Case study: How Experian Malaysia achieved a paperless and digitalised talent acquisition process

In the effort to leverage technology, check out how this information services company built an outstanding candidate and employee experience, as told by Chua Chai Ping, HR Director, Experian Malaysia, in an interview with Aditi Sharma Kalra.

The technology and digital sector in Malaysia is evolving rapidly, and companies operating in the country are expanding operations from Malaysia to support both regional and global landscapes.

This was a driver for information services provider Experian, when it undertook three initiatives: an employee app, digitisation and digitalisation of key HR processes, and predictive analytics.

The first was the digitisation and digitalisation of the entire recruitment and onboarding process by implementing and integrating a suite of tools enabling its talent acquisition professionals to manage their relationships with candidates and internal stakeholders.

“The entire process is now managed through a suite of combined technology tools as our intention was to move from the old-fashioned ways of managing recruitment processes such as Excel spreadsheets to contemporary looking tools which will allow us to fully manage the end-to-end recruitment process, while maintaining high productivity levels of the TA team members and the full automation of tasks,” says Chua Chai Ping, HR Director for Experian Malaysia.

What that means is from the first interaction with a candidate, to an electronic offer acceptance, and automated tasks and content-sharing through a rich media online platform, the candidate and new hire experience is elevated. As a result, the company is now saving the time of both recruiters and hiring managers, enabling them to focus on other value-added activities.

The second initiative was the introduction of its HR-based app across APAC called Your Choice app, which allows employees easy access to four components:

• A personalised digital rewards statement.
• A benefits allowance through the allocation of annual points for employees to spend on fitness, entertainment, food and beverage or daily essentials.
• A monetary employee relief fund for employees or their dependents experiencing hardships, and a support line for when life gets tough.
• A focus on their health and wellbeing by giving information and support in real-time on employee devices.

The third initiative was an in-house built predictive analytics solution for HR to give greater insight into the organisation’s workforce and help accelerate HR strategies.

“This interactive online platform provides a truly unique view for HR and supports the core people management processes for leaders to develop the right strategies to reduce attrition, drive churn-related cost savings and improve overall business productivity,” Chua explains.

Any technology change and adoption is underlined by a change in human behaviour, and Experian’s experience was no different – thus, education and awareness sessions were given equal importance as technical implementation and user testing.

“All managers, leaders and stakeholders were introduced to the technology tools prior to implementation, and sufficient workshops were carried out to collate feedback for implementation prior to go-live.”

Given the investment for the tools was done regionally, she credits the encouragement and influence of the company’s senior leadership for making it successful.

In the effort to implement this technology, the intention was to build an outstanding candidate and employee experience, and Experian has certainly achieved that. The talent acquisition process is now fully paperless and digitalised, including onboarding and talent analytics, via a single local set of recruitment technology.

Additionally, all users (employees, managers, recruiters and candidates) have much greater visibility over their processes, among a host of other benefits such as the reinforcement to the employee wellbeing agenda, and the reduced business impact of losing key talent by making evidence-based decisions.

As with most new initiatives, she affirms this one shouldn’t be HR-driven, but rather a partnership with the business. To continuously measure the results, Experian monitors several sentiments and engagement survey results at various touch-points of an employee’s journey at Experian.

It has also adopted CheckPoint @ HR session, whereby employees, who have spent two months in the business, are invited to an informal coffee session with the HR team to gather live feedback on their onboarding to date, and ideas on how to improve further.

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