European Laser Centre ELI ERIC uses OKbase

The unique research centre based in Dolní Břežany needs an effective solution for managing HR processes for its international team of 350 employees. They have been using OKbase successfully for 8 years and plan to expand the functionality further.

Who are ELI ERIC?

ELI ERIC is a European laser centre where an international team of scientists works on the most intense laser systems in the world. It is pioneering research in physics, materials science, biomedicine and laboratory astrophysics and is part of the global scientific research organisation The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC. As the largest scientific project in the country's history, they have 350 employees from more than 30 countries, which brings specific challenges for their HR department, especially when they have to comply with strict rules on transparency and accurate cost reporting from public funding.

They were therefore looking for an HR solution that would simplify administration, streamline processes and speed up attendance reporting. Prior to OKbase, they were recording attendance and HR in Excel, which was generally challenging and inefficient.

It should be noted at the outset that the implementation of the HR and attendance module of OKbase here took place in 2016 and since then there have been further updates.

What did they expect from the new system?

Ing. Lenka Černá, HR Manager of ELI Beamlines Facility (which is an organizational unit of ELI ERIC), describes the specific requirements for the new HR system: "First of all, we needed to have everything together, not in different Excel spreadsheets, so that we could easily report attendance, do reports and reports. We need these for both internal and external purposes. We also create various labor reports based on actual amount of time, involvement on a particular project and other parameters. In addition to the scientific community, we have teams of technicians, engineers and administrative staff, as well as contract workers and students.

In most cases we use so-called flexible working hours, but some teams work in the form of 12-hour shifts. Employees can effectively be on site from 6am to 10pm. Recording attendance in accordance with the law, recording overtime and correctly breaking down hours worked into individual cost centres, including generating timesheets, are extremely important to us."  

The main requirements were:

• A unified system for managing attendance, HR and other HR processes, which would enable their easy administration.
• A detailed breakdown of hours worked into individual cost centres.
• Generation of accurate timesheets for grant funding and, of course, to report hours worked by contingent workers.

How has OKbase worked for you in practice? 

"The transition from manual spreadsheets to the automated OKbase system has brought about a fundamental change in the way ELI ERIC now manages its HR processes," says Lenka Černá and goes on to evaluate specific OKbase functions:

Attendance

"It's great that OKbase is able to allocate closed attendance to projects automatically and can be relied upon to ensure that all current statutory changes are always incorporated. Our HR specialist just sets up the timesheet in the system according to the specific hours and the rest is dealt with automatically." 

HR

"We now have all the necessary employee data centralized. Managers who previously had no special tool available used to get the information from HR. Now OKbase is also helpful for them - they have, for example, subordinates' job descriptions, mandatory and optional training, end of probationary period, contract and termination dates and other useful information in one place. In short, no important deadline goes unnoticed in the 'bejzka'; managers have a perfect overview of their employees."

Training

"Training is very important for us. We have all kinds of employees, from scientists, building and workshop management technicians, IT and so on, and many of them have to undergo periodic mandatory training. We have a lot of them. We now have everything clearly recorded in OKbase - what training is needed and how often for a given position. Employees and their supervisors also receive notifications that the training is about to expire and needs to be renewed. It works the same way for health checks. Fortunately, we have the majority of our employees in the lowest risk category, but there are those with higher risks where physicals are needed more frequently. OKbase does all the checking itself and alerts us."

Organisational structure

"For me personally, the organisational structure in OKbase makes my work much easier. Nowhere else can I generate it so easily and here I have all the data about employees in one place. At the same time, I am able to generate additional reports on, for example, attendance. It is easy for me to do the reporting and just as easy to get the documents we need for payroll processing from OKbase," concludes Lenka Černá.

What are your plans for OKbase in the future?

The system has proved so successful that ELI is planning to gradually introduce additional functionalities. "At the moment, we are particularly interested in further digitisation options. In the near future I am looking forward to having, for example, the Consent Register, which is a great functionality. Then there will be no need for employees to sign all sorts of forms. Instead, they will receive a notification that they have to read something (most often some internal documents), and once they do, the confirmation will remain stored directly in OKbase.  So I won't have to rush them with papers or emails," says Lenka Černá enthusiastically.

Thank you for the interview and sharing your experience.

OKbase has proven to be able to address HR needs well even in a complex international environment, and one that is funded from a variety of sources. HR managers confirm that it makes them work more efficiently and without mistakes. They and their employees have a modern tool for necessary HR tasks and can better focus on other important work.