When Erwin Hoogeveen joined Fugro almost ten years ago, the organisation had very little technology supporting the employee lifecycle. Today, its HR Technology landscape supports global processes, real-time workforce data, workforce planning and decision-making across the business.
After more than 30 years in HR, Erwin has seen plenty of technology come and go. His experience at Fugro offers some practical lessons for organisations deciding what they actually want their HR Technology to achieve.
Key Insights
- Get the foundation right first. Reliable data and one global core gave Fugro the foundation to keep developing.
- Standardise before you automate. Fewer unnecessary variations make global processes much easier to manage and improve.
- Measure business value, not only savings. Better data, faster processes and better decisions matter just as much as reducing cost.
- Adoption needs leadership. A technically successful implementation means little if managers and employees do not change how they work.
- Be selective with new technology. Another tool or AI solution only makes sense when it solves a real problem.
- Keep people where people add value. Not every HR interaction should be automated.
Insight 1: The basics determine how far you can go
Fugro implemented Workday globally in eight months, but speed was not the only priority. A lot of effort went into data and data quality from the beginning. The first version of the platform was relatively straightforward: headcount, employee locations, compensation and other core HR information.
That foundation is what allowed Fugro to move further. Today, the platform supports workforce planning, future skills and compensation and connects with Finance, HSSE and commercial systems. What started as an HR administration tool became a source of information for the wider business.
The lesson: advanced HR Technology becomes much more useful when the data and core processes underneath it already work.
Insight 2: Standardisation creates room to move faster
One of Fugro’s harder challenges was reducing unnecessary variations in processes and documents. Local flexibility can seem useful, but every exception eventually has to be supported somewhere in the technology. Erwin puts it simply:
“If you standardise at the front, the back end becomes so much easier.”
Fugro can now generate contracts directly from Workday, run compensation processes globally and give HR and Finance the same real-time headcount information. Less variation means less manual work and fewer separate versions of the truth.
The lesson: standardisation is not the boring part before innovation. It is what makes innovation scalable.
Insight 3: Don’t build the business case around savings alone
When Fugro selected its People Technology platform, cost was deliberately not part of the selection criteria. Erwin wanted the decision to focus on what the technology could bring to the organisation rather than which system was cheapest.
That perspective is still visible today. Fugro now has an internal HRIS team of around eight people that did not exist before Workday. So the transformation did not simply make the HR Technology organisation smaller. It gave Fugro new capabilities. The return is found in faster processes, fewer errors, reliable data and better information for the business.
The lesson: the better business-case question is not only “What will this save?” but “What will this allow us to do better?”
Insight 4: Adoption starts with leadership, not go-live
Introducing self-service meant transferring activities from HR to managers and employees. Erwin knew that would only work if senior management supported the change.
His message to leadership was clear: without their support, there was no point pursuing the broader transformation. Fugro would simply have another administrative system. The team then actively encouraged adoption through internal programmes and incentives rather than assuming people would start using the platform because it was available.
The lesson: go-live proves that the system works. Adoption proves that the transformation works.
Insight 5: More tools don’t automatically create a better landscape
Erwin’s first response to a request for new functionality is often: can we do it in the system we already have? That does not mean Fugro never uses specialist technology. But every extra tool needs data, integration, maintenance and adoption. Fugro introduced two additional tools that ended up seeing little use and is now phasing them out. The team is instead looking at whether that functionality can be delivered closer to its existing platform, through apps or potentially AI.
The lesson: evaluate new technology on the value it adds to the whole landscape, not on how impressive the individual tool looks.
Insight 6: AI should not remove the human moments that matter
Erwin believes AI could make HR Technology much more predictive. Organisations could anticipate future skill requirements and model how different business scenarios might change their workforce. But Fugro is also drawing boundaries. AI is not used to screen CVs or make decisions in the interview process. Erwin is cautious about bias and believes recruitment contains moments where human interaction remains essential.
The lesson: don’t start by asking where AI can be used. Decide where technology improves the process and where people still do the better job.
From HR system to business infrastructure
Fugro’s journey is not really a story about implementing Workday. It is about what happens when an organisation keeps developing after the implementation. The company first built the foundation, then standardised, drove adoption and expanded the role of its HR Technology. That has taken Fugro from basic HR administration to a landscape that provides real-time information and supports decisions across the business. And despite everything that has changed in HR Technology, Erwin’s principle remains simple:
Technology should make the business work better.
Want to hear more about Fugro’s HR Technology journey and Erwin’s perspective on what comes next? Listen to the full conversation with Erwin Hoogeveen, CHRO at Fugro, and Bas Eggelaar on The SuccessDay Podcast.
