A unique onboarding experience for every employee at imec

Headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, imec is known across Europe – and the globe – for its world-class innovations in the fields of nanotech and digital technologies. The R&D and innovation hub is home to 5,500+ expert scientists from 96 countries. Read how Flexso helped them offer every new talent – whether permanent or contingent – a tailored, personalised onboarding experience.

A great personalised onboarding experience for all new employees

Today, a well-designed onboarding program is an essential part of the HR strategy. Onboarding has been proven to be key for a positive employee experience. It ensures that employees are well-equipped to perform their jobs effectively and are warmly welcomed into the organisation. Organisations use various HR solutions to support that experience, especially from the moment an employee signs their contract until their first day at work.

Up until today, imec already had an Onboarding process in place but they wanted to elevate their current process to a next level. They wanted to create an even better and personalised Onboarding experience, as of the moment employees sign their contract. Therefore, imec chose SAP SuccessFactors as their Onboarding solution.

To imec, an ideal onboarding solution should:

Make it easier for internal stakeholders to collaborate and maintain an overview of different tasks involved per onboardee
Simplify the system landscape
Eliminate double data entry wherever possible
Automate – but not just for the sake of automation
Deliver a great user experience that is continuously improved
Cover the contingent workforce as well as internal employees

However, choosing SuccessFactors came with two challenges. On the one hand, the current SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding module does not offer the onboarding process for the contingent workforce. Knowing that today half of imec’s 5,500 experts are contingent employees this was of course an important element to take into consideration for imec.

Additionally, imec wanted to share a lot of interesting and personalised onboarding information for each onboardee.

This was the perfect opportunity for Flexso and imec to join forces once again and show what creativity and technology can bring! In addition to the large set of standard functionalities of SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding, the team would add a custom extension.

A brand-new ‘Welcome Webpage’ with the imec look and feel

Personalising the onboardee content was tackled by the creation of dynamic content webpages. The webpages give the opportunity for imec to share personalised information with each new employee – either internal or external workforce.

In collaboration with AppFoundry for the creation of the dynamic content, Flexso built an extension using SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP) that serves as an imec-branded ‘welcome webpage’. This webpage features full imec branding and delivers all content that the organisation wants to use to enrich the onboarding experience.

This page is completely personalised: it displays their names and shows different content based on various parameters available from SAP SuccessFactors. For example: when an international employee joins imec in Belgium, they will receive information about moving to Belgium.

5 benefits of imec’s new welcome webpage:

A smooth and welcoming start-up experience for all new hires, complete with the imec look and feel
Less manual administration for HR
Higher data quality, as it is gathered automatically (less chance of human error)
Comprehensive reporting options, thanks to the SFSF Onboarding module
A streamlined internal onboarding process featuring automatic notifications of actions required from every party involved

The Welcome page also forms the bridge to SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding where new internal employees continue the process and can for example complete their paperwork before joining imec.

The second challenge of including the external workforce in the Onboarding at imec was solved with one of Flexso’s extensions. Namely: the Contingent Worker Registration extension (CWR) for SAP Employee Central. The extension was already implemented a few years ago at imec. In this CWR extension, the external employees can complete their paperwork for imec. With the new Welcome page, imec is now also able to offer a personalised Onboarding – just as with internal employees – and continue the more practical side of the process in the CWR application.

“The top experts we hire from around the globe deserve the same personal, and welcoming experience, regardless of whether they start out as internal or external employees. Thanks to the fully integrated flow across our different systems, we now have less administrative work.”
Aurélie Saenen - HR Digitalisation Specialist at imec

Like-minded collaborators

The Onboarding project involved working with different systems, including Cornerstone (the recruitment solution within imec), SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding, the Flexso CWR app and SAP BTP. This also meant linking all different systems into efficient and sustainable processes. But no matter the complexity: imec and Flexso collaborated seamlessly from the very start. Everything is integrated and information is shared to the right platform automatically.

"imec is driven by innovation to the very core – Flexso was highly involved in the implementation process, particularly the testing phase, and thought alongside us about possible solutions. There was a lot of knowledge sharing as well as natural trust and flexibility between both of our teams.”
Sabine Billen - HR Business Analyst

Just a part of the beginning

Following the success of the entire Onboarding project, imec is far from finished when it comes to innovation for their HR environment and employee experience.

Aurélie Saenen, HR Digitalisation Specialist: “There are quite a few project ideas in the pipeline – and we will continue to partner up with Flexso to ensure project success.”