From transactional to transformational HR: Avis Budget Group

In 2015, the HR department at Avis Budget group embarked on a major transformation journey. Among globalizing their operations and implementing a core HR system, they set up shared service centers. The goal was to free up their HR resources in the field so they could spend less time on administrative work and more time on strategic initiatives and employee engagement. This kind of shift is the cornerstone of transformational HR.

In this video, hear from Sherry Knaszak, VP of HR Transformation and HRIS, Avis Budget Group, on why she chose PeopleDoc’s technology to get the shared service centers functional.

Giving employees direct access to information

Moving administrative HR work out of the business units and into a shared service center required Avis Budget Group to implement a tiered support model where employees could self-serve and then submit a case to HR if needed. For this to happen, “We needed a case management system and a way for employees to access information directly, without having to go to their local HR person,” says Sherry.

It comes down to honesty

Sherry did a thorough search for a vendor that could provide the functionalities she needed. “Going through this transformation, I was dealing with a lot of vendors, a lot of consultants on a really regular basis. People would tell you what they thought you wanted to hear versus what was actually true,” she explains.

Sherry ultimately chose PeopleDoc because of their honesty. “In my interactions with PeopleDoc, they were honest with me. They told me ‘this is what the solution can do, this is what it can’t do, this is what we’re working on, and this is the direction we’re going in.’ They gave me some good, solid information to make the right decision,” she says.

Seeing versus imagining the end result

Choosing a solution to support your HR transformation is just the beginning. Implementation is when the real work begins. Luckily for Sherry, implementing PeopleDoc was easy. “The implementation process for Employee File Management was probably one of the easiest implementation cycles I’ve been through,” she says.

Sherry valued being able to see the staging environment from the very beginning. Instead of imagining what the end result would look like, the team at Avis was able to start adding to and customizing the final product. “It made understanding the system a whole lot easier than it might have been with other vendors,” says Sherry.

From transactional to transformational HR

Hiring at Avis can be very seasonal. In the summer months alone they may hire around 7,000 employees. As you can imagine, this consumed a lot of local HR's time. Once PeopleDoc was implemented, the local HR teams were able to move the pre-hire work into a shared service center, where they could better manage and keep track of the process.

“Initially, absolutely, we did see some improvement in terms of the time people spent getting through that administrative work,” says Sherry. Giving the business insight into the pre-hire process, but relieving them of the work, “absolutely made a difference.”

Hear more from Sherry about the HR transformation journey at Avis Budget Group. Watch the on-demand SHRM webinar, From Paper to People: HR Transformation at Avis Budget Group.