Heineken case study

To set up an HRM Shared Services Center
Download full pdf:  case_study_Heineken

Heineken N.V. is the most international brewery group in the world. Heineken occupies second place in the world table, but the majority of its activities lie in Europe. The organisation has around 37,000 employees. In The Netherlands there are around 5,500 employees and around 5,000 so-called "otherwise active people", such as retirees.

Issue

• At the beginning of 2002 research was carried out into the possibilities of HRM Shared Services within Heineken, various company visits were also held and Best Practices were investigated. These investigations led to the development of an HRM Shared Services concept within the Heineken organisation in The Netherlands, with the following aims:
• A significant savings on the costs of HRM support;
• Efficient, uniform HRM processes carried out in accordance with agreed quality requirements;
• A Programme of Requirements for IT support to enable these processes to run in the best way possible. This technical and application infrastructure can be shared with other shared services processes;
• Uniform and unequivocal information provision by telephone and e-mail;
• Employees who are appropriately trained for the tasks;
• Employees, managers and HRM consultants/specialists in The Netherlands who are given better service and who understand what they can expect from the HRM service organisation;
• Availability of relevant HRM management information.

Heineken was looking for support in achieving a HRM Shared Services concept.

Result
A HRM Shared Service concept now exists within Heineken in which all decentralised HR and salary accounts departments have been joined together. The work processes are uniform and are carried out in standard ways by employees who are competent to do this work. There has been a reduction in the number of employees whilst the quality of the work has increased. The change process has taken place without any noteworthy problems in good consultation with the staff council. The HRM Service organisation now forms part of the Heineken Nederland Services Organisation, which also includes the ICT, administrative and facilities services.