How Central Group put employee experience at the center of their digital operations with automations

A forward-looking business with a diverse portfolio, Central Group is a leader in Thailand’s retail, property and hospitality industries. The company also has investments both domestically and internationally in leading enterprises from various industries – brand management, food and beverage, and digital lifestyle.

As Head of Digital HR, Parichat is mainly responsible for managing company-wide HR SaaS solutions, exploring enhancements and integrations between these solutions, and identifying manual processes for automation to improve process efficiencies.

Her goal is to transform and elevate the employee experience by streamlining processes and leveraging easy-to-use, mobile-friendly solutions to establish a stronger connection with their large frontline workforce.

The existing platform that the employees were using to apply for leave took up too much time, and they wanted a platform that was easy to use and mobile-friendly.

In addition, at the height of the pandemic, Central Group needed to collect health declaration forms from 4,000+ employees in 2 business units across multiple locations in Thailand. They needed a quick solution to track and identify employees in possible COVID clusters.

As a forward-looking business, Central Group also wanted to level up the employee experience by allowing any employee to give thanks, encouragement, and recognition to their colleagues and managers. At the same time, they wanted to replace outdated technology tools, and eliminate manual and repetitive work.

Central Group’s HR team used Workbot to build a Leave Bot. Now, employees can apply for time off with just a few clicks, via the Workplace chat. Once a request is submitted, Workato routes the request to the line manager via Workplace to ask for approval.

When the line manager approves the request, the employee receives a notification of leave request approval via Workplace as well. The leave request and approvals process is now easily done through the chat platform. This eliminates the need for employees to log in to SAP SuccessFactors to perform this request (1 system less to manage!).

Now, employees can submit their health declaration forms in just a few clicks, via the Workplace chat. Once the form is submitted, Workato picks up the data on the backend, identifies any COVID risks / cases, and notifies the HR team and respective line managers via Workplace. The bot also sends out automated questionnaires to keep track of employees in quarantine. With these datas, Workato generates a COVID Status Daily Report that is automatically sent out via email to the relevant stakeholders.

In addition, the HR Team can broadcast any COVID-related news / changes in protocol, all via the bot. Employees can also use the bot to update their vaccination statuses.

Since implementing Health Bot, the HR team has access to real-time data on employee’s health statuses, and can easily identify employees who are in critical COVID zones. This further allows them to provide the timely support needed to ensure their employee’s well-being and safety, while keeping the business productive.

With Chom Bot, Central Group’s HR team streamlined the employee appreciation workflow and brought greater visibility to the employees at different levels – formal and informal, managers and peer-to-peer.

After implementing Leave Bot, Health Bot and Chom Bot, Central Group’s HR team saw significant ROI:

• Better & faster experience for employees

• Increased usage in Leave Bot

• Reduced leave approval waiting time by 94%

• Quicker time to integration (1 week to build and go live with Health Bot)

• 60% of health declarations collected daily

To further integrate a customer-centric mindset and process into how employees work, Parichat and her team are looking to build Dream Bot, where employees can submit ideas to motivate or inspire their colleagues on customer-centric projects. The bot will also facilitate idea sharing contests for employees to take part in.