September 2024 - the ninth month of NOBO Auto
With the end of September, I bring another part of the blog, in which I describe how a new greenfield company is being built in 2024, starting from the first month of my tenure at NOBO Auto in České Budějovice. NOBO Auto is part of the Chinese car company Great Wall Motors, which has decided to expand into Europe in the autumn of 2023 and build a new production plant in České Budějovice to supply seats for BMW cars.
My name is David Havelec and the company NOBO Auto approached me exactly one year ago with an offer to participate in a selection procedure for the position of HR manager in a newly emerging automotive company directly in České Budějovice. At first I did not believe that such a thing could be true. At that time, I had been working for about 6 years in another multinational corporation, where I had a great job, a stable team and, dare I say, a promising career. I always told myself that I would only consider going elsewhere if there was a significantly more interesting job offer in terms of job description, distance from home and working conditions. And in this case, all 3 of those areas ended up meeting. When a specific offer was on the table, I thought to myself that I would probably never be lucky enough to be the first employee of a company that operates a short distance from my home and also does business in an industry that I understand and have been in for many years.
On the other hand, it has to be said that it was quite a risky move. At the time I accepted the offer, NOBO Auto did not have a registered company ID in the Czech Republic, had no employees, no CEO had been selected, no binding contract had been signed with BMW or the developer. And from the employers' point of view I am the prototype of an ideal employee - I have the so-called 3x "H" = mortgage, harants and hunger. I was accustomed to a company car and other standard corporate benefits that a non-existent employer understandably could not offer.
Despite the above, I made sure that I always did my job well and my superiors were happy with me. And that if for some reason this move didn't work out, I would eventually find a job.
And then the end of December came, I returned my company car, bought a work computer and a phone at Datart, and from January I was ready for new challenges. During the first month, I tried to imagine that it was October 2026, we were just starting to deliver seats to Dingolfing in Czech Budejovice in series conditions, and I mapped out the areas we would need to have covered by that time to be able to operate as a company in line with legislation and customer expectations. This resulted in an HR Roadmap which we have been gradually implementing ever since.
And today I would like to write about 3 areas from the roadmap where we have made significant progress in the last month.
We have a website
The vision is becoming a reality - I am very pleased to introduce our new corporate and careers website, which my colleagues and I have been working on together Daniela Víznerová RACR , Tereza Škrdlová from our HR team and Marek Homolka z Chilli Production have been working for the last 3 months.
The first aim of the website is to introduce the general public to a new brand on the Czech market - NOBO Auto. This information written on the website nobo-auto.cz and most of them may be familiar to attentive readers of this blog from past posts.
The second goal is to share currently open positions, information about the selection process + candidate management. There was of course the option of using LMC services, but after weighing all the pros and cons we decided to have the ability to manage open positions on our website. The main arguments for going down the route of our own website were:
- possibility of connection to the future HR system = we issue a position in the HR system, it is written on the web + the candidates' reactions fall directly into the HR system, where the winning candidate can be directly transferred to the employee status after a successful selection procedure and we send him/her an online personal questionnaire, from which we generate employment legal documents. This avoids manual transcription of personal questionnaires and other inefficient activities.
- the possibility of promoting the position through online advertising - we want to try this mainly for positions where we need more candidates at the same time, typically production operators and logistics operators.
- total cost
We will continue to advertise on the LMC portals, but only for some of the positions. Most importantly, we will continuously evaluate the effectiveness of each communication channel.
What I am very happy about on the website is the "useful information for applicants" section. https://www.nobo-auto.cz/kariera/uzitecne-informace/where Daniela Víznerová RACR has prepared a summary of the standard selection process, how candidates get to us, where they can park, and last but not least, what their first day on the job will be like.
We are very happy with the site and are curious to get feedback. I would be glad if you could write your impressions in the comments below the article, what you like about the site or if there is anything missing.
We have an HR system
After many meetings with potential suppliers, we have decided on a system plusPortal. We are currently in the implementation and first training phase, so I cannot yet evaluate the use and specific functionalities of the system. However, I can share the parameters we considered in the selection process:
- One system for all HR topics - mainly payroll, attendance, HR - we have already eliminated the vast majority of systems.
- Follow-up to Czech legislation and related regular adjustments to the system. So that, for example, when we change the counting of holidays from days to hours, we do not have to pay X tens of thousands for adjusting the system.
- Paperless options in as many areas as possible. We will still be printing employment contracts, but as I wrote above with the careers pages, even the actual preparation of contracts can be greatly streamlined, so that staff time is not wasted on blind transcription from paper to computer.
- Connecting the HR system with other systems - whether in production, maintenance, logistics or even just with the access control system. U plusPortal I liked the openness of the representatives to help with connecting to other systems. The difference compared to the approach of other vendors I have worked with in the past was truly diametric in this regard.
We have suppliers for salary ranges and job catalogue
Following my last blog, I had a call with Marek Premus. We were in contact a few years ago when my potential employment with them at Alza was in play. Even though we didn't get along then, Marek didn't give up on me and we stayed in touch. We call each other once in a while and share good ideas in different HR areas. And a month ago I told him that we were working on a reward system at NOBO Auto. We have a fairly free hand from HQ in setting up the reward system and we have experience within management of different ways of rewarding and categorising employees from our previous locations. It's great to have autonomy and the ability to set things up your way, but it's also a big responsibility. Employee costs are the second largest cost item in the company after the cost of production materials, so I want to make sure that the system we have devised is the best one currently available. Alza has recently undergone a change in their remuneration policy, which the firm helped them with BD Advisory s.r.o. and I got a great reference from Mark. At the same time, I've been Tomas Jurcik a Martin Kopecký had very good memories from my last employer as well, so we agreed that they would help us with this topic.
Plans for October 2024
In the first week of October, we will have our first ever off-site workshop for all current employees. We will spend 3 days together around Lipno. At the same time, we will be joined by 4 new colleagues, bringing our temporary offices to almost 100% utilization of available workstations. Fortunately, the move to our permanent building is coming soon. From the windows of our offices, we are able to observe the continued construction of our hall, which we already have partial access to for the installation of technology and will all move into together at the end of the year.
If you're interested in joining us, check out our new careers page on currently open positions or write me or call me on +420 724 337 081.
David Havelec
HR Manager in Nobo Automotive Czech Republic
30 September 2024