Discover how AAK partnered with Octily to personalize their HR platform, creating an engaging experience that reflects their brand and supports their global workforce.
AAK
Octily
Are you looking to make your HR platform more engaging and aligned with your company’s culture?
In this interview, Denise Broberg, Global Data Insights Manager for Human Resources at AAK, shares her journey of transforming AAK’s Cornerstone OnDemand platform to drive employee engagement and achieve ambitious sustainability goals. Through a close partnership with Octily, Denise turned the HR platform into a personalized, branded experience that truly connects with employees across the globe. Let’s dive into how AAK is “Making Better Happen™” and learn practical insights that could help you on your own HR journey.
Can you tell us about your role and what drives your passion for Talent Management?
Denise: “I joined AAK just one year ago in a newly created role as the Global Data Insights Manager in HR. My background as a Customer Success Manager at Cornerstone OnDemand gave me a unique perspective – I already knew AAK, as one of my favorite clients, and saw firsthand the potential of Cornerstone. What really drives my passion for Talent Management is the opportunity to make a tangible difference in people’s work lives. Sometimes, in HR, it seems we do a number of projects but can’t show concrete results backed up with numbers. In my Data Insights role, it is really important for me to plan ahead for ROI. The customizations we’ve done with Octily are a great opportunity to show the business, with data and analytics, how tailoring Cornerstone has a real effect toward our Employee Engagement goals and how HR has a concrete impact on the success of the company.”
ABOUT AAK
AAK is not just about oils – it’s about making everyday products better, from the chocolate you crave to the ice cream you indulge in. With a rich history spanning over 150 years, AAK’s mission of “Making Better Happen™” is brought to life by over 4,000 employees working across 25 regional sales offices, 15 Customer Innovation Centers, and 20 production facilities worldwide. Headquartered in Malmö, Sweden, AAK is committed to fostering a vibrant, inclusive company culture that unites its global workforce and supports its sustainability ambitions.
What are the main challenges AAK faced before working with Octily?
Denise: “When I joined AAK, they had been using Cornerstone OnDemand for several years, but only for basic HR functions. However, the standard Cornerstone setup didn’t support the biggest challenge – integrating our global teams across five continents, speaking 20 different languages, to build a common company culture in a sustainable way. While Cornerstone’s functionality is exceptional, without corporate branding and personalization, it wasn’t living up to its full potential. I knew that with some expert assistance, we could truly “Make Better Happen”.
We are on a digital and cultural transformation journey at AAK. We need to attract, engage, and retain employees on a global scale. To do this, we need to engage new employees right from the start, encourage current employees to learn and grow, and support our managers by providing the tools to help shape the new culture. We want to create a new way of working, a new way of behaving toward each other, and create a safe environment for all our employees. With the help of Octily, we are on a good path.”
How will the collaboration with Octily impact your Talent Management strategy?
Denise: “Our work with Octily is transforming how employees work with our HR platform. It starts with new employee onboarding. We only get one chance with each employee to make a good first impression of Cornerstone. We want to give every employee the same onboarding experience, no matter where in the world they join AAK. In addition, we want new hires to understand the breadth of AAK – its farms, factories, laboratories, and offices – and its inclusive programs for diversity, equity, and employee engagement. Octily has helped us create a beautiful, tailored Onboarding Page that gives new hires a great impression of the breadth and depth of AAK and the feeling of being part of a big, connected family all over the world.
This smooth onboarding experience continues with beautiful, personalized Welcome Pages that optimize each employee’s experience with user-friendly interfaces, streamlined navigation and access, and alignment with our corporate brand values. Cornerstone OnDemand is a great platform, but if people don’t log in or can’t find what they need, everything is impeded, and they don’t come back for more. Our employee engagement metrics showed that employees were logging in only once every two months, mainly for basic HR tasks like compliance training and performance reviews. I knew we could make this much better, but we did not have the in-house resources to make the necessary changes. Octily, with its deep expertise in Cornerstone and exceptional creative and technical team, was able to help us build inspiring, compelling pages that align beautifully with our corporate brand and messaging.”
How will the collaboration with Octily impact your Talent Management strategy?
Denise: “We are in the process of transforming three key activities in Cornerstone: The Onboarding experience for new employees, Custom Welcome Pages for every employee’s HR journey, and a Manager’s Hub to help streamline and provide transparency for the tasks of managing employees.
Onboarding:
Onboarding is every employee’s first “taste” of what it is like to work at AAK and with its HR platform. We want to give each employee the same onboarding experience, no matter where in the world they join AAK. Octily’s customization provides a personalized welcome message, a welcome video from the CEO, links to self-service custom HR forms, quick access to learning content from the Global Instruction Program, and information about AAK’s new ‘buddy program’ for new hires. This combines to make every employee feel they are an important part of the AAK team.
Welcome Pages:
Next is our new Welcome Page. This is a challenge and opportunity for us as, typically, our employees’ main interaction with Cornerstone has been for compliance training. The training itself is a required, dull exercise, leaving a bad taste around the Cornerstone platform. The employees seeing a Cornerstone message would think, ‘Oh no, not more of that boring Cornerstone compliance training.’ With our new Octily-customized Welcome Page, we are optimizing the user experience, creating user-friendly interfaces to streamline navigation and access, and aligning with corporate brand values. Our goal is to change a once-every-two-month interaction to once or twice a week. We feel the new Octily improvements will help us make this happen.
Manager’s Hub:
The goal of AAK’s Manager’s Hub is to provide its leaders around the world with a single, simple-to-navigate page offering insight into the state of their specific team and each team member. The system we’ve designed with Octily provides an easy overview of due dates and easy access to actions with trigger reminders and notification pop-ups. The inspiration for the AAK Manager’s Hub came from a Electrolux Case Study I read on the Octily website. Our managers are super busy, and HR tasks are a burden. I was intrigued at how Octily managed to pull different information from various parts of the Cornerstone system and display them in a streamlined way. The goal – make it simple. With Octily, we have done just that.”
Octily quickly delivered designs that fit our corporate culture and haven’t stopped impressing us since. Their creativity and precision helped elevate our HR platform far beyond our initial vision.
What advice would you give other organizations considering a similar approach?
Denise Broberg: “Because of my work as a Cornerstone Customer Success Manager, I knew how much the Cornerstone platform could be tailored – with corporate branding, page personalization, improved navigation, process flow, and much more. However, I also knew when I joined AAK that the HR team had limited in-house technical resources.
When I worked at Cornerstone, there was a buzz in the air amongst Customer Success Managers about the Octily team and how they could transform Cornerstone for our clients. I knew if we wanted to quickly transform into a beautiful, on-brand, bespoke Cornerstone, the right team to engage was Octily. This was the right choice. We are on our way!
The collaboration with Octily was really great right from the start. We brainstormed as a team, and with a simple request, much like giving an AI prompt – ‘Bring me something that you think is nice, that fits our corporate culture’ – Octily quickly delivered the perfect designs and hasn’t stopped impressing us since.
We realized that, similar to working with a generative AI, the more context and clarity we provided about our needs, the better the outcomes. Octily thrived on the input we gave, continuously delivering designs that were not only on point but also beautifully aligned with our brand. It’s been a truly collaborative process, with Octily responding to our feedback with creativity and precision, helping us elevate our HR platform far beyond our initial vision.”
Conclusion
AAK’s journey with Octily underscores the power of tailored customizations in transforming employee experiences and driving business outcomes. Denise’s insights highlight the importance of collaboration, creativity, and a forward-thinking approach in navigating the evolving landscape of Talent Management.
“I am very satisfied with the whole collaboration with Octily as a creative partner. They contributed new ideas, approaches, and perspectives from their long, broad work customizing Cornerstone for other clients. I can come to a meeting and say, ‘I have nothing. Would you come with something, and we can work from there?’ And, so they would. The inspirational collaboration sessions have been really helpful for AAK as a company. We could go from nothing and have a way forward. Such win-win working together.”
Want to learn more about how customization can transform your HR platform?
Partner with Octily to transform Cornerstone into a platform that reflects your brand and engages your employees. From personalized Welcome Pages to comprehensive Manager Hubs, Octily helps you unlock the full potential of Cornerstone. Join AAK and other industry leaders in maximizing your HR platform with tailored customizations that drive engagement, enhance onboarding, and showcase HR’s value.
- Get in touch
- Download Case Study
Or reach out at octily@octily.com, book a meeting, and create your customization wishlist at octily.com to start your journey.
