Skroutz is the leading online marketplace in Greece, with 560 employees working out of their headquarters in Athens. The company started as a price comparison tool, employing 120 and with a People department of one. However, during the last few years, the company changed course and has grown significantly, including doubling its headcount during the COVID-19 pandemic as people turned to shopping online. Today, Skroutz has seven HR professionals divided between managing talent acquisition, people operations, and performance and development. The company’s growth increased pressure on HR and pushed them to look for ways to automate tasks they were performing manually. HR also wanted to upgrade various processes in the company, such as introducing 360-degree performance reviews and creating a more streamlined compensation management process, which was not possible using their existing HR system. After researching various HR platforms, Skroutz found Bob and the rest, as they say, is history.
Running manual compensation review cycles was not sustainable
Running biannual compensation review cycles at Skroutz was a complicated and time-consuming process—and this was when they were a company of 200 employees. For each cycle, HR created 10 Google Sheets—one for each division, listing each employee, their start date, current salary, when they last received a raise, and their pay grade—and then shared them with the company’s division heads. These spreadsheets were used as the basis for salary reviews and were followed by Slack chats, email messages, and meetings with HR to discuss their proposals. Once final decisions were made on which employees would receive a raise, HR consolidated this information on another spreadsheet and sent it to Payroll. The process was a slow and complex one, with information sometimes getting lost because there wasn’t a centralized place for all stakeholders to communicate. It was clear that as the company grew, they needed a better solution.
Streamlining compensation management in Bob
Skroutz now runs compensation review cycles using Bob. In place of the Google Sheets, emails, and Slack messages that they used before, all information regarding employees’ salary reviews— from current salaries, last salary increases, recommendations, and new salary calculations and budgets—are done in Bob. All stakeholders, from HR to division heads, and Finance to Payroll are automatically kept in the loop and constantly updated. Bob’s compensation management module also includes space to write comments and notes so that if, for example, an employee is not eligible for a raise but will be recommended to receive one next time, it is documented and can be easily accessed and reviewed in the next cycle. Running compensation in Bob saves HR days of work and has made it a smoother and more equitable process for all involved.
Enhancing performance management
Skroutz searched for a solution that would enable them to upgrade their performance management process. They wanted to run 360-degree performance reviews, which support employee feedback from all directions—self-reviews, and reviews from managers, peers, and direct reports.
Running 360-degree performance reviews in Bob
Skroutz now uses Bob to run three performance management sprints a year. The first cycle starts in September with a discussion on goal setting and career development. This is followed by a performance review in January where they evaluate goals and track progress. Then, in June, the company holds its main event, a 360-degree performance review cycle, where they conduct an in-depth review of employees’ progress during the past year and encourage growth opportunities. They also use a continuous performance management framework where employees and their managers meet regularly to discuss goals and gain feedback, which has become even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many employees working remotely.
Bob has made managing performance at Skroutz much more efficient, with all information on employee performance reviews saved in one place and easily accessible for review.
Automating employee onboarding
With Skroutz’s growth, the pressure on HR to hire and onboard new employees also grew. They looked for ways to improve their onboarding process and make it faster, more efficient, and paperless.
Skroutz was using Workable as its applicant tracking system (ATS) and ideally wanted to find an HR platform that would integrate with it and help streamline the process. They also wanted to replace email for preboarding new hires, which was hard to track and had potential security issues.
Increasing efficiency with Bob’s Workable integration
Skroutz’s HR loves Bob’s integration with Workable. Now, every time they hire a new employee, it automatically triggers the onboarding workflow, which transfers all of the new hire’s information from Workable to Bob and then initiates preboarding.
In place of the lengthy email exchange that they had before, HR has set up automated onboarding task lists for their new hires. These include requests to upload all of their paperwork such as bank details, identification records, and tax forms directly into Bob, and complete preboarding before their first day of work. It also triggers a task that sends out a candidate experience survey for new hires, enabling HR to gain valuable feedback on their hiring process.
Task lists are also set up for different stakeholders within the company, ensuring that new hires have everything they need and feel supported in their new roles. Using Bob’s onboarding workflows, HR can ensure that no detail is forgotten and that all sensitive information is saved in one centralized and secure location.
Main takeaways
- Skroutz saves a week in admin time by running their compensation review cycles in Bob, and which keeps all stakeholders—from HR to division heads, and Finance to Payroll—in the loop and constantly updated.
- With Bob, Skroutz can now run 360-degree performance reviews, including self-reviews, peer reviews, manager reviews, and reviews from direct reports.
- Skroutz loves Bob’s integration with Workable, which saves them time when hiring new employees.
- Skroutz uses Bob’s automated task lists when onboarding new employees, increasing efficiency and ensuring no detail is overlooked.
