Case Study #2: How GlueData keeps growing during the pandemic

GlueData was established in 2011 and started using Hi5 in July 2018, after realising they needed a central place for employee performance reviews which allowed for easy collation and storage. They extended their global reach in 2020 when they set up an EU office in Everberg, Belgium.

GlueData’s employees are data experts who partner with corporates to build SAP data solutions, oftentimes as on-site consultants to their customers which include an impressive portfolio of corporate giants such as Massmart, Pick ‘n Pay, Engen, Pioneer Foods, Tiger Foods, Media24 — the list goes on.

This means that their entire team are rarely together in one building at any given time. This has become even more prevalent during the pandemic, with their South African workforce now working completely remotely.

The ability to keep their distributed team connected while working remotely, especially through Hi5’s cloud-based performance review & recognition tools, has proven an invaluable arrow in their quiver of software.

Culture and values have always been central to the success of GlueData and these are nurtured through a range of activities including info sessions, one-on-one calls with directors and promoting a caring, team-work approach to all engagements. What’s more, culture alignment and measurement has become more central to their everyday running of the business

“Hi5 has helped extensively in keeping in touch with the team through positive reinforcement of daily activities (Hi5's) and showing how these activities align to our culture and our values, also through embedding our values into the review process where values are highlighted as much as goals…” — Kathy Carrick, HR, Marketing & Operations Manager at GlueData

We delved into our own data to see how GlueData has been coping during the pandemic, comparing data from the past year (August 2019 — August 2020).

The COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa started at the end of March 2020. That month GlueData had seen an all-time high number of employees actively engaged (giving & receiving recognition and completing performance reviews on Hi5), followed by a steep decline in April and their all-time low in May.

What followed blew us away: in a time where many businesses were scaling down, furloughing employees and closing shop, GlueData’s number of employees increased — followed by a rapid upward trend in employee engagement!

In a time where many businesses were scaling down, furloughing employees and closing shop, GlueData’s number of employees increased.

Now, with a bigger, international workforce and fully remote South African team, GlueData is really able to see the value of investing in a cloud-based performance review & employee recognition tool like Hi5 — taking less than 3 months to bounce back from their lowest number of engaged employees as a result of the pandemic.

This trend also indicates that they have an effective onboarding procedure in place, ramping up the time it took for new team members to settle in and become actively engaged members of the company’s culture.

About GlueData

“Accurate Data, Relevant Information, Effective Business Decisions” — the GlueData team has a passion for data and a very specific set of techno-functional skills, working alongside Implementation Specialists and BI specialists to enable business drivers for their customers using SAP EIM applications.

GlueData consultants also have ERP & S/4 HANA business process knowledge and deep expertise in master data object and field content within SAP and aligned to specific industries.

Their vision is to be the most sought-after niche SAP data solutions firm and to deliver value-driven services & products that:

• enable data migration projects,
• simplify the governance & management of data, and
• transform data into business intelligence.

GlueData wants to ensure that their clients’ business processes are optimised & their business strategies are realised, using data. How do they achieve this?

• By striving to be a company that attracts top talent, committed to the GlueData vision and culture.
• Providing a career path and working environment that inspires, challenges and rewards their employees.
• Developing and delivering the highest quality data services and products that meet market needs and provide customer value.

🎥 Check out GlueData’s testimonial video here.

Below is the text from the case study interview we did with Kathy. Enjoy and let us know what you think!

1️⃣ What’s your name, what do you do? What does your role entail?

Hi, I’m Kathy Carrick and I’m the HR, Marketing & Operations Manager at GlueData. I ensure the company runs efficiently and that our people are happy 😊

2️⃣ What company do you work for and what does your company do?

GlueData is a leading SAP Data Solutions company based in South Africa and Belgium.

3️⃣ How many people work at your company?

We have around 60 consultants delivering high-end data solutions to SAP customers.

4️⃣ How long have you been using Hi5?

We’ve been using Hi5 for more than 2 years now.

5️⃣ What were the challenges you were facing before you started using Hi5?

Recognising every day achievements and successes — as a consulting firm our teams are dispersed across many clients and work onsite, so we struggle to keep in touch with day-to-day activities and successes.

We also needed a way to solicit open, constructive 360 degree feedback on consultants for review purposes from all colleagues on each project, as well as a tool for creating quick, occasional online surveys to ascertain areas of improvement within the business or our processes.

Furthermore, as a dispersed team we were looking for a centralised place for making a schedule of important events and reminders available to the team, without opening up everyone’s calendars.

As if it wasn’t hard enough finding one tool that had all these elements, we also wanted to be able to keep an organisational chart online that was available to the team in real-time.

6️⃣ How has using Hi5 in the company helped you to meet these challenges?

Hi5 provides a platform for celebrating daily successes and creating company-wide visibility of these through recognition messages, fun GIFs and various ways to interact (Hi5 backing, commenting, etc.).

It also provides us with much needed employee feedback, and we use Hi5 extensively in our bi-annual review process. We also occasionally run surveys using the platform’s Pulses feature.

We keep our schedule of important announcements & events using the Notice Board, and keep our org chart up to date using the Organogram tool on Hi5.

7️⃣ Can you see a noticeable difference in your team / culture?

We have always had a great team and culture, so we did not really see this as a weak point we wanted to address. However, Hi5 has helped extensively in keeping in touch with the team through positive reinforcement of daily activities (Hi5’s) and showing how these activities align to our culture and our values, also through embedding our values into the review process where values are highlighted as much as goals.

With Hi5, we have a platform for open and honest feedback which is aligned to our values and our focus on growth and development.

8️⃣ Would you recommend Hi5 to other companies?

Definitely!

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