The trigger: finding a solution suited to watchmaking, not a generic tool

When Saskia Henry arrives at Metalem at the end of 2023, management sets an ambition: move from manual HR management to a digital, up-to-date tool. Ten providers are evaluated.

The choice falls on Roger. What makes the difference: the Roger team seeks to understand Metalem’s specific needs, challenges its practices, and relies on the modularity of its tool to match Metalem’s requirements. In practical terms, this has made it possible to deliver an improvement that now benefits everyone: an hour catch-up module that meets the requirements of sectors like watchmaking.

The project starts in February 2024. Scoping and setup in March-April, testing in May-June, data migration in August, launch in September. Six months, to the day.

To bring the teams on board, including the craftspeople who do not all have a professional email address—a point addressed from the scoping stage—Metalem relies on fifteen ambassadors, volunteer employees who test the tool before the final choice.

For manager training, Roger presented the tool on site and then provided remote support. A process that allowed managers to quickly manage their teams’ attendance with the tool. For employees, the ambassadors took part in the support process. Very quickly, employees managed their own clock-ins, balances, and absences and no longer went through HR.

After the September launch, Marie-Noëlle Jeanneret, client success manager at Roger, provided support for continuous improvement: process adjustments, workflow optimization, and responses to blockers.

And Saskia Henry concludes:

"She knows Metalem’s employees, their environment, and the way they work. A detail that changes everything in day-to-day adoption."

The transformation: complete HR digitization, from the shop floor to management

The objective has now been achieved: the HR function is digitalized. « We have moved from an administrative office to a real HR function », Saskia Henry sums up. This represents six months less administrative work each year.

This time has been reinvested in what was not possible before: setting up an employee guide, structured tracking of apprentices, and multi-skilling matrices to prepare for retirements and safeguard rare expertise.

On the shop floor, each employee has gotten into the habit of checking their vacation balance. There are almost no more HR calls for this kind of question. The paper timesheets signed by managers, forwarded and filed by HR in shoeboxes, have disappeared. Along with them: data-entry errors and checks.

For managers, the change is just as concrete. Before Roger, they had no visibility into absences and attendance. Today, they have a shared calendar to organize their teams’ work.

Finally, on regulatory obligations, the data for the cantonal authorities is ready in half a day, compared with a week of work before.

An unexpected benefit also emerged: internal communication. The platform makes it possible to share information directly with employees. It is a positive impact observed on the ground that Metalem had not anticipated