Case Study

Introducing Automation and Consistency to Global Talent Mobility

The Challenge

Groupe SEB is a large multinational manufacturing and retail company with a global presence in over 150 countries. To support their globally dispersed business, Groupe SEB typically deploys ~100 individuals a year across 63 various country of origin / host country combinations. This effort was largely performed manually and by the International Mobility team coordinating with various HRBPs and vendors. This lead to multiple inefficiencies and inconsistencies in deploying talent. The key challenges Groupe SEB faced in their global mobility program included:

No technology to help manage their mobility program
Manually initiating moves involving up to 10 different contacts (internal and external) creating coordination issues
Individual treatment of moves leading to inconsistency in employee experience
Purchased COLA data, but had to perform calculations on their own, relying on internal mobility team expertise to perform these calculations
Difficulty in collecting required data for program performance reporting
Lack of ability to scale quickly
A need to better tie global mobility to to Talent Management

As a mobility program on the smaller side, Groupe SEB required a solution that would not only be cost-effective and deliver fast ROI, but one that could be implemented quickly and able to grow with them as they expanded down the road and evolve their global mobility policies.

About Groupe SEB

Groupe SEB is a large French industrial group that produces small appliances and is the world’s largest manufacturer of cookware with brands for both professional and home use.

Learn more at www.groupeseb.com

Annual revenues of €6,940M
Appliance and cookware manufacturing and retail
33,000 global employees
40 industrial entities with 31 brands in over 150 countries
1,300+ retail locations

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The Solution

Groupe SEB needed a technology offering that would provide built-in best practices, enhance the value of purchased data, and provide self-service functionality so HRBPs could initiate moves directly. They came to Topia looking for a solution that would:

Connect to their HCM platform
Initiate important vendors like EY
Provide modern tools for mobile employees
Automate processes such as document generation, package construction, and cost projections
Facilitate easy reporting

Seeing that Topia offered the best solution to meet their needs, Groupe SEB moved forward with a solution consisting of Topia Plan, Manage, and Go with AIRINC COLA data embedded in the Topia One platform. Groupe SEB was able to take advantage of Topia’s standardized best-practice approaches that are built into the products/platform and update their policies and processes accordingly. However, during the course of implementation Topia configured key compensation and COLA calculations to meet Groupe SEB’s unique needs - balancing out-of-the-box standards with important configurations where necessary.

A mobile app displays a map with a highlighted flight route and destination markers.

The Results

With the support of the Topia team and taking advantage of the best practices and standards part of Topia One, Groupe SEB was able to live in a matter of weeks with minimal effort. With their new Topia solution up and running, Groupe SEB is now benefiting from:

Efficiency Gains

Time to initiate a move has decreased by days
Cost estimates and balance sheets are generated instantly
Able to initiate EY and other services automatically via tasks built into initiation workflows

Consistently Better Employee Experiences

HRBPs can log in directly to kickoff new assignments and relocations and the process will be the same no matter what group or country they’re in
Mobile employees have modern tools to support their relocation including City Guides, task lists, timelines, benefit explanations, and more

Refreshed Policies

Updated policies reflecting industry best practices
Centralized Insights and Reporting
Over 30 standard reports available at the click of a button in addition to limitless self-configured reports and dashboards
Centralized data repository for mobility information allowing for instant program insights

Scalability and Control

Ability to easily add additional features and functionality available in the Topia Suite of products
Easily add users and set permissions

Looking forward, Groupe SEB will be leveraging Topia to implement Core/Flex policies and integrate with their new Workday HCM solution. This will allow global mobility to further align itself with talent strategy and unlock new insights.