Financial Statements - Solvay

50
1. 3S: Solvay Shared Services,
the Group’s shared services
center for Finance and Human
Resources.
Solvay Global Annual Report 2008
Objectives Aligned with our Values
In order to contribute to Solvay’s strategic
objectives, Human Resources in 2008 adopted a
new organization aligned with its key processes
and systems.
As a global enterprise, the Solvay
group needs to be sure that all its
personnel are ready to meet the
challenges of a constantly changing
world.
With the progress made in 2008 in
the practical implementation of the
Group’s HR strategy “Growing our
people to grow our Group”, the HR
organization, policies and systems
have been adapted to meet these
challenges.
This strategy, developed in 2006, is
the foundation on which all the new
processes and systems are built.
In 2008, a year of “fi rsts” in HR
management, the reorganization
of the HR structure and the
“Renaissance” project bore fruit as
the new HR organization and tools
became operational.
New HR organization
The new HR organization has
undertaken a Group-made
assessment of professional
competences. Dedicated to specifi c
processes and fi elds of expertise,
HR is responding more and more
effectively to the needs of each
Sector and of Solvay employees,
wherever the Group is active:
HR teams in the businesses
are teams of business-oriented
HR professionals who are now
an integral part of each Group
Sector and General Management,
providing both global strategic
support and HR representation at
local and site levels.
Business Support Centers.
Three shared-services organizations
operate in the following areas:
> HR administration:
The payroll, compensation and
pensions processes and the
entire related data management
are now managed from a single
central base;
> People development and
performance management:
Recruitment, training
and development, and
performance management
are now coordinated with a
shared-services approach.
This regrouping ensures that
essential investment in training
is undertaken in areas vital for
attaining Group objectives;
> International mobility:
All expatriation processes
have now been simplifi ed and
standardized.
Competence Centers. The HR
functional areas that are critical to
the Group’s long-term development
have now been centralized in four
Competence Centers: People
Development and Performance,
Organization Design and
Performance, Compensation and
Pension and Benefi ts.
New HR tools
Thanks to SAP/HR, the Group’s
global Human Resources data
processing system for Human
Resources, and with the support of
the services provided by 3S 1 in Lisbon
(Portugal), Group managers and
employees can now manage their
main HR transactional operations on
the Group intranet.
In a secure IT environment, they can
update personnel information in real
time, manage their absences, fi ll in
their assessment and development
interviews, administer pay, manage
organization diagrams, and request
and take the on-line training courses
(using a new electronic training
tool) that are available in the Solvay
Corporate University.