Wärtsilä uses real-time on-demand people analytics for business impact

Wärtsilä partnered with Visier to revamp its People Analytics capabilities by switching from gathering time-consuming data manually to a real-time, strategic business relationship. The aim was to provide analytics for the business, and not to do analytics just for HR. Now, their HR leaders and business managers get on-demand access to workforce intelligence that improves their decision quality.

Early feedback on the tool showed a leadership team excited to use Visier Workforce AI to improve transparency and get actionable insights. This supported their mission to support sustainable societies through technology and people. The Visier platform also helps them track competencies, improve compliance, and measure leadership development impact.

Wärtsilä is a global leader in innovative technologies and lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. We emphasise innovation in sustainable technology and services to help our customers continuously improve their environmental and economic performance.

Our Summary:

Industry

Technology

Headquarters

Helsinki, Finland

Company size

18,000

The Challenge

Wärtsilä’s HR team had fragmented workforce data, so it had to leave leadership meetings to find answers, which cost the business momentum and kept HR from acting as a strategic partner.

Why Visier

Wärtsilä rolled out Visier as a business intelligence tool, not only an HR platform, giving HR and business leaders real-time, on-demand workforce insights during meetings.

Outcomes

Leaders acted on newly visible trends in retirement risk, generational mix, and female leadership, changing team development and succession plans, while HR gained easy access to training compliance data and to the ROI of leadership programs.

THE CHALLENGE

Giving business leaders real-time, transparent workforce insights

Wärtsilä's HR team struggled with fragmented workforce data, causing delays and reduced impact during crucial business meetings. Senior leaders wasted momentum searching for data, and this further limited HR’s ability to act as a strategic partner.

On this, Mattijs Mol, VP HR Technology, Strategy & Analytics, notes: “In the past, when workforce topics were discussed in our business, HR always had to go back to the drawing board, back to the basement, to figure out where the data sets. Now we can actually use momentum during business management and leadership meetings to drive decisions.

"I think it's the first time we got positive feedback upfront without explicitly asking for it. What the business really appreciates about this platform and the solution they envisioned is its real-time, on-demand nature. They finally got the insights, at the moment they need it, that lead to higher decision quality."
Mattijs Mol, VP HR Technology, Strategy & Analytics

THE SOLUTION

Using robust analytic insights to improve the quality of their decisions

Visier Workforce AI was positioned not just as an HR platform but as a strategic business intelligence tool. Upon implementation, the team received on-demand, transparent insights, allowing HR to support business discussions immediately and proactively.

This partnership allowed Wärtsilä's HR analytics team to translate data into value and participate more closely with the business, supporting decision-making in real time.

THE OUTCOME

Driving adoption and organizational strategy with Visier

Wärtsilä received immediate positive feedback from business leaders who received increased visibility into the workforce trends that impacted the business. One senior leader was "flabbergasted by the amount of people he had close to retirement, the different age generations he had in his organization, and actually the limited number of female leaders". These were all data points that were previously not on his mind.

This newfound transparency triggered concrete actions and changes in team development and succession planning. As Mattijs Mol, VP HR Technology, Strategy & Analytics, explained, "This feature helped him to do things differently in his organization and how he was leading his organization."

"Our industry is changing. So there's a lot of push to acquire new competencies and skills in order for us to serve our customers in the best possible manner. With these, you actually want to understand the progress and impact of how your company, as well as how your workforce is moving in a certain direction.
Do we have the right competencies in place in-house at a certain moment in time? Are we making progress in the right direction? With Visier, we get easy access to this kind of information.”
Mattijs Mol, VP HR Technology, Strategy & Analytics

The Visier platform also allowed Wärtsilä’s HR team to have easy access to training compliance data and measure the ROI of leadership development programs. This supports the organization's transformation priorities in a globally dispersed workforce that requires mandatory training and competency tracking.

Looking ahead, Wärtsilä is excited about broadening the platform’s use by integrating additional data sources such as employee engagement, total cost of labor, and other external workforce data to increase the strategic value of HR’s insights.

On this, Mattijs emphasized their vision of "data democratization" to ensure leaders can understand and incorporate data into their decision-making naturally.