Asahi Beverages is continuously refining its HR self-service

Asahi Beverages has adopted a continuous improvement mindset when it comes to HR self-service for its Australian and New Zealand operations, and AI could help it make HR service delivery even more efficient.

Image credit: Asahi Beverages

Head of people services Chris Halliday told the SAP HR Connect conference in Melbourne that the overarching aim is to make HR seamless, so staff and managers “can focus on our product and what matters the most.”

The best-known of those products is beer, but the company also distributes brands like Pepsi, Gatorade, and Lipton in Australia.

It has about 6000 staff, about one-third of whom “don't access PCs - they’re on production lines,” Halliday said. 

“We've gotta be really mindful around how we roll out technology in a way that makes sense for managers so they can do things on behalf of [these] employees.”

For staff with PC access, Asahi Beverages has focused on enabling self-service access to HR and on simplifying and continuously improving that technology over time.

“It’s about making sure our technology is actually working as it should and … our processes are also clear,” Halliday said.

“Self-service really means that we're simplifying things [in ways] that speed up processes for managers and ensure that they're not having to worry about all the extra stuff that HR cares about in the background.”

AI is anticipated to drive additional improvements, although Asahi Beverages is early in its adoption of the technology.

Halliday said the company had “cleaned up [its][ data” and better documented its HR processes in preparation for AI.

It is hoped that an AI overlay - likely to be SAP Joule, given the company runs on SAP SuccessFactors - will “make it even easier for managers and employees to execute on tasks that they may only do once or twice a year.”

“They've got a problem, how do they solve it really quickly and then move on. That's what we're looking to move towards,” Halliday said.

“We're really exploring how we use Joule in conjunction with a number of other systems and technologies that can make sure we've got a holistic experience [to HR service delivery].”

He added: “What we're looking to do is continue down the simplification path for self-service, first and foremost, really get our AI strategy clear and starting to work through that, working with our managers to ensure that we're continuously improving, continuing to work on data and we've also got a couple of big modules [of SuccessFactors] coming up [to implement] in the future as well.”

The most recent module that it implemented is around employee development and succession planning.

Halliday said that staff already had career goals, but they were stored elsewhere, mostly in Excel or email inboxes.

Within weeks of the module going live, he said there was “98 percent compliance” among the 2500 employees on the system in plugging their goals into the centralised system.