Decathlon Nederland: Ready for growth through centralised HR

Decathlon Nederland operates under a retail collective agreement for stores and distribution centres, supplemented by its own payroll function. Additionally, Decathlon uses systems globally from its French headquarters, but for payroll, local legislation always takes precedence. With twenty stores and significant growth plans, the decentralised HR structure became too complex. Exceptions became the rule, causing complexity to mount. Decathlon wanted to centralise HR, strengthen compliance, automate changes, and give employees direct access to their HR data.

Decathlon Nederland chose Nmbrs and carried out a thorough restructuring of how HR operates. Nmbrs took a central place in the IT ecosystem, with various easy-to-manage integrations, such as Dyflexis for time registration and scheduling, and an occupational health integration for absence management. The twenty local HR functions at store level were replaced by a small central team of three payroll administrators and two payroll specialists, who serve the entire organisation from the head office.

From twenty local functions to a team of five – Decathlon was able to fundamentally simplify its HR structure. With Nmbrs as the central hub where all HR and payroll data comes together, Decathlon achieved what it set out to do. Employees have direct access to their HR data without needing to contact HR. The captains can now focus on what really matters: customer experience and the wellbeing of their team. Compliance is better safeguarded and changes are automated rather than processed manually.