Tasked with building a high-performing culture, Topcon’s HR unit knew it needed a globally consistent solution to give employees and managers access to HR data in a matrix organization. At the time, Topcon’s current HR systems were accessible only to the HR unit. “Whenever anyone needed information, someone in our unit would have to prepare the documentation and send it over,” says Senior HR Manager, Kazuto Yamada.
Visibility, even for HR, was extremely limited. “We didn’t have a clear idea of the kind of employees we had in our various locations. The first thing we needed to do was work on visualization.” Topcon chose Workday as a global system that would dramatically improve transparency and support collaboration across the group to drive business growth.
We needed to do a better job of using data and Workday has particularly strong functionality in data integration, reporting and analysis.
HR Senior Manager
Allowing managers to support career growth.
Workday allowed HR to become an open system, helping Topcon’s line managers to visualize human resources. Now they could see people’s past careers and skill sets, managers could appoint the right people into the right jobs. Topcon also incorporated the way Workday visualizes employee skills with its Career Development Plan. This has helped employees to talk with their managers about the career they want to pursue, while managers can look at the data and consider how they can make the most out of the individual capabilities available to them.
“We now have the kind of environment that enables line managers to think about and act independently to support the growth and careers of their teams,” says Kazuto.
By the end of the first day we went live, 70% of our employees had already logged in.
HR Senior Expert
Empowering employees with self-service.
Opening up HR functionality to the business and allowing employees and managers to see and update information themselves has changed the culture at Topcon. “Employees themselves can update their information, adding training they’ve completed and new qualifications they’ve earned, showcasing their uplifted capabilities—and managers can see those updates immediately. HR can also check on where skills are insufficient or where there are more than adequate and assign people accordingly—not only in Japan but overseas. This has helped us to boost sales and profits. It’s a big step forward,” explains Kazuto.”
Workday is a platform for managing HR information, but its application goes beyond purely HR matters.
HR Senior Manager
Improving goal setting to drive performance.
According to HR Senior Expert, Atsushi Yano, before Workday Topcon employees submitted their goals on paper and, even in HR, there was no way of analyzing such data. But now Workday-based goal management has boosted communication between managers and their staff. “This is leading to people setting better goals,” he explains. “Also, HR can use Workday to check on goals and make sure they are aligned with strategy. As a result, we've already seen quality improvements.”