Electrolux: Make sure you give your people the tech they actually want

Electrolux has been on a mission to make living better for over a century.

Innovation is, therefore, part of the DNA of the Nordic home appliance manufacturing company – its operating income reached $38 million in 2023, with net sales hitting a whopping $12.3 billion. 

This innovative spirit plays out in how Electrolux thinks about the world of HR and HR technology.

Adapting to change and achieving agility for its 45,000-strong workforce in 50 countries was the theme of its Director of People Technologies Christian Bengtsson-Rossby’s session at UNLEASH World 2024.

The UNLEASH Editorial team sat down with Bengtsson-Rossby to find out the secrets to success, and his perspectives on the HR tech topics of the moment.

Four years of HR transformation at Electrolux

Back in 2020, IT and HR sat as two separate teams in Electrolux.

While they worked together on tech projects, it was challenging – “IT came from an IT leadership perspective, and they had their views. HR had theirs, and there was tension between the teams,” notes Bengtsson-Rossby.

Then a couple of visionary leaders in the company said, “why don’t we just merge them into team, under one leadership, and drive it like one team”, then People Technologies was born.

Fast forward to 2024, Bengtsson-Rossby shares: “We’ve been busy. We’ve had some big implementations” – noteworthy examples include implementing Phenom and Workday, as well as expanding its partnership with Cornerstone.

While the People Technologies team leads on the HR tech strategy, Bengtsson-Rossby is clear that his teams works closely with the wider People function.

‘We need to support our people’ with their careers

As the People Technologies team has evolved over the past four years, it has split into two teams – one focuses on data, payroll and compensation, and another on the development side.

This fact alone shows that learning and development is really important to Electrolux; UNLEASH was keen to find out why.

“We have to support our people.

“There’s lots of things to worry about – it is our responsibility to ensure that they have safe employment with us”, and there’s growth possibilities.

He adds: “We try and foster a culture where you stick around – you’re loyal to your employer, and we’re loyal to you back.”

To be able to live up this promise – and it not just be words – technology is essential, particularly because of Electrolux’s global scale.

The beauty right now is that HR tech has finally reached a point where “technology will not be the limiting factor to achieving what you want” – and this particularly plays out around skills.

Bengtsson-Rossby tells UNLEASH: “I’ve been in the HR space for 12 years now, some of things that we do with career pathing, people have been talking about for all that time” – however, it wasn’t until now, because of technology, that organizations could actually have a real impact in this space.

You need good technology and good processes to ensure that we can support our people in having a good career and staying around,” he adds.

Cornerstone is a great partner for Electrolux because of its vision for the future, which “really aligns with what we want to do, what we’re seeing, what we want to achieve, and how we want to work” in terms of putting technology in place to support employees in their careers.

Bengtsson-Rossby is also particularly impressed by Cornerstone’s recent acquisitions in the space – these include SkyHive and Talespin.

Prioritize experience when buying HR tech

During his session at UNLEASH World, an audience member asked: What would you do differently with HR transformation if you had to do it again?

“We were guilty of releasing those items that nobody really used because there wasn’t a need for them” – instead, “we should listen more to what our people want, what they need”, states Bengtsson-Rossby.

Don’t provide them with what you think they want, provide them with what they’re telling you they want.”

He cites a quote from user experience expert Sean Gerety: “The technology you use impresses no one. The experience you create with it is everything.”

Ultimately, you can implement whatever technology you like, if your people aren’t using it (and regularly), then it won’t have the desired effect.

It is easy to over-complicate things, especially when there’s so many vendors and tools out there, but if you stick to the basics – the experience – “that is where success is”.

AI and the future of HR tech at Electrolux

The conversation then turned to the exciting technologies that Electrolux sees on the horizon – what is on Bengtsson-Rossy’s HR tech to-do list for 2025 and 2030?

He is pleased that the manufacturing giant’s strategy is aligned with the market.

The UNLEASH World show helped Bengtsson-Rossby sense check this fact, and keep an eye on the latest HR tech trends. His takeaway was there is so much innovation going on not just from large vendors, but also from the startup exhibitors.

The standout themes for Bengtsson-Rossby and Electrolux are in areas like AI, skills, payroll and recognition.

Zeroing in on the HR topic of the moment – AI – he shares that Electrolux is thinking about this technology through “lighthouses” – HR has one, so does sales, finance, R&D etc.

This means that every function “is somewhat responsible for their own development in that space”; Bengtsson-Rossby oversees the HR AI lighthouse, and the core approach is to really build a business case around the use cases for HR.

What normally gets overseen with AI is that there are two types – passive and active. “They’re both AI product and functionality, but the nature of implementing them is very different.”

Active investment takes a lot of work – examples include building an AI assistant in-house that sits across all of Electrolux’s HR platforms – “it will answer policies, it can automate tasks, and will give good experiences to our employees”.

In comparison, passive adoption is “where vendors bring cool AI technology to our table” – “it is typically easier to adopt” and fixes specific problems (rather than being a holistic layer on top of all HR tech tools).

Ultimately, Bengtsson-Rossby is optimistic about the opportunities from AI, and HR tech in general.

The HR tech market is “the best it’s been in the last 12 years in terms of capabilities, possibility and tech” – but it is “mind blowing that this is the worse it’ll ever be”

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