The head of group talent attraction and talent management at European paper and packaging giant Mayr-Melnhof (MM) Group wants the HR function to become a strategic partner to the whole organization, and really drive business outcomes.

Eva Edelmüller exclusively tells UNLEASH how she and her team seized the moment when the Austrian-headquartered manufacturer – with 15,500+ employees in 33 countries – saw a change at the helm in 2020.

After 18 years, Wilhelm Hörmanseder stood down and MM Group appointed a new CEO with Peter Oswald stepping in as successor.

Using the catalyst of a new CEO, the HR department moved quickly to transform itself. They wanted to move from being perceived as just admin to becoming genuine “trusted partners” and advisers to the business, employees and candidates alike, shares Edelmüller.

She adds, HR teams should have “the power to stand up in the front of the business and say… I bring value here”.

What happened next was a rise in profile for the HR function, which required the company to change its mindset and embrace HR’s involvement in new, forward-thinking tech.

Choosing the right tech for MM

Edelmüller and her team, therefore, got to work selecting the perfect tech partner.

Over the course of a year and a half, the team looked at so many suppliers on the market.

The priority was data and analytics – without the right facts and figures (for instance around how many positions are open or how many applications you have), then “you have only parts of the picture” to share with the business, explains Edelmüller.

But the other needs and wants MM figured out as they went along the tender process.

The team realized that they needed “some kind of legacy system” – a core HR system that considers certain compliance needs, as well as provides management and storage of all the employee master data.

They settled on SAP SuccessFactors. Although it does a great job around data analytics, alone it wasn’t enough to transform HR into a trusted partner to the wider business.

So Edelmüller and team looked at recruiting system to layer on top – a tool that “is very much for the candidates”, which is incredibly important.

“We decided on Eightfold because we believe in the future of AI”, plus it is a globally scalable solution, and MM felt that the vendor really understood their situation and tried to find a solution that really fitted that.

Eva Edelmüller, head of group talent attraction and talent management, MM Group.

To bring it all together, MM needed an implementation partner.

This was important because “we are not a company who has established processes [or] a certain foundation to start off with”; “we did not have a single source of truth” and had previously relied on an Austrian applicant tracking system, but that was no longer fit for purpose in a global business.

They decided on Deloitte, again because of great relationships between the teams. “We had the feeling they understood what we needed,” Edelmüller explains.

But another reason was Deloitte’s previous experience implementing Eightfold in other global businesses.

Once they made the decision on the tech and implementation partners, Edelmüller made the business case to the head of group HR and internal communication, and then the rest of the C-Suite.

“The important thing was for the C-Suite to see that there is a need, and what the need is, but then also to see that we had put a lot of thinking into selecting a suitable solution for the company”.

Changing the HR game at MM

The C-Suite approved the business case, and over the next five months, Edelmüller and the HR team successfully implemented SAP SuccessFactors and Eightfold with the help of Deloitte.

The implementation also acted as a trigger for the HR function to not just embrace new tech, but rethink how they collaborate and really create a HR community.

“The project was about a HR system, but it is more than just a system, it is a way of collaborating”, explains Edelmüller. “I did not want a system for the sake of having a system. I wanted to define and change the way we work together.”

Edelmüller is really proud of her team’s work here, particularly “the way we interacted and treated each other”.

This success is particularly impressive as MM had just acquired Essentra Packaging, which meant integrating 3,500 employees across 10 countries, as well as a separate HR function with its own way of working.

The SAP SuccessFactors-Eightfold-Deloitte project “was one of the first touch points they had with us”.

For Essentra’s HR team, the project was “painful. They had just implemented a new recruiting system”.

“We recognized that they were tired of learning, doing, and testing”, so top of mind for Edelmüller and MM was easing the transition and making their lives as simple as possible.

Deloitte was key here, according to Edelmüller – but the main positive was how easy and intuitive Eightfold’s platform is to use. For Edelmüller, this is central to what makes Eightfold a “gamechanger”.

It is also a win-win because “the mindset behind the system is supporting the candidate in finding the right position, and it supports the recruiter and talent adviser in finding the right candidate.”

The future of HR tech at MM

According to Edelmüller, MM is a “no nonsense company”, and that really plays out in how it works (and will continue to work) with its vendor partners – and particularly Eightfold.

“We are…giving them feedback on what we would consider helpful – they are listening to us, telling us what is possible and what is not”, she explains.

“This relationship works very well, and we are looking forward to all the new features” Eightfold is rolling out in the near future.

Examples of new Eightfold products include a talent planning model that allows workplaces to have visibility over the skills gaps in real time, as well as generative AI-powered solutions to drive employee and recruiter productivity.

Beyond Eightfold, the HR tech and transformation work at MM is never done. Edelmüller concludes: “We are also implementing a learning management system in the next couple of months” – this will be with SAP, but the timeline is not fully finalized.

Watch this space.