UK, is responsible for developing the company's culture changes. He explains about the benefits overhaul, "We wanted IT talent to be attracted to us, so we needed to offer motivating benefit choices. We had to revamp the benefits programme to suit a variety of employees - from those who come from the legacy area of IT, to web developers, to those that focus on cutting-edge technology. Plus, we need to look after our support functions, finance, purchasing and so forth. Providing flexible benefits really hit the mark for us."

gedas also wished to communicate the rewards package more effectively to the entire workforce. Hoffman continues, "We found that employees didn't understand their whole salary package. We typically spend £2000 per year on an employee's training, we provide long service awards, critical illness cover, pension, childcare benefits and so forth. With the total reward technology, employees can appreciate that they earn say, £30k in salary, yet they earn nearly half as much again in benefits."

The Solution

gedas implemented the online benefits solution in August 2004 to communicate total rewards to staff, as well as to use the 4th Contact technology to track and manage absence more efficiently. In June 2005, it launched 4th Contact's online flexible benefits programme to all UK employees.

According to Hoffman, 4th Contact was chosen for the implementation because, in his view, they are "technology experts who really understand the reward landscape".

He also prioritises security. Hoffman says, "gedas is part of a large corporate that is very tight on security, so system integrity is critical. 4th Contact's experience, background and customer reference sites provide vital reassurance." Secure technology is of paramount importance to 4th Contact, where all online data is hosted within a fully secure, best of breed environment.

Indeed, 4th Contact has a pedigree in security. It is owned by Star, a leading provider of managed technology services and part of the MessageLabs group of companies, the leading provider of managed email security services to businesses worldwide.

The implementation of the online system progressed quickly. "The integration of 4th Contact's benefits solution with our enterprise software went very smoothly and the team at 4th Contact were on the button," adds Hoffman.

gedas' flexible benefits programme was launched to employees with several innovative techniques. Small clockwork bendy men were delivered to employees' desks to raise awareness of the programme and encourage all to read the specially-created brochure which depicts a lady bending over backwards. There was also a competition for a flexible desktop keyboard, which can be folded up and put in a bag.

Results

"The implementation has had a very, very good response," enthuses Hoffman. "The site has received a massive 910 logons during the launch month, with 85.94% of employees making their flex choices. A direct measure of the success of any flexible benefits programme is its adoption by employees, and the most popular benefit choice was private medical insurance with an 81% take-up rate."

Childcare, dental insurance, ECO cars, holiday, critical illness, a discounted shopping website and health screening are the other choices on offer.

What's more, the flexible benefits programme has made it much easier for contractors to understand the reasons to change their status from self-employed to fully employed. Out of 20 contractors working with gedas, the flexible benefits programme has made it easier for five to convert to full employment. Several more are currently contemplating the transition.

The 4th Contact technology also provides absence management and reporting capabilities.

This has provided 'huge, tangible, measurable results' for gedas. The company used to manage absence on paper, and using technology to manage holidays and sickness has saved the company five days per month of company time that is now redeployed on other sales related activities. In addition, gedas has a view on capacity planning for peaks and troughs for all staff.

Hoffman sums up, "4th Contact was by far and away the most experienced of the other providers. That smoothed the course for us. They have given us room to breathe; they took away the difficult work and let us concentrate on business, safe in the knowledge that our employees can pick and choose benefits relevant to them. All in all, happy employees lead to happy customers". www.4thcontact.co.uk