Randstad Germany has been working hard to make its future workplace happen. And it is alive and kicking! A big milestone reached in 2019 was the roll-out of Chromebooks. 1,422 Chromebooks were distributed to consultants, and another 500 Chromebooks made available for external people working from Randstad offices (one Chromebook per office). Part of the project was also starting the switch from Microsoft Office to G-suite. 

2.000 Chromebooks delivered

Stefanie Tessaro, project manager Future Workplace at Randstad Germany: “I look back on a great, smooth project. Of course it is an advantage for everyone to work with Chromebooks, so we did not expect a lot of resistance when we started. But still it feels good when something goes well: a change is always exciting. There was a great collaboration between all involved German teams – IT, marketing, communication, business school, Randstad academy, procurement, purchasing, finance, project and invocation, the New Front Office-project (CRM) -, with the global organization and with our partners.”

“Something that also helped the smooth transition was that Citrix stayed available throughout the project. That enabled people to keep using Microsoft Office when needed, which made sure the change wasn’t too big for everyone all at once. The next step now is to get completely rid of Citrix. This is what we call Future Workplace 2 The Max. It is scheduled for Q2 of this year. We will only keep Microsoft applications where essentially needed.”

The journey continues: Future Workplace 2 The Max!

Gamification to facilitate change

To make the process of change easier, a gamification element was part of the Future Workplace project. Stefanie: “We let our consultants familiarize themselves with the Chromebooks and G-suite through gamification: we created nine quizzes that they had to do in a period of nine weeks. The first quiz started with general ‘what to expect’ topics and with the subsequent quizzes we tested their knowledge more in-depth.”

Ninjas and Senseis

Another important part of the change was the appointment of Ninjas and Senseis. Stefanie: “Around 700 consultants that were part of the project earned the Ninja certificate.. In addition we trained around 90 Google Senseis, which are specially trained master users to support the sales organization and our service teams.”

A big hug from the CIO

Randstad’s CIO/CDO Carsten Priebs gives a big hug to the project-team: It is unbelievable how this team changed working at Randstad: Rather then being tied to the desk our consultants are now free to work from where they want and enjoy the full portfolio of our applications and tools. Tightly timed and interdependant with the rollout of WIFI in our 500 branches and the introduction of our new Front Office (UFO), based on Bullhorn and Salesforce, this project bundle beamed Randstad into the age of digitalization.Dies