Global power management giant
Results at a Glance
- Significant Efficiency Gains: Saved thousands of administrative hours annually, fundamentally optimizing regional workforce processes.
- Strategic HR Focus: Freed HR teams, attendance clerks, and managers from high-volume manual data processing to focus on high-value strategic work.
- Complex Localization Mastered: Successfully automated highly complex, localized rules, including 30+ unique overtime types in the Philippines and 8 distinct employee types in Taiwan.
- Superior User Experience: Delivered a transformative process optimization, moving over 10,000 employees to a self-service, real-time, and efficient mobile experience.
- Scalable APAC Blueprint: Established a unified, scalable WFM platform successfully deployed in China, the Philippines, and Taiwan, creating a blueprint for further regional expansion.
“This wasn’t just a system swap; we optimized the entire process. The GaiaWorks system brought great efficiency gains and a simple, efficient user experience to our employees, clerks, and HR team.”——— Director, HR Service Center, Eaton APAC
The Challenge: The Scale of Complexity in a Diverse Region
Eaton, a 113-year-old global power management leader, operates a vast network across 13 countries in the APAC region with nearly 20,000 employees.
As the company expanded, its HR teams faced immense operational challenges. The region’s diverse and complex labor laws created significant administrative burdens that its long-serving systems were not designed to handle automatically.
The complexity was a major business challenge:
- Highly Complex Labor Laws: Each country presented unique compliance challenges. The Philippines, for example, has 18 types of public holidays and strict regulations monitored by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). This includes over 30 different overtime calculation rules.
- Diverse Workforce Needs: Operations varied significantly. Taiwan alone has 8 distinct employee types (including factory, office, and sales staff), each with unique attendance and scheduling rules.
- Opportunities for Process Optimization: Manual processing for attendance, scheduling, and leave management was time-consuming for HR, managers, and employees alike, creating risks of data error and compliance issues.
Eaton needed a unified Workforce Management platform powerful enough to automate this extreme complexity and flexible enough to deliver a modern, mobile-first experience.
The Solution: A Unified WFM Engine Powered by GaiaWorks
Eaton’s APAC HR Service Center led a strategic initiative focused on process optimization. The goal was to re-engineer workflows from the ground up, not just “lift and shift” old functions to a new system.
Eaton selected the GaiaWorks Workforce Management (WFM) suite as its new, unified platform for the APAC region. The solution was configured to:
- Automate Complex Rules: The GaiaWorks platform was configured to automate the most difficult local requirements. At a factory in the Philippines, when a worker clocks out at 11:00 PM, the system now instantly applies the correct attendance rules, automatically determining the shift type, holiday status, and correct multiplier from over 30 possible types.
- Drive Process Efficiency: The system automated key areas by optimizing workflows (eliminating manual verifications), automating calculations (like leave quotas), and mobilizing approvals via the mobile app, drastically cutting process wait times.
- Unify Diverse Operations: The platform successfully managed the deep contrasts in Eaton’s operations, applying the correct, different rule sets for factory workers in Tainan and office staff in Taipei, all within one system.
The Results: A Transformative Leap in Efficiency and Experience
The impact of the GaiaWorks platform was both immediate and profound, establishing a new benchmark for Eaton’s digital transformation in the region.
1. Significant Efficiency Gains
The project’s primary success was the saving of thousands of administrative hours annually. This reclaimed time was a major strategic victory, allowing attendance clerks, supervisors, and HR teams to move from low-value data entry to high-value employee engagement and business support.
2. A Transformative Leap in User Experience
For over 10,000 employees, the system delivered a major upgrade.
- Empowerment & Privacy: Employees gained self-service access to their data and could manage sensitive leave requests privately.
- Modern Communication: Critical information moved from physical bulletin boards to precise, instant mobile push notifications.
- High User Adoption: The new system was met with enthusiasm. The local team in the Philippines was so pleased that they recorded testimonial videos and handed out commemorative badges on launch day.
3. From a Regional Tool to a Global Benchmark
By conquering the immense complexity of APAC’s labor laws, the Eaton-GaiaWorks project has become a milestone in the company’s regional operations. It proved that a single WFM platform can drive efficiency, ensure compliance, and dramatically improve the employee experience across a diverse landscape.
Struggling with complex APAC labor laws and inefficient processes? Talk to our team to see how GaiaWorks can unify your operation.