2.1. The organization and its aspiration
FrieslandCampina is a world-leading multinational dairy corporation which is the result of a merger between Royal Friesland Food and Campina in 2008. The corporation is collectively owned by the dairy farmers from the Netherlands and other nations. As the biggest stakeholders of the corporation, the farmers demand FrieslandCampina’s operations towards sustainable growth and value creation, which are also the two main goals of their business route until 2020 (FrieslandCampina, 2016). The route2020, their long-term aspiration, revolves around these four figures: 5, 10, 15 and 20.
Specifically, the corporation wants to aim for a volume increase of 5% in its priority markets (Europe, the Middle East and Asia, especially China), Next to that, FrieslandCampina strives to process 10 billion kilos of members’ milk and increase revenue to 15 billion $ before 2020. Lastly, it aspires to be financially healthy and in harmony with nature in the upcoming 20 years.
As a major player in the global FMCG industry, FrieslandCampina has full control of the entire value chain, developing, designing and producing their products from ‘’grass to glass’’. As the organization wants to ensure sustainable growth for its business, it represents itself as a people-focused, approachable, open and transparent business (FrieslandCampina, 2016).
2.2. FrieslandCampina’s organizational structure
Zooming in the corporation, the organizational structure of FrieslandCampina consists of five market-oriented business groups operating worldwide namely Consumer Products EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa); Consumer Products Asia; Cheese, Butter and Milk Powder; Ingredients and China. There are numerous factories, innovation centers and offices located at every continent of the world to maintain FrieslandCampina’s position in the global playfield.
The client, the HR Manager works in the ICT Organization of FrieslandCampina. The ICT organization plays a Corporate Support role by providing these service lines:
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Supporting Operations Services, Commercial Operations Services, Employee Services, Value Chain Services and Business Intelligence Services. The Development &Operations team somewhat covers the whole ICT organization and those five service lines, assisting them with innovative and business-oriented IT solutions (see figure below). So to say, the research is executed and targeted at the new employees who belong to the green and yellow areas in this figure below.
2.3. Vision of FrieslandCampina’s ICT
The ICT organization itself is in a transformational phase, which is reflected upon its vision: Let’s make a difference. ICT wants to represent itself as a global reliable business partner who can bring about innovation and impact to the business world by taking advantage of the ever-changing IT advantages. The main clients of the ICT are the five big business groups of FrieslandCampina. ICT, though having the leading role of support for all the business groups and design all the service lines of FrieslandCampina, has a lot of gaps to fill in within its internal operation. One of the areas that need a lot of improvements is Communication, aside from Priority Setting and Building
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Capabilities. Communication is thus put as a focus point in every project and program, including the Onboarding of the HR team.2.4. Employees of FrieslandCampina ICT
From 2014 until now, there have been 82 talented individuals internally hired by FrieslandCampina ICT. Seventy of them are now still functioning in the company and their nationalities vary from country to country. More than 60% of the new hires are Dutch and the rest comes from other parts of Europe and Asia. English is the lingua franca of FrieslandCampina, but Dutch is the most spoken language of the whole ICT.
Quite some favor for the Dutch language was granted to most of the Onboarding activities, for example, 7 out of 10 Introduction Days are organized for Dutch employees.
Language barrier is a classic concern for global enterprise, but for Onboarding, it can cause some miscommunication and the ICT’s HR can appear as insensitive and unprofessional when it sends out information in Dutch to new foreign employees.
2.5. Current Onboarding’s communication channels
As the organizational structure is complex and the Onboarding process may vary from team to team, there is the need for sufficient and consistent communication about Onboarding to the new employees. The current HR team demonstrated their wishes to have some improvements for the communication tools of the Onboarding, so the new staff can receive information sufficiently and fitting with their wishes.
Until now, there is a separation between the offline and online channels used to communicate information regarding Onboarding. These channels can be used throughout the process of Onboarding from Pre-boarding to the Follow-up stage.
For online channels, there are emails, Lync/Skype for Business, Yammer – the enterprise social network, and the company’s intranet (SharePoint). SharePoint is a common enterprise platform for collaboration and communication within the organization and thus plays a big role in showcasing information about Onboarding to the new employees. For now, the information about Onboarding can be found on the corporate intranet’s HR site. The HR site consists of different know-how sections and especially an Onboarding-Offboarding site where new employees can check to
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accumulate new information. This site, however; is not well-communicated to the new staff.There are also offline channels such as telephone, post, face-to-face conversations, team meetings, workshops, print materials (posters, brochures) and especially an Introduction Day. This Introduction Day is organized exclusively for newcomers and includes several integration activities and presentations that tell about the futuristic, strategic moves of FrieslandCampina. On this day, the new staff can tour around the office buildings and to the factories where the end-products are made. The goal of the Introduction Day is to bring the new hires closer to the supply chain operation of FrieslandCampina. The company hopes to demonstrate the root of its business to the new employees: the farmers and how they make the dairy products. The Introduction Day is organized both in Dutch and English and new employees can only register for it once every month.
Taking one step back, there are many communication channels used to assist the Onboarding, but miscommunication still happened. The research is thus designed to make an assessment of the channels mentioned above and spot improvement points to tailor the communication channels of Onboarding to the motivations of the new hires. This way, the new hires can become more engaged with FrieslandCampina, getting more productive and bring in positive things to themselves and the company.