These are the winners of the HR Technology Awards 2023
Yesterday evening the winners of the first edition of the HR Technology Awards in the Netherlands were announced. During a well-attended networking event in De Kazerne at Brainport, the 9 nominees (spread over 3 categories) were given the opportunity to pitch their HRIT product or project to the professional jury and the public. In the end, the awards went to Just Eat Takeaway.com, Workday Peakon Employee Voice and Crunchr.
In the category Best HR Transformation using Technology (aimed at user organizations), Just Eat Takeaway.com took home the award. Karya Imirzalioglu, Global Head of People Technology at Just Eat Takeaway.com, accepted the award on behalf of her team. “I’m very happy we won. It is a very prestigious award that we wanted to win. We are an innovative tech company, and we would like to radiate that to the outside world. We have shown that our HR department is at the forefront of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and it is nice that this is now also seen by others.”
Best HR Transformation Using Technology
Just Eat Takeaway.com competed against A.S. Watson/Neurolytics and Enza Zaden. While Just Eat Takeaway.com’s HR team, best known for Thuisbezorgd.nl in the Netherlands, has automated most of the processes of HRIT package Workday using an API, this is too complex for global operations with country-specific rules. “For example, JET Pay — the system that allows teams to have their favorite meals delivered to the office via the app or pay with the JET Pay Card in the company canteen or restaurants — was not yet fully integrated into Workday. As a result, the HR operations team had to manually enter data about new hires, contract terminations, and job changes, leading to challenges. A pilot project was started to automate three specific automation processes using Robotic Process Automation (RPA),” explains Imirzalioglu.
The bot, named Jetty, takes over all the boring, repetitive tasks. This offers a number of benefits, including increased efficiency, lower costs, improved accuracy, and a better employee experience. “It’s a relatively small project with big results. The award can help us to come into the picture as an attractive employer with candidates and that is great because we want to expand our team further soon.”
Best HR Technology Product Innovation of the Year
In the Best HR Technology Product Innovation of the Year category (focused on software vendors), the award went to Workday Peakon Employee Voice. “With this tool, we give every employee a voice and help him or her realize the change they want to see in their daily work. That starts with listening and understanding what’s going on,” explains Michiel Veefkind, Workday’s Head of Peakon in the Benelux. Read here how Peakon Employee Voice works exactly.
Veefkind is pleased with the recognition of the professional jury of the HR Technology Awards. “We believe in the power of Peakon’s positive impact. It’s nice to see others acknowledge that as well. It was a nice event with a nice turnout. It’s good for the entire HR community that this event is here. I’m already looking forward to next year, because this will undoubtedly have a sequel!” Workday Peakon Employee Voice took on Oracle Grow and UKG.
Best NextGen HR Technology
In the last category of the evening – Best NextGen HR Technology (aimed at scale-ups) the award went to Crunchr. This originally Dutch company has offices in Amsterdam, London and Boston and now has about 70 employees. Unfortunately, CEO and founder Dirk Jonker could not physically attend the award show because he was speaking at an international conference, but he had delegated his colleagues. In an interview prior to the award show, he hinted that he was hopeful of winning the award. “We recently won an award from Gartner and were named the best HR technology by Forbes. We tell HR with Crunchr what is going on in the organization. And we show them what the options are to do something about it. This is how we make HR the best business advisor for the business. Recently, you can also talk to Crunchr with your data using generative AI,” says Jonker.
In this interview you can read more about Crunchr and how the technology works exactly. Jonker emphasizes that time is running out for organizations that have yet to start with insights based on people analytics. “Every month that you wait to gain insight, you lose an incredible amount of money. We now have a client where we have calculated that we have saved almost 16 million dollars in one year. That’s over a million a month! No time to waste . Don’t build anything yourself. It took us eight years to get to where we are today. So wake up and take the lead as HR. It is my ambition that the CHRO will become the vice president of the CEO.” In addition to the award, Crunchr also received an incentive prize of 10,000 euros from the organization of the HR Technology Awards. The other nominees in the scale-up category were Fanployer and WELDER.
Successful event
The award show was attended by more than 100 CHROs, HR directors and HRIT experts. Michel Stokvis, Senior Director Randstad Innovation Fund delivered the keynote. During the dinner there was a lot of networking and the visitors enthusiastically exchanged knowledge and experiences with each other. Initiator Bas Eggelaar of SuccessDay looks back on a successful event. “It’s wonderful to see that an idea that once originated in the shower has grown into something so beautiful. Given all the enthusiastic reactions, the quality of the entries, the number of participants and the expert jury, you can safely say that there was an urgent need for an independent award show for HRIT solutions from both major software suppliers and scale-ups and for HR transformations using innovative technology. We plan to make this an annual event.”
