Popay significantly shortens the workflow associated with new employees at Radboud University Medical Center
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Published on
12 Feb 2025
Interview with Radboud University Medical Center
Approximately 20,000 employees. Including 11,000 salaried staff and 9,000 non-salaried individuals such as interns, temporary workers, subcontractors, guests, and volunteers. An average of 500 new requests every month. A total of 60 different types of contracts.
Before a person is hired, their diplomas must be verified, they must provide a certificate of good conduct, and undergo a medical examination. All of this resulted in a recruitment workflow at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen that could easily take up to six weeks. It was high time to digitize and automate the process.
The result ? The process can now be completed in just one day if necessary.
Hetty Dortmans (responsable des services RH) et Silvia Verstegen (chef de projet Gestion de l’information) nous racontent comment elles y sont parvenues avec Popay.
Voici le projet Welcome !
The Radboud University Medical Center employs between 1,500 and 2,000 people who have the authority to hire new employees. The process starts with the manager, who requests basic information from the new colleague to create a profile. Then, the selection, testing, and data entry process begins, continuing until everything is completed and the employment contract can be signed.
While this process could previously take up to six weeks, today, a new employee can be registered in the hospital’s payroll system within just a few hours.
The HR team's goal : save time and work more efficiently
Hetty is responsible for HR services, which includes supporting the onboarding, transfer, and offboarding processes of employees. In doing so, she aims for her team members to provide the best possible support to managers and new hires. “The entire process, from selecting a candidate to signing the contract, was tedious for many colleagues,” Hetty explains. “We were already using a comprehensive HR self-service tool, with all systems interconnected through Popay. But we were ready to take the next step. We wanted to fully digitize and automate the preliminary process of drafting an employment contract. The goal ? To save time and enter data only once. From the Information Management department, Silvia joined the project as a project manager and started working alongside me.”
Silvia adds: “I enjoy working on ICT projects—missions that have real purpose. In this case, there was a concrete challenge on the table. Previously, new employees had to fill in the same information three times on different forms, which then had to be manually entered by HR. Then, when an employment contract was ready to be signed, it required signatures from multiple people. It takes about 20 minutes to walk from one end of our site to the other, which resulted in a huge loss of time. Similarly, all actions related to medical exam requests and recording the results were done manually.”
« At Popay, we don’t just focus on technology—we also think about the process.
This makes a huge difference. »
Hetty Dortmans — Head of HR Services
Customization by Popay : a focus on both technology and process.
With such a goal in mind, the question was :Â how do we achieve it?
Hetty explains: “Within the HR self-service system, we explored ways to automate and digitize the onboarding process. We work with Oracle EBS, so we first considered this option since it is our core system. This way, no additional links or connectors would be needed. However, moving away from Oracle posed too many limitations and offered too few technical options for Radboud University Medical Center. We were already familiar with Popay, as they had fully implemented our HR Self-Service system, so they were our first point of contact.”
As soon as Radboud University Medical Center decided to move forward with Popay, the collaboration began immediately. The expertise and trust were already in place.
Silvia explains: “Upfront, we held a weekly meeting for a year with Pim from Popay and the project team at Radboud University Medical Center to prepare everything in terms of content. We knew which processes we wanted to automate, but not yet how. I believe Popay brought great expertise to this. They understand HR processes, even at other clients, and were therefore able to advise us—particularly on how to logically sequence all the steps and bring them together.”
Hetty adds: “Indeed, at Popay, they don’t just focus on technology—they also think about the process. This makes a huge difference.”
« The process was clear, but the details of the different types of contracts turned out to be quite complex. Popay leveraged its expertise to find the right solution. »
Silvia Verstegen — Project Manager for Information Management
A complex puzzle solved down to the finest details.
For the past two years, Hetty, Silvia, the project team, and the Popay team have been hard at work—first with a year of preparation, followed by a year of implementation.
“We hadn’t anticipated from the start that we would need so much time,” Silvia explains. “The new process was clear and straightforward in its broad outline but turned out to be quite complex when dealing with the details of the different types of contracts. We have up to 60 different contract types and need to differentiate between salaried and non-salaried colleagues. When you start translating this into a technological framework, exceptions arise. These then need to be adjusted either in the process or in the system. Popay was able to provide its expertise to help us get closer to the right solution. Based on the data entered by the new employee, the appropriate processes are now triggered fully automatically, and the correct contract is generated—with the right annexes and in the appropriate language.”
In addition to this new system developed by Popay, it also had to communicate with four other systems. Popay’s technical experts successfully created these connections in collaboration with the specialists of the external systems.”
Hetty adds: “We now have a single source containing all the data. Employees enter their information once, and it is then distributed everywhere from this central source—for example, for medical checks, diploma requests, or certificates of good conduct. Previously, all of this had to be done through separate letters or different systems with individual connections. Now, if the employment contract is signed digitally, it is automatically linked to payroll processing and the integration of all documents into the digital personnel file. And with that, the process is complete. Once employees start working, they gain access to the HR Self-Service portal. They can view their records, retrieve documents, submit changes, request leave, and more.”
«We have been using the system since April 12, and we are already seeing the significant benefits of its implementation and the acceleration of the process.. »
Hetty Dortmans — Head of HR Services
Business case : short- and long-term benefits
“When you invest in a project like this, you need to be able to see a return on that investment. We have been using the system since April 12, and we are already seeing significant benefits from its implementation and the acceleration of the process. We are making progress in several areas. First, with 500 new registrations per month, we are saving a tremendous amount of time. We can now onboard new colleagues much faster, which is a major advantage given the current labor market shortages. Additionally, payroll administration used to manually verify all data at the end of the process. Now, this team no longer has to handle that task. The auditor has reviewed and approved the system: since everything is well-structured digitally, with multiple checks carried out by authorized personnel, a final manual verification is no longer necessary. This also results in significant labor savings.”
Managers are also very satisfied with the system, says Silvia: “Managers can now see at a glance where a new employee stands in the process. They no longer need to call HR to find out. If something is taking too long, the system will flag it. This means they no longer have to actively follow up themselves—they can check at any time what is still in progress and what the current status is. The fact that new employees can submit their information entirely digitally from home is, of course, a great showcase for Radboud University Medical Center.”
« I believe we have achieved a very strong result. What we have built with Popay, including the interaction with external systems, does not exist on the market as an off-the-shelf product. »
Silvia Verstegen — Project Manager for Information Management
Very proud of this unique achievement
Saying that Hetty and Silvia are proud of this achievement would be an understatement.
Hetty: “I am incredibly proud, and I make sure people know it. We have regular consultations with other UMCs, which has allowed us to see that we are truly at the forefront in this area. Of course, other hospitals have also automated and digitized processes, but our solution is truly comprehensive. It includes diploma verification, the request for a certificate of good conduct, medical checks, and digital signing. This is also the limitation of a standard system—it doesn’t offer these options. By developing it ourselves with a partner like Popay, we have significantly more technical possibilities.”
Silvia is also proud. “I believe we have achieved a very strong result. Even now that we are live, you can see that the details and exceptions were so well thought out in advance that everything runs smoothly. What we have built with Popay, including the interaction with external systems, does not exist on the market as a product—at least not at this scale, with all its variations. Additionally, thanks to this digitalization, we are working paper-free and signing documents digitally, which is also beneficial for the environment.”
« Popay trains our application and function administrators so that we can manage the system internally. »
Hetty Dortmans — Head of HR Services
Opportunities for the future
Hetty sees even more opportunities for Radboud University Medical Center. “Before hiring someone, there is a recruitment and selection process that involves a lot of communication. We can further integrate this into digitalization and automation. After the contract is signed, various practical matters need to be arranged, such as a phone, a laptop, a key, and an access badge,” Hetty explains.
“In the future, we also want to automate the upstream and downstream processes of recruitment and selection. But for now, let’s start with what we have. Popay trains our application and functional administrators so they can manage the system themselves. Popay also provides ongoing support through training. We are more than satisfied,” Hetty concludes enthusiastically.
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