LPP is a Polish company that designs, manufactures and distributes clothing. During 25 years of its existence, it has developed from a small clothing company to be a tycoon in Central and Eastern Europe. The sales network covers the whole of Poland, however LPP products are also available in Germany, Czechia and Slovakia, the Balkans, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Croatia. Since 2015, LPP has also been operating in Egypt, Qatar and Kuwait. In 2016, a store was opened in the United Arab Emirates and in 2017, in London at Oxford Street, Europe’s largest shopping street.  Operating in different markets, LPP must adapt its offer to the preferences of customers in different countries, but also take into account the latest global fashion trends.

Such a broad business model and scale of operations must be based on proven IT tools in all areas of operation, including those related to HR. Currently, LPP employs more than 25,000 people in 20 countries. With this headcount, a good, reliable system facilitating work organization is a must.

Project Goals

Managing HR processes in a distributed sales network in Poland with almost 1000 stores is an extraordinary challenge.  LPP, with the support of SNP (now All for One Poland), undertook to carry out a unique project aimed at improving the efficiency and comfort of work of all HR process stakeholders – sales network employees, store managers and the central HR department.

The result of joint work was to develop a modern model of HR operation in the digital age, open to the needs of key customers – employees and store managers, whose work is of particular importance to the effectiveness of the network.

This purpose was to be achieved through implementing a modern HR platform, allowing for effective and quick processing of all personnel events in the dispersed employment structure, with particular emphasis on the time management module.

Employees and managers were to be provided with a self-service portal available at any time and from anywhere in the world, while the central HR department was to be equipped with a tool for monitoring and remote management of HR processes.

Project Flow

Carried out by LPP and SNP (now All for One Poland), the implementation of a new HR solution covered over 10,000 employees of stores of Reserved, Cropp, House, Mohito and Sinsay brands in Poland.

The implementation of such a large HR project was in itself a major challenge. An additional risk factor was the limited implementation time – only 10 months. Conceptual work started in May 2016 and the first employees were hired in the new system already in March 2017. LPP decided to launch the new solution in stages; this process lasted another 6 months. Another challenge was the need to train a large number of employees in operating the new HR platform. At the end of 2017, the full accounting for all employees of the LPP sales network in Poland was already made in the SAP HR system.

The project timeframe defined in this way required the two companies to cooperate closely at each stage of the project. The SNP implementation team consisted of more than 15 consultants, who with their experience supported LPP in the process of business analysis, implementation and support in the first weeks of using the system. However, even the best team would not have been able to implement the project of this scope within the set time had it not been for the involvement of the LPP implementation team, which, based on its own business analyses, defined the scope of the implemented applications very pragmatically, providing SNP with requirements for the operation of each functionality. A very important element of the implementation was also the constant monitoring of the progress of work against the requirements that were set by SNP at the stage of building the system architecture. The LPP implementation team meticulously tested the system, assessing at the same time whether the prepared solution met the high quality standards expected by end users.

Implementation Scope

The new platform for employees and store managers has been made available in the form of a simple, user-friendly portal – LPP Quick Peek. Users use LPP Quick Peek via a web browser or any mobile device, gaining access to a wide range of self-service functions.

As regards components, the HR platform is built around SuccessFactors Employee Central, a solution available in a cloud model (SaaS – Software as a Service). All information entered by users is saved on-line, enabling payroll calculation in the SAP HR system, which has been integrated by SNP specialists with SuccessFactors and SAP HR add-ons (All for One E-Tax Returns, All for One BHP).

The SuccessFactors Employee Central platform has been enriched with in-house developed SNP solutions built at the request of LPP in accordance with best practices using SAP Cloud Platform (All for One E-Time, All for One E-Requests).

Arkadiusz Wróbel, IT Director, LPP

Dynamic development of mobile systems
SuccessFactors Employee Central extensions are prepared by SNP (now All for One Poland) in innovative SAP UI5 technology on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. As a result, our HR solutions used by thousands of employees across the entire sales network, operate without any problems with the scalability of the cloud platform, while meeting the highest standards of data access security. Additionally, SAP HANA Cloud Platform functionalities guarantee us a flexible approach to the development of further extensions, which is crucial in such a dynamically developing organization as ours. The systems are accessible from mobile devices, which provides employees with easy access to the necessary information also at home, and keeps them informed about changes in the schedules via text messages. This is in line with the LPP system development strategy, which focuses on mobile tools
Arkadiusz Wróbel, IT Director, LPP

HR Self-Service on a Daily Basis

The key challenge was to develop an appropriate approach to the simplification of personnel processes and the involvement of employees working in the sales network in the implementation of these processes.

“Time is more precious than money, you can have more money, but you can’t have more time” – according to this proverb, our specialists and the LPP business team spent most of their work on developing All for One E-Time, an innovative application used by employees to manage their working time comprehensively. The aim of the solution is to optimally prepare work schedule in stores, with taking into account the balance between work and personal life of each employee.

Currently, thousands of employees log in to the LPP Quick Peek employee portal every day. Each user, from any place in the world and at any time convenient for him/her, can check the information about his/her remuneration (using the All for One E-Payslips application), enter his/her working time preferences and submit an e-leave request (using All for One E-Time). They can also change their data in the system, such as the bank account number (All for One E-Requests). The information entered in this way is delivered immediately to the SAP HR system, significantly reducing the circulation of traditional documents in the organization.

The processes taking place in the system are supported by the module for informing employees about changes in the statuses of HR and leave requests (e-mail). Additionally, employees are informed via SMS about changes in the system related to their working time.

Decentralization and Control in One

As part of the project, a modern approach to the employee hiring process was also developed. It enables each store manager to generate the necessary HR documents on their own, and as a result, to hire an employee almost without the participation of the HR department. Currently, a contract of employment, a referral for a preliminary medical examination or an OHS training sheet are automatically generated directly from the SAP HR system.

This reduces the need for tedious manual completion of documents. From the point of view of the store manager, the recruitment process is easier to start and faster to complete. At the same time, the HR department saves time.

All HR and payroll processes are controlled centrally from LPP’s headquarters in Gdańsk. Using many reporting mechanisms, HR specialists have control over all processes taking place in the sales network, from the moment an employee is hired, through payroll calculation, to generating PIT returns (All for One E-Tax Returns application).

It is very important for every conscious company to take care of the employee in the OHS area. That’s why LPP decided to enrich its HR solution with All for One BHP, an application that makes control over training extremely easy and transparent.

Paweł Serowik, HR Director, LPP

Work and live
At LPP, we want to align the company’s goals with the personal goals of each employee, creating a friendly workplace. This is what the HR platform, prepared together with SNP (now All for One Poland), supports. Modern technologies allow us to align the objectives that are seemingly difficult to align.
We align the effectiveness of working time management with employee satisfaction and compliance with regulations. We ensure uniformity, monitoring and control of HR processes, with their far-reaching decentralization and the use of employee self-service wherever possible.
We operate not only faster, but also more flexibly. At the store level, the new platform allows us to effectively plan man-hours in relation to customer traffic and store sales. We can also respond to the need to smoothly transfer employees to another store in the same city, regardless of the brand under which it operates. In this way, we create one team helping each other.
So we increase the productivity of working time, but not at the expense of employees. Everyone can modify their work schedule, taking care of their private life, according to the “work and live” slogan. We are fair to the labor law, we are fair to each other.
Paweł Serowik, HR Director, LPP

Benefits – from a bird’s eye view

From the perspective of several months of operation of the new platform, it can be concluded that the digital transformation in HR has become a reality in everyday work at LPP.

Managers can be sure that all units in the distributed LPP sales network operate using proven, unified HR processes, and employees can enjoy access to a modern platform that enables them to handle matters in a quick and trouble-free manner.

The key benefits resulting from the implementation include:

  • A coherent approach to the hiring process
  • Efficient and flexible management of employees and their working time as well as working hours preferences
  • Optimal staff planning in the store, also in the context of sales volume and traffic in the store
  • 100% compliance of working time planning with the Labor Code provisions
  • Automated generation of personnel documents
  • Time savings in the HR department thanks to employee self-service

Danka Krzysiak, Head of HR and Payroll Operations, LPP

Graphics of works in salons
Creating work schedules in stores is a critical process for us, as it determines the availability of our employees for customers and the ability to adjust the appropriate number of staff to the schedule of tasks in the store. On the one hand, the schedule must be optimal in terms of the productivity of a team of several dozen people, and on the other hand – fully in line with the labor law and the availability of the employees. Until now, a manager had to spend even two to three days to create such a plan every month. Now, thanks to All for One E-Time, managers using the automatic shift staffing function prepare a preliminary schedule suggested by the system in just a few minutes. With hundreds of stores, this brings enormous savings.
Danka Krzysiak, Head of HR and Payroll Operations, LPP

For a store manager

From the perspective of the HR strategy, the effectiveness and comfort of hundreds of people acting as store managers is of fundamental importance for the effectiveness of the network’s operation in general. It is a manager who is responsible for organizing the work of the store and the team, and at the same time is the representative of LPP in the field, performing also the functions of the “field representation of the HR department”. The central challenge in the store manager’s work is to plan the working time of his/her subordinates – that’s why the new HR platform, together with the capabilities of the All for One E-Time application, has brought so much to the work of this group of LPP employees.

From the point of view of the LPP store manager, the new HR platform means:

  • Convenient working time planning with full compliance with the Labor Code.
  • Automation of the process of taking into account the preferences in the working time of employees
  • Automation of the process of informing employees about their planned schedule.
  • Full control over the team’s leave requests.
  • Ability to generate employment contracts, contracts changing employment terms directly from the system, without the need to involve the HR team.
  • Control over the employment process with automatic generation of medical referrals and OHS training sheets.

For a Millennial

The key, although immeasurable, effect of the implementation is the satisfaction of employees with their work in a company that uses the most modern IT solutions.

For the young generation (millennials, Generation Y) entering the labor market, it is important to balance professional and private life. Ensuring the right balance between these two aspects of life is crucial for job satisfaction. Having a real impact on their work schedule, LPP store employees receive tools that make it easier for them to plan non-work activities. Mobility is crucial here – I have everything with me, I have everything in my smartphone, I balance my personal life and work.

From the point of view of the LPP employee, the HR platform means:

  • Access to information from any place in the world, at any time convenient for the employee.
  • Ability to check payslips also on mobile devices
  • Control over the planned working time, ability to report working time preferences
  • Text messages with information about changes in working time
  • Employee’s ability to change address and bank account data on their own
  • Leave self-service – checking leave quotas (I always know what my available leave is); quick submission and acceptance of e-leave requests

LPP Quick Peek: start screens of the store manager (a desktop view) and employee (a mobile view)

All for One E-Time – Time under Control

Working time planning was a central issue in the project. The participants of the project realized that the final result would be evaluated by thousands of sales network employees during their daily work.
Therefore, when working on the implementation of All for One E-Time for LPP, the basic assumption was to provide end users with a convenient and modern tool that would effectively allow them to control all the processes related to working time planning.

And this was achieved. Today, after logging in to the employee portal and displaying the All for One E-Time tab, each employee can see a clear work schedule for the current month. Here, they can report preferences for working time in the next month and submit a leave request in just a few moments. In the same tool, the store manager manages the team’s working time using views dedicated to him/her.

Employee view: a work schedule for the current month

LPP employees enter their preferences both in a positive sense (“I want to work on this day during these hours”) and in a negative sense (“I cannot work on this day because I have an exam, an appointment with a doctor”).

Employee view: entering time preferences in the next month

The employee can easily enter a leave request, at the same time viewing any previously entered absences of his/her team colleagues.

Store manager view: a manager’s dashboard

After logging in to LPP Quick Peek and navigating to the All for One E-Time application, managers can see the start screen, which is an HR dashboard that collects all the necessary information about the working time of the whole team.

This is where notifications appear informing the manager about key aspects of working time planning, such as changes in the employee’s working time basis, registered certificates of the employee’s disability, or expiring fixed-term contracts.

Working time planning is carried out on the shift planning screen. Here, the manager should specify their staff requirements on individual days (the so-called requirement matrix).

The matrix prepared in this way may be supplemented with “manual” entries by the manager. During this process, the manager is informed about the compliance of the planned staffing with the Labor Code on an ongoing basis.

However, the manual working time planning process is not an optimal one. Rather, it is used to take into account specific situations in the store that cannot be handled automatically using the database in the system.

The vast majority of LPP employees’ working time is planned with the use of the automatic shift staffing algorithm in All for One E-Time. After starting the automatic planning process, the system creates an optimal available work schedule for the whole store, taking into account all Labor Code restrictions and employees’ work preferences.

In this way, after preparing a requirement matrix for a certain number of employees, the system fills it in automatically, shortening the process of assigning employees to planned shifts from hours to just a few minutes.

In addition, All for One E-Time provides managers with access to a variety of reporting tools, such as:

  • Monthly and weekly schedules of employees
  • Specification of monthly and weekly schedule implementation
  • Specification of employees’ absences
  • Specification of working time preferences
  • Monthly and periodic working time statistics
  • Specification of man-hours worked in the store

All these activities can be carried out by employees and store managers also on a mobile device.

E-Payslips for Everybody

The “on-demand” availability of payroll information is a significant example of the benefits of digitalization of HR processes. Every LPP employee can view their payslips, including historical data, at any time. They are available after logging in to LPP Quick Peek.

The e-payslip information comes from the All for One E-Payslips application, integrated with SuccessFactors and the SAP HR payroll system.

HR LPP Platform in Numbers

Data valid for August 2018

  • Nearly 5,000 unique users logging in every day
  • More than 40% of logins from mobile devices
  • Nearly 40,000 leave requests approved in All for One E-Time
  • More than 65,000 HR requests submitted on the HR platform
  • Nearly 6,000 payslips downloaded monthly from All for One E-Payslips

LPP SA is one of the most dynamically developing clothing companies in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. For over 25 years, the company has been consistently operating in Poland and abroad, achieving successes on the demanding clothing market. LPP SA manages 5 fashion brands: Reserved, Cropp, House, Mohito i Sinsay. The company has a network of over 1700 stores and on-line shops of all its brands and creates jobs for about 25 thousand people in offices and sales structures in Poland, Europe, Asia and Africa.