Employee Self-Service

The customer

As a truly Namibian company employing 5,568 people in various sectors, the Ohlthaver and List Group is rooted in and committed to Namibia and all her peoples. Headquartered in Windhoek, O&L is Namibia’s largest privately held group of companies, with revenues contributing about 4% of GDP.

Its business interests span food production, fishing, beverages, farming, retail trade, information technology, property leasing and development, marine engineering, steel retailing, and the leisure and hospitality industry, with annual revenues of over 5 billion Namibian dollars.

The challenge

• Increase efficiency by replacing a paper-based, labour-intensive vacation request process with an electronic one
• Enable users with limited SAP literacy or computer proficiency to interact with HR
• Minimise training requirements through simplified interfaces
• Accommodate multi-lingual needs, especially local languages not supported by SAP
• Prevent inappropriate or fraudulent access to personal data
• Prevent downtime related to password resets
• Reduce the time pressure on HR to provide simple employee data

What was implemented

Employees were given easy access to their own HR data through a secure, simplified interface at shared kiosks, with biometric identification in place of a password.

The outcome

• Private HR data such as pay slips, vacation requests and scheduling is available to non-specialist users at shared kiosks, on a timely basis
• The paper-based vacation request system was replaced with a real-time electronic process
• SAP data is presented in simplified screens showing only what the task needs, so no specialised SAP knowledge is required
• Biometrically controlled access provides accountability and prevents password sharing and fraudulent access