07 / 10
Turning a New System Into a Habit Globally
Headline result
95% cut in paper-based HR submissions within a year
The challenge
Having a self-service system in place didn't mean people used it. Across the same manufacturer's 140,000-employee worldwide workforce, a stubborn volume of HR activity was still being submitted on paper and understanding why, team by team, turned out to be one of the hardest parts of the whole programme.
My approach
I brought together a global team of stakeholders to first assess the scale of continued paper-based submission and understand its root causes. We worked through the processes already in place and the barriers to self-service adoption, to understand where, why, and for whom the tools weren't landing – some couldn't use them, others simply didn't want to. We used personas to work through the "what's in it for me" for each group, then built a campaign of targeted communication and support to bring everyone onto self-service.
The impact
Global paper usage fell by 95% within a year, backed by strong senior and stakeholder sponsorship that helped shift perspectives on self-service and on HR systems more broadly across the business. It was a reminder that adoption is won or lost on the human side of a rollout, not just the technical one.