AXA Belgium is a people-focused insurance company with 3,000 employees headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. The company’s core mission, helping individuals, businesses, and societies to thrive, extends to their customers and employees. Like many large companies, the HR team was challenged by high volume employee interactions and juggling information between various systems. Another challenge was that the HR information employees needed was complex and not easily accessed.

HR Operations Manager Marc Sobieski knew there was a better way. His goals were: an improved employee experience, simplified HRIS landscape, and more efficiencies throughout these processes. Marc was looking for a comprehensive solution that improved HR services from end to end. He envisioned a 24/7 automated service to provide answers for employees around the clock, improving AXA Belgium’s tiered HR escalation system, and simplifying employee communications. At the same time, Marc wanted to streamline the HR information system landscape. AXA Belgium used Neocase for some HR management, and Marc turned to Neocase for a solution.

Neocase’s HR platform has three core components that work together to provide just the solution Marc was looking for: a self-service portal with HR knowledge base, a case management ticketing system, and a business process automation (BPA) capability. According to Marc, by:

“having everything under one single roof, Neocase has been a gamechanger.”

Improved Employee Experience

A 360 View Portal for Full Employee Context

Marc explained that the HR team was busy answering calls, emails, texts, and chats from employees. Managing the different communication channels and pulling information from other sources wasn’t efficient. He explained,

“…we still used a lot of group mailboxes for the different HR teams. Each team had its own HR mailbox. We decided to centralize most of the interactions with employees – and queries about the employee – in one place so that we could have a 360-degree view of those interactions. And that was possible thanks to Neocase.” 

Instead of tracking with multiple messaging channels, Neocase pulls incoming requests into their portal, even chats from apps like Slack. Because Neocase interfaces easily with other tools, employee data can be updated close to real-time and allows HR to see it without leaving their Neocase application. AXA Belgium agents found that having all the updated information about an employee in one tool gave them a summarized view of everything they needed to know about the employee. The HR team can view the full context of the employee’s situation, allowing them to be proactive and offer the assistance needed.

Neocase also provides an HR ticketing system that prioritizes and manages escalations beyond the automated portal responses. With this information, the HR team can ensure timely responses to escalating issues. Marc found it much more efficient. He said:

 “…say the contact center receives a question by phone or by ticket from a new hire. You just go to the ticket and can see what the person has been doing and everything regarding that person’s package because everything is in the ticket.”  With Neocase, you can deliver fast and easy-to-understand solutions to your employees. When you exceed their service expectations, employees know their company cares for them, and engagement soars.

HR Delivery that Drives Satisfaction 

Employees increasingly expect their HR services to be mobile and available 24/7 like all their web experiences. AXA Belgium held employee workshops to gain insights into the challenges and expectations of HR services. Employees reported that the information online was technical and not easy to understand, and the portal was difficult to navigate.

AXA Belgium designed a new system based on meeting employee needs and expectations. The HR team also rewrote the human resources content, guided by the employee journey, to be easily understood by employees. Marc said the new design allows:

“employees to find answers quickly and on their own. It’s a win-win situation.”

The Neocase Self-Service Portal is a web portal used by employees to contact their HR Team. All employee requests are submitted either through the portal or through the Neocase Live Chat. The self-service portal also gathers requests submitted via instant messaging tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, or a dedicated chatbot. These changes gave AXA Belgium employees easy options to access HR services and a more robust overall experience.

AXA Belgium found that the Neocase Self-Service portal reduced direct calls to the HR team. Although employees could contact an HR team member directly, they began to find their answers quickly and easily through Neocase’s Knowledge Base. When an employee begins to create a ticket or search a topic on the portal, the automated knowledge management system recommends articles and sources to answer the employee’s query. AXA Belgium found that 77% of employees received their answers through this automated system and did not require further HR contact on the issue. The portal frees the HR team to handle more complex cases and focus on the overall employee experience.

AXA Belgium reports that in the first year of Neocase implementation the portal was widely adopted by employees. The number of employee connections to the updated portal rose by 52%, and employee traffic (page views and clicks) increased by 59%. By the second year of implementation, employees reported a 90% satisfaction rate with the HR portal and HR services. When employees can easily navigate services, get information quickly, and the HR team is free to handle escalated issues and focus on employee engagement, it truly is a win-win.

Onboarding Made Easy

Bringing new talent to a company requires a series of transactions, including transferring information and managing processes like providing laptops and other items on day one. The goal is to wow the new employee. The onboarding experience should convey to new employees that they are joining an innovative organization that puts value on a great employee experience.

Part of Marc’s simplification goal was to streamline onboarding transactions while creating an outstanding first experience for new hires. Marc explained that applicant information is pushed directly from Taleo to Neocase.

“And there, we start the administrative part of the operational onboarding phase where the recruiter can also write some extra information. When all steps are completed, the recruiter generates the contract through Neocase.”

Neocase HR connects seamlessly with talent solutions such as Oracle, Taleo, and PeopleSoft, centralizing all the onboarding interactions while eliminating manual work and human errors.

The easy process is continued, according to Marc,

“Via an action button, it goes directly to the next step: the candidates have access to our portal for new hires. The employee is invited to upload his photo for the badge, add some complementary information, and everything goes automatically into our Peoplesoft HR database, overnight and it’s done. All before the 1st day.”

The Neocase solution allowed AXA Belgium to customize onboarding by building processes to address differences between a classic new hire, transfers, trainees, and other specialized cases. The result? Employees recognize the great experience. Mark reports that:

“The survey results were not great before. But since we went live with Neocase, it has been the contrary. The satisfaction rate is very high. We don’t have any delays; the laptops are on time; everything is on time.” 

Efficient and Integrated HR systems

A cloud-based HR solution, Neocase helps companies meet their goals for digitizing business. Cloud technology allows for seamless integration of systems. AXA Belgium’s digitization strategy requires flexible business process automation (BPA) and data dashboards that help manage HR trends and services. Neocase’s design makes this easy.

Flexible Business Process Automation

Marc describes the value of Neocase’s easy configuration,

“… changing your work regime, your marital status, with Neocase, you have many options. We built a special BPA for employees to make the reservations for the parking. And in Belgium, we have ten different types of thematic leave, such as parental leave, and recently the government established the Coronavirus parental leave. So, we also automated that in a BPA. [As an employee] you just have to request it, then you generate a contract, you sign it, upload it, and then it’s automatically set in two different systems. “

Thanks to Neocase’s Self-Service Portal and Business Process Automation, you can create or change automated workflows that will help HR agents save time and help your employees waste none. Marc found that:

“HR’s reputation improved a lot, because, during the COVID-19 crisis, every part of HR was involved in managing the crisis from an organizational point of view […]. So, we received 200 requests, and in only five days, we completed this BPA. It was very much appreciated by the managers and the employees to see that HR could offer this so quickly.”

In one year, AXA Belgium increased automated HR functions from two to 32 processes and subprocesses. Neocase employs a “drag and drop” technology to allow HR employees to quickly create or change a business process within the system. It couldn’t be easier, saves time, and provides process administration that employees inherently understand because they are already familiar with the Neocase system. This makes change management easy and change administration even more effortless.

“I think that the BPA is the greatest module of Neocase. It’s very good, very flexible.” AXA Belgium’s Marc Sobieski.

Integrated HR Task Management

Neocase not only gives AXA Belgium ‘s HR all the tools to be more efficient, but it also helps them in unexpected ways. According to Marc:

“Actually Neocase is used as an HR task management tool,” and he explained how valuable this has been to AXA Belgium. Before Neocase, the team had so much incoming information that, “every week, they had to do planning about how they deal with priorities. Then they had to know that the information about one employee was a bit there, and there, and a bit there too… “.

No longer. HR employees now use Neocase as the single tool to manage tasks and track progress against service level agreements (SLAs) with dashboards to visualize issues and progress. Instead of weekly planning meetings, Marc reports, “Our HR team works based on deadlines (SLAs), and that’s it. It’s a lot easier to organize the work. You can have everything in a single dashboard.”   

AXA Belgium achieved outstanding SLA results. Tickets were closed with 91% of SLA achievement. A Neocase system helps this achievement with advanced knowledge base management, seamless integration, and effective data dashboards, leading to a more efficient HR effort.

What’s next for AXA Belgium? Marc is looking at additional Neocase functionality to deliver digitized document signatures and further simplify benefits processing.

AXA Belgium achieved its goal of automated and available information for employees, simplified process management, and back-end processes that help the HR team provide outstanding results. Service levels improved, employee and HR agent satisfaction increased, and leaders have an efficient, cost-effective, and easily configurable system. For Marc, Neocase has exceeded expectations beyond simply improving HR service delivery. He states:

“Neocase has become much more than an HR solution; it has become an HR reputation enabler.”

Special thanks to AXA Belgium and HR Operations Manager Marc Sobieski for sharing experiences and successes with us.