“You can’t break anything. Just try things out!”
We said this in a meeting shortly before the switch. In IT projects you can rarely say it with such a clear conscience. And it was probably the most important sentence of the whole project.
We supported Hacker School gGmbH in moving its HR software from Flair to Personio, in three stages.
1. A look at the archive
Before a single record moved, we looked at what had built up over the years: contracts, salaries, absences, personal details. This is information people entrust to their employer. So first we reviewed it, tidied it up and settled who gets access to what. Data protection was not a chapter at the end but the common thread.
2. The move
The transfer ran in stages, with a check after every step. In parallel we set up Personio to fit the way the organisation works. All of it in close coordination with our contact person at Hacker School.
3. Settling in
For the staff the switch was clearly noticeable: a new interface, new ways to record time and request absences. New systems often inspire a certain awe at first. What if I click the wrong thing?
That is where our sentence came in. Instead of thick manuals there was an invitation to just get started: click around, test, submit a practice holiday request. Alongside that came short guides and an open ear for every question.
Today the team uses Personio as a matter of course.
What we take away
Change management does not start with training slides but with taking away people’s uncertainty. Anyone who is allowed to explore with curiosity feels at home much sooner.
It is not the only system change at Hacker School. How fundraising moved from Salesforce to Microsoft Dynamics is described in Grant logic first, then the data.
Thank you to the team at Hacker School gGmbH for their trust, their openness and the courage to try things out!