Owned by the State of Finland, Posti, which started as the country’s main postal service, is now the leading delivery and fulfillment company across the Baltic Sea region, focusing on the Finnish, Baltic, and Swedish markets. Posti provides a wide range of services in Finland for areas including parcels, freight, warehouse, fulfillment, and logistics, as well as postal. It was to strengthen its position in Sweden and Norway that in 2020 Posti acquired Aditro Logistics, one of Sweden’s leading contract logistics businesses.
As expected, this merger had its challenges. According to Posti Group Vice President, HR Development and Operations Heini Toivonen, “The merger time approach had been for Aditro to continue operating independently, but that changed with the Posti Group strategy update and the launch of it in 2021. By mid 2022, plans to integrate Aditro were underway, targeting the end of Q2 2023 as go-live for the first phase.”
Ease of use and Posti Group processes.
A key decision had to be made about merging HR processes. According to Aditro Vice President, HR Ulrika Lanzén, who joined Posti with the merger, “Before the businesses came together, we didn’t have an HR solution, and therefore had a limited view over our master data. In the expanded business, there was an urgent need to have insights in areas like retention statistics, how people are feeling, employee numbers by role, and much more. Just as important was the need to get to know one another.”
Posti had been using Workday since 2019, and has lately used it as a major source of its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and GRI data, as well as its diversity, equity, and inclusion reporting. As Toivonen says, “It wasn’t a huge step to recognize how well Workday was already positioned to be the main platform for supporting that unified Posti feeling.” And, as Lanzén adds, “Its ease of use and Posti-wide processes made it perfect for the task.”
We now know our people better across the organization, enabling us to take whatever action is necessary to make life better for them every day.
Ulrika Lanzén, Vice President, HR, Formerly of Aditro Logistics
Building a shared culture to create a unified Posti.
The key target for Posti’s leadership was to ensure that all employees had a similar experience across all HR processes, no matter where they were based or what group business they worked for. As Toivonen explains, “The Workday deployment really proved to be the start of Aditro’s integration into the Posti Group. Its foundation helps us build a shared culture, and provides the tools for group-level processes like performance management and rewarding, and leadership development through our Caring Leader program.
“To highlight the magnitude,” Toivonen continues, “Posti Group has over 900 supervisors, which is one of the crucial target groups when driving the caring company culture. To know [supervisors] and [be able to] reach them are both necessary to succeed. Following this first step to integrate the businesses, we’ve since delivered other integration projects and initiatives.”
According to Lanzén, “From the former Aditro perspective, Workday is delivering more insight we need to properly know our people across the organization, enabling us to take whatever action necessary to make life better for them every day.”
Full visibility across employee data.
Toivonen also highlights some of the significant benefits that people throughout the newly expanded Posti are experiencing following the first deployment phase.
“We have properly implemented truly Posti-level processes, bringing everybody onto the same platform with the same tools at their fingertips,” Toivonen says. “As a result, employees and data are all fully up-to-date, and there is no longer any reliance on manual processes. This delivers huge benefits, and HR and IT in particular are very happy to have full visibility across employee data.”
Lanzén agrees. “Overall, we have far more efficient processes that support more efficient work. Quite simply, it’s now much easier for us to have insight over our organization.”
We have properly implemented truly Posti-level processes, bringing everybody onto the same platform with the same tools at their fingertips.
Heini Toivonen, Vice President, HR Development and Operations
Looking ahead.
The initial phase was completed in just six months, with the second wave taking place during the second half of 2023. According to Toivonen, “From now on, our focus is to enable Aditro to join all Posti-level processes, such as performance and talent management, succession planning, STI, individual development plans, and more. Workday is fundamental to all this, just as it is to any business like ours that includes multiple business streams or locations.”
