Agility and consistency within a broad and diverse public service organisation

The Flemish administration is a public service organisation for the Flemish Region serving more than 50 entities with ten different policy areas. The organisation has a broad and diverse range of responsibilities spanning from leisure and housing, education to employment. Each policy area is composed of a department (conducting planning) and several agencies (implementing the policies).

The Flemish administration main objective was to centralise HR systems as a shared service to maximise efficiency. It also sought to streamline recruitment processes and talent retention, as well as improving their learning content and training approach to create a consistent experience.

The Flemish administration seeks to be a modern and innovative employer to attract and employ a high standard of professionals in their wide range of departments. The project was rolled out to more than 28,000 employees and has been greatly beneficial to address the initial strategic challenges of the older HR processes.

“As a public service organisation, we strive to be as efficient as possible in managing and connecting our people and increase workforce productivity. Cornerstone has allowed us to integrate our teams so efficiently and easily, meaning we can work smarter and trim down administrative burden. By focusing in on the details whilst also being able to see the big picture, the Flemish administration is in a better position to recruit and develop top talent, as well as plan for the future.” Kurt Ryckaert, Project Leader of HR Technology at the Flemish administration.

Why Cornerstone

The Flemish administration wanted to be as agile, open, and decisive as possible by operating with a more centralised approach to ensure its common and central organisational objectives were interlinked and aligned. Prior to working with Cornerstone, the separate entities of the organisation were working in a singular manner with inconsistencies and no uniformed processes.

Learning content and approaches were often challenging to deploy to the Flemish administration’ employees and professionals which in turn affected engagement. COVID-19 accelerated digital learning forms; and Cornerstone’s learning technologies allowed the organisation to maximise on this learning shift and appetite, taking further steps in enhancing their digital content library.

Working in separated entities often made it a challenge to attract, develop and retain talent. For example, learning teams could not provide a centralised learning approach and learning content, making it difficult to deliver a modern learning approach. Cornerstone allowed the organisation to have these processes in one convenient place.

The integration of the different Cornerstone product modules was crucial, creating one talent management experience for the organisation.

The results

Unified, efficient platform: The overall systems and platform have drastically changed to bring all the different modules from separate entities together for maximum value and consistency. The different teams can now work together to roll out new features and communications, such as releases or new integrations. For future strategy and goals, there is now a more functional layout to achieve their objective goals such as recruitment and selection, learning, and teams.

Reduced administrative tasks: Cornerstone allows the Flemish administration to streamline administrative tasks so they can add more value to recruitment, talent management, and training. This improved efficiency has freed up productivity, allowing teams to focus on performance and be driven by innovative technologies. The adopting of new processes is easier now with the integration of Cornerstone. Alongside this, there is cost saving on admin and licences, project managers, and integration costs.

Innovative learning programs and content: Delivering learning content across the Flemish administration is now simplified and fast, allowing teams to develop efficiently. The increased level of interactivity and learning, often digitally, is a visible and important benefit. The learning library is constantly being built out with active user groups to create a database of increased knowledge sharing and content. This has increased the appetite internally for learning and growth consumption. After introducing a new digital learning library, the consumption of e-learning in all involved entities almost doubled and remained stable at a higher level than initial after time.

Strategic, future proof planning: Looking forward, the Flemish administration anticipate having greater organisational agility, adding value to their learning content and adding more integrations to optimise digital recruiting. By integrating the different entities, the organisation can focus on its overall vision and performance with greater detail as it joins together as an empowered public service organisation. Cornerstone ticked the boxes for the Flemish administration on learning, efficiency, flexibility and much more.