SOLEK: Transparent HR system across continents

The radical growth of society always brings with it changes. This also applies to human resources and the related HR agenda. What excel spreadsheets used to do is suddenly not sustainable. Information is piling up and employees are getting bigger. When the number of employees at SOLEK exceeded 300, they decided to take a big step forward and embarked on a journey to digitalize their HR processes.

SOLEK focuses on the renewable energy market with a focus on the production and supply of photovoltaic energy. Sustainable energy is a big topic today and with this comes the growth in demand for clean energy and the company's expansion, which has tapped into the potential and now operates in 11 countries worldwide with more than 295 MWp of power plant capacity.

HR software that fits all processes

The main requirement for the new HR system was clear - it must have features that can be configured to their international needs. Most of the employees are concentrated in Latin America in Chile, while the European part is managed from the headquarters in Prague. And even though SOLEK operates between continents, it was essential for them to have all their data in one place, so that anyone could access it conveniently, regardless of country.

Barbora Detáry, People Experience Manager at SOLEK, and other colleagues were looking for a solution that would help them replace the attendance system with a negative attendance record and one that would not address payroll issues but could be linked to the payroll software. Of course, the requirement for intuitiveness and language mutations was a must. Pinya HR emerged as the best of the 8 solutions tested and after two months of selection, the decision was made.

How did Barbara find out about us?

,,I received a recommendation from a former colleague who works as an HR manager in a smaller company where your HR software was being implemented. She recommended you even though they hadn't used Pinya HR fully yet because she was impressed with you in the initiation meetings. So, we added Pinya HR to the selection process and in retrospect, I think it was a very good decision because her words were only confirmed. I was very impressed that nothing was a barrier and we managed to tailor the software to our specific HR processes," says Barbora.

Implementation of the new HR system within a month

Pinya HR was not the first HR software Barbora Detáry had the pleasure of using in her professional life. That is why she was very pleasantly surprised by the speed of the implementation, which together with the training took only 4 weeks.

,,What I really have to highlight was the speed of your responses. You reacted practically from day to day, you gave us testing approaches and immediately started working with our product manager Dita Salajková. We started the training, which we had on a weekly basis, and within a month we were done," Barbora recalls of the implementation process.

Although more than half of the employees are from Latin America, the training was conducted only in Czech, with the necessary information being passed on directly to the HR department in Chile by Barbora. After the training was completed and employee data was imported in bulk, all 320 employees were sent access credentials that allowed them to immediately view their data, apply for leave or confirm receipt of assets with one click.

In addition, employees from Chile can look into Pinya HR in their native language, as we have expanded the list of languages to include Spanish thanks to SOLEK.

One system for all

"Maybe it's a cliché, but what really helps me the most is that I have all the data in one place and I can do any kind of reports on it," Barbora Detáry answers when asked what makes Pinya HR the easiest for her. No wonder. Thanks to the list of employees, she can easily specify which group of employees the report should cover and what data it should display.

"It's great to be able to look at employees from Europe and Latin America separately or together with other colleagues from the HR department, whether in Prague or Chile. We can always tailor it according to what data we need at the moment."

One of the big advantages of getting the Pinya HR was that SOLEK was able to get rid of the classic attendance taps. The sophisticated module for requesting and approving absences has not only pleased the HR people, but also other employees, who have been relieved of the obligation to sign in and out when coming or going from work. All they have to do is request for leave or other absences through Pinya HR. And thanks to the mobile app, they can do so anytime, anywhere.

HR software has also brought more transparency to SOLEK. Although they have a company intranet, employees do not actively visit it. And because they wanted to keep employees in the loop, they went against that and decided to use the News module in Pinya HR. Thanks to notifications, employees get to know about news the moment it's published, and they also come across it whenever they log into their account. Updates can be targeted by different criteria, such as country, department or job role.

The sophisticated module for requesting and approving absences has not only pleased the HR people, but also other employees, who are no longer obliged to log in and out of work.

From 3 hours to 10 minutes

There are many areas that Pinya HR covers, soSOLEKis taking it one step at a time. In addition to the actual recording of employee data, they started using the ability to generate contracts, set up onboarding and record assets right from the start.

"The asset register has really saved us a lot of time. Before we had chaos, some assets were managed by IT colleagues, some by the back office. Now we have it all in one place and we can finally say for sure who took over which assets. This is also useful for the audit, which can now no longer surprise us unpleasantly."

However, Barbora herself is most happy about the possibility to make reports easily and with just a few clicks. This was her wish when choosing HR software. Thanks to Pinya HR, it has come true. It is not only her who benefits from the ease of reporting, but all her colleagues in HR.

"If the HR manager needs a report from me with the number of hires for the year, for example, I can prepare it for her in 10 minutes. Before, it would take me 3 hours. So the time savings are huge," Barbora says enthusiastically.

As the development of new Pinya HR features does not stop, the HR team is gradually going through all the ones they want to use. These include medical appointments, checklists, or setting up custom notifications to remind them of the end of their probationary period. And to fine tune the automation and digitization of SOLEK's HR processes to perfection, we're working on connecting Pinya HR with other systems via APIs. This will avoid duplicate data entry and help the company make work even easier and save time.