"Our HR team and our Store Managers have found the new onboarding system so easy and quick to use. We’ve been really happy with the system and working with the Affirm team."

Christie Lockyer,
Senior Human Resources Manager

Billabong International Limited’s (Billabong) core business is the marketing, distribution, wholesaling and retailing of apparel, accessories, eyewear, wetsuits and hardgoods in the boardsports sector under the Billabong, Element, Von Zipper, Honolua Surf Company, Kustom, Palmers Surf, Xcel, Tigerlily, Sector 9 and RVCA brands. The company has approximately 6000 staff worldwide and its shares are publicly listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

Business Challenges

Billabong Australia employ permanent and casual staff with seasonal peaks over Christmas where a significant number of staff are recruited.

New hires previously received onboarding packs in the mail, which included contracts, forms, policies and company information, which were then manually returned to either the store or HR team for processing.

The HR team often encountered errors due to incorrect information being provided by the candidate, and HR would spend significant time chasing information or missing paperwork from candidates and stores. The manual process was time consuming, labour intensive, and would often delay the onboarding of new hires.

The typical demographic of many Billabong new hires is someone young and technology savvy, mobile and connected to the web wherever they go, and want to consume information through their mobile devices.

Affirm’s Onboarding Solution

Billabong, a company focused on its staff, felt that the manual onboarding experience did not align with the company’s brand. They wanted to create a user friendly, modern and professional candidate experience so that they could onboard new hires quickly online.

Billabong chose Affirm’s web based onboarding solution to transform the experience for their new hires.

Key benefits

Billabong have transformed the way they onboard their new hires.

The system allows either the HR team or Retail Store Managers to set up and onboard new staff. It also provides candidates with a highly personalised onboarding experience, where they can enter details online via tablet, smartphone device or PC, and complete the onboarding process in a way that best suits them.

• Significantly reduces time to onboard and hire staff
• Provides a clear communication process to all Billabong stakeholders around Australia
• Ensures all employees are compliant with workplace regulations by having legal contracts in place before commencing employment
• Provides a user friendly and intuitive experience for new employees to begin their employment, and enables them to electronically accept employment contracts and policies quickly
• Helps educate new hires on the Billabong brand before they start, by providing new hires with information to read and understand the business and culture, to help them settle in quickly
• Eliminates duplicate data entry and time wasted in processing paperwork
• Eliminates postage and courier costs

Conclusion

Billabong have been thrilled with their new onboarding system, which was implemented within six weeks of client acceptance.