Nick Walker, CHRO of wefox: “A global HR system is your foundation when growing at scale and pace”
Technology is reshaping the insurance industry across the board. Among the companies leading the charge is wefox, the Berlin-based insurtech. The company is growing fast through both organic growth and acquisitions. To achieve its ambitious global HR strategy, an advanced global HR system is crucial. “Procrastination is not an option. We need a solid foundation sooner than later,” CHRO Nick Walker says.
Author: Ester Schop | Illustration: Studio van Laar | This article appeared in: CHRO Magazine (in Dutch)
When Nick Walker joined wefox as CHRO the company was laboring with the project launch of Workday, due to internal staffing availability and an overly technical view of the implementation partner. As a result, after some soul searching, SuccessDay was selected to help accelerate the go live. “Implementation partners are mainly affiliated to the vendor with core focus on licensing and process geared integration. Our resourcing challenges, plus a lack of knowledge and experience with implementing a new system meant that we really needed a third party on board. Someone on our side. Someone who thought like HR but had technical capability and capacity.”
wefox is a little like a teenager in terms of fast growth, big appetite, great personality, no baggage, completely open minded and authentic
That said, implementing a global HR-system is more than just about technology, stresses Nick. “Sources of data and both local and global processes need to be streamlined, and people need to be involved in the change. SuccessDay is familiar with this and is aware of the pitfalls.” An HR professional for over 25 years Nick cut his teeth in large American corporates before turning his attention to European Telco and IT organizations where he gained experience in acquisitions, divestments, and ownership changes. Ten years ago, he embarked on his first high growth, start up adventure with Skrill which later rebranded as Paysafe. Nick has been involved in 46 acquisitions and divestments in his career including multiple changes in ownership and public offerings on AIM, FTSE, and NYSE.
April 2023, he joined wefox, a fast moving, high growth and high potential European insurtech. “Here I can leverage all my experiences to help with the next stage of our journey. I wouldn’t return to big corporate again. International organizations, with scale and growth (organic and international) is where I can contribute the most value.” People who worked with him describe him as ‘someone who cares about people and gets s**t done.’
Journey to young adulthood
Nick was already familiar with wefox when he was headhunted for this job. It’s one of the tech darlings of Germany, and one of the next growth engines in Europe. “wefox is a little like a teenager in terms of fast growth, big appetite, great personality, no baggage, and completely open minded. I am eager to take this business on a journey to young adulthood.” He says it can be challenging sometimes to find the balance between keeping an entrepreneurial spirit and putting in structures and foundations that can help grow and build the company. “I think any business that grows at scale quickly will experience growing pains at certain stages of their journey. As you grow into adulthood; accountability, responsibility, maturity, formality all kicks in, but some of this can be overwhelming and slow you down…you need to find the balance.”
Now wefox has 1,450 staff working from eight offices, including the head office in Berlin. In the Netherlands there is an office in Eindhoven, which also happens to be the home of SuccessDay. Furthermore, there are offices in Austria, Spain, France, Liechtenstein, Poland, Italy, and Switzerland. wefox is a European-centric organization, but it aspires to grow into the UK, Asia, and North America. According to Nick, often when you grow very fast, organizations forget about concrete foundations, particularly from an HR perspective. “You need these, including an advanced global HR system, in order to be able to have manageable and sustainable growth.”
Currently, wefox uses Personio as an HR system for 70 percent of the business. The other 30% is operating independently with their own local systems. “It has served us very well, but we want a service that offers greater functionality, programs, and initiatives to better support our need and desire to expand globally. We were looking for a system that can offer a full suite of HR products and services to all our employees, be one source of truth and enable the HR team to focus on partnering, advising, and consulting.”
Teething problems
After due diligence had been undertaken, the choice fell on Workday. Nick: “It offered us the functionality that we needed now and in the future. Workday is global, and obviously newer to market than many of its competitors and has therefore a more up to date and pragmatic approach to what international HR functions need.”
Keeping the lights switched on and delivering a fast-paced service whilst implementing a solution for the future when you’re in high growth is always a dilemma in HR
After the package selection, a few teething problems followed prior to the actual implementation. Nick: “The best way to describe it, is that we bought this new toy, but we had no instructions in terms of how to put it together. Internally, we hit a wall in terms of how we implement this without dropping the balls on growth. Keeping the lights switched on and delivering a fast-paced service whilst implementing a solution for the future when you’re in high growth is always a dilemma in HR.”
Finding the time to invest in building or even re-building the foundations is key. “We’re always chasing the rabbit and don’t think about taking some time out to build foundations that are going to benefit us hugely in the long term in terms of being able to scale and grow. We continued to build an organization, hire people, integrate acquisitions, and scale when what we needed to do was to prioritize the team, and the projects and implement this system – finding a partner that could address our shortcomings internally.”
Nick Walker – CHRO wefox
Act like a third party
wefox was referred to SuccessDay, who quickly got a team assembled to support the company. “We first did an assessment of where wefox was standing in the implementation process. My colleague Eveline and her team did a readiness check, a gap analysis and determined the priorities,” says João Lourenço Silva, senior Project Manager at SuccessDay.
The pressure was high: the board of wefox wanted to go live with Phase 1 by the end of this year. During those early weeks of that relationship with SuccessDay wefox felt like it had someone who had their back. Nick: “They were able to get into the weeds of the project quickly and did not try to intimidate us. I think a lot of other third parties could have probably just said ‘You’re dreaming’, but they came up with a fair and pragmatic assessment, basically saying where we had some shortcomings and where we needed to fill some gaps and what it would take to get the project back on the path. They made it real and human.”
SuccessDay offered wefox support to get the Exec and Board onside for a project GO whilst providing resources to address the gaps that it had internally to get the project up and running. A combination of allocated people from wefox and SuccessDay are now working together as a team. “We are collaborating with like-minded individuals – culturally and professionally. We are in the same boat; their growth journey is very similar to ours. I also like their can-do attitude,” Nick says.
Bite the bullet
João: “It’s important that we have a proper HR strategy definition, that we can bring the culture and the objectives of the company into the HR system, so we can have a proper employee journey, a proper culture reflected on the system.” The HR strategy of wefox is all about recruiting the best, developing talent, and giving opportunities for people to be their authentic selves and thrive within the organization – creating a great work environment.
According to Nick the implementation of Workday couldn’t wait any longer. “The longer you wait, the more difficult it gets. We must bite the bullet and get on with it. Without a robust global HR system in place, you won’t be able to break down local barriers and tribal cultures that exist in companies. People underestimate how important a global HR system is at alleviating a lot of our challenges, like winning the hearts and minds of people, creating a common goal, purpose, and culture. A HR system can drive consistency in how you do things, how you interact with employees and how you provide opportunities for them.”
Another thing he expects Workday to do for HR is to reduce a lot of the time and the effort spent on important but arduous topics around admin, processes, and operational activities. His team wants to spend more time doing business partnering, consulting, advising, and strategizing. “I’m hoping that once that system is in place, our team will be freed up to spend much more time on value-added services as opposed to operational.”
Back on track
Today, the project is on track, there is a clear roadmap and there is clarity around the resource allocation and the priorities in modules in all phases. “At the moment we start to see some green traffic lights in the project planning,” the CHRO says proudly. The first modules of Workday that will be implemented are HCM core, Basic Compensation and Time Management. The Go-Live for this phase is mid-October. The second phase will be Performance Management, Peakon and Advanced Compensation and then ATS (Applicant Tracking System) and LMS (Learning Management System.
If you implement a program of this scale, don’t try to do it all internally, the wefox-CHRO advises. “It will just burn you because you’ve got to deliver a service and continue to help the company grow. Select a partner of choice that understands you, that knows how HR operates, that’s culturally in line with your ideals, and that can help support you. And finally, if you’re running multi-country operations and you’re growing, you can’t go cheap. Build for the future. At some point, you will get burnt, since your current system won’t be able to scale with you.”
