Transferring recruitment responsibilities to managers: Natura & Co

The challenge

As with many businesses, technology adoption has not been without its challenges in Natura & Co’s operations, best known in the UK for its brands The Body Shop and Avon.

What they did

When The Body Shop implemented the recruitment module in its HR information system, its business case was based on cost efficiencies.

Recruitment responsibilities were pushed to the line manager, enabling The Body Shop to take out the entire recruitment function.

Outcomes

The system was not intuitive enough for line managers who are not digital savvy or rarely use it.

"We went too far too quickly", says Louise Wilson, the former HR director of The Body Shop, now Global Transformation and Integration Advisor for Natura & Co and Director of LEW Advisory. "We had to bring some people back into recruitment to support them." When looking at sister company Avon’s HR information system from another vendor, it was also clear the firm had some HR administrators doing the activity for line managers.

In hindsight, Wilson realised that the end user, and specifically line managers, should have been engaged with even more and earlier. "It’s important to have engagement as early as possible. This is not about asking permission to bring a system in but rather getting your workers to visualise, think and play with a tool that is not yet in place. At The Body Shop we did lots of engagement, but probably not enough for such a big change planned."

Key learnings and top tips

• HR has a unique role to play in bringing the lived experiences of workers to leaders at an early stage.
• Managers are critical in any worker-related system change, and the operating model needs to take into account their roles and skills.
• Technology does not have to be highly advanced to be disruptive. All technology implementations are disruptive when they are new to the workforce.
• Understand the different capabilities and potential adoption rates of different populations. The Body Shop found store managers and staff were among the earliest adopters as they are more autonomous and digitally savvy.