“Last year, we were looking for a tool to bring down both our employee turnover and the degree of absenteeism,” explains Wim Van der Meersch, Chief Human Resources Officer at Bridgestone EMIA. “Triggered by the results other companies already obtained thanks to the Twegos method, we started a pilot project in Poland. Poland is a rather particular market from an HR-perspective. There is less offer than demand in Poland, which makes it a labor market with quite some frictions and ideal HR-territory for a pilot with Twegos.”
“During the pilot, Bridgestond retained the regular recruitment process and Twegos ran in parallel”, says Jurgen Noël, one of the Co-Founders of Twegos. “In this pilot the population consisted of both blue- and white-collar profiles. We focused on blue-collar profiles, operating in a production environment, however. The database did not contain enough white-collar profiles in the data set to run any kind of reliable, statistical analysis.”
Significant decrease in turnover
“We firstly see that the blue-collar profiles have one, strong culture, independent of location or function level,” Jurgen shows. “Furthermore, profiles with a high fit to this culture show 22% less turnover behavior than those without that fit.” For Wim Van der Meersch, this was an eye-opener. “We could analyze, in a fact-based manner, that the Twegos tool can effectively reduce our employee turnover with 22%.
We haven’t seen this way of making a business case with any other tool… and this is unique.”
“It’s important to understand that only when applying a cut-off level of 70%, we can reduce employee turnover with 22%. This means that you remove all respondents with a value fit score lower than 70% from the recruitment process,” Jürgen explains. The Twegos ValueFit tool ran in parallel with the regular recruitment process. Bridgestone used it in pre-screening.
36% less time spent on recruitment and less absenteeism
“Analyzing the pilot results, we see that applying this same cut-off level of 70% would result in a 36% reduction in time spent on recruitment,“ states Jürgen.
During the pilot, Bridgestone Poland interviewed 725 candidates. 263 interviews were an unnecessary time loss, because the applicants scored less than 70% when it comes to value fit. “I was pleasantly surprised to learn that using Twegos ValueFit in prescreening could save us 36% in time spent on recruitment,” Wim confirms. “This is particularly good news for our recruitment team that is under a lot of pressure to successfully manage the recruitment process with limited resources.”
Finally, the pilot results also give an indication on the level of absenteeism at Bridgestone Poland. “We see clearly an indication that blue-collar workers with a high fit score are likely to be 28% less absent for sickness (1-3 days without medical leave), and equally likely to be 18% less absent for unpaid holidays. These are important figures because absenteeism increases the workload heavily in a production environment,” according to Jürgen. “These indicators are interesting because they are also linked to a better performance. The direct impact on our productivity can be substantial,” confirms Wim.
Qualitative collaboration
The pilot results have convinced Bridgestone Poland to expand the collaboration with Twegos. “We see the value for our production facilities, but would like to expand the use now also into our executive and retail units,“ says Wim. “We were also thrilled with the way Twegos operates. The collaboration has been very professional and suits our reality and our intention for change. Twegos stands for drive, flexibility and a qualitative accompaniment.”
The results of this pilot project have been very positive for Bridgestone. There are clear indications that Twegos ValueFit will enable a reduction of employee turnover, a reduction of time spent on recruitment and a reduction of absenteeism. Bridgestone also praises the user-friendliness of the tool: the process is quick, light and easy-to-understand for all respondents. Want to learn more about ValueFit? Get in touch and we are happy to help! Or check out our offer.
Based on an interview with Wim Van der Meersch, Chief Human Resources Officer at Bridgestone EMIA .