Case Study: Personio Implementation and Recruiting Support

Cansativa and Edl Consulting are a great example of a good and stable working partnership, which is strengthened by Personio as a professional HR software and has led to a successful and qualitative cooperation at eye level through regular exchange with each other.

About Cansativa

Cansativa was founded in 2017 by brothers Jakob and Benedikt Sons and is now considered the leading platform for cannabis in Germany. By founding Cansativa, the company has made it its mission to democratize the cannabis market. In the still young medical cannabis market, Cansativa sees itself as the central contact point for pharmacies and is additionally the only company commissioned by the BfArM to distribute medical cannabis from German cultivation. But Cansativa’s vision goes even further:Cansativa wants to be the largest platform for (medical) cannabis, offering the largest brand diversity of (medical) cannabis products . Cansativa is already the one-stop-shop for medical cannabis.

About Edl Consulting

Edl Consulting supports start ups, scale ups and SMEs in building a professional, sustainable HR function. As HR-as-a-Service, the boutique consultancy pursues the mission of creating a motivating, modern work environment for talent at its clients*. Thus, Edl Consulting supports companies in establishing sustainable HR processes and structures – including HR management software selection and implementation. The operational and strategic support covers the entire HR value chain: recruiting, training & development, establishment of feedback, performance and leadership culture, support of change projects, and much more. The team offers their professional and pragmatic expertise of HR management, recruitment, coaching, training and consulting – from years of experience in start ups, medium-sized businesses and large corporations. Since 2020 Edl Consulting is a certified Personio implementation partner.

The challenge

The Cansativa team is growing and the HR department is lacking. – While the legalization of cannabis is being discussed and the importance of the industry is becoming more and more present, the team, which still had 12 members in November 2021, should grow by another 30 to 50 employees by the end of 2022. The challenge: In addition to managing the rapidly growing company, the two founders, Benedikt and Jakob, could no longer handle the human resources work themselves. They lacked suitable structures, processes and systems for efficient HR work and a leader to build an urgently needed People & Organization team.

For Cansativa, it was clear that they absolutely needed professional HR support. The goal was to build the HR function into a fully functional unit and implement targeted HR structures, HR processes and HR management software. And preferably immediately – even better: yesterday. Cansativa was about to close a significant and prominent financing round, which was soon to be made public. By then, it was a matter of polishing up the HR presence as quickly as possible to attract the best talent to Cansativa. No time to wait, a solution was needed.

Support from Edl Consulting and Personio

Edl Consulting is known in the start up and scale-up environment for hands-on help – solutions can always be found, even at short notice. When the call for help came, Edl Consulting quickly recognized the need of the fast growing start-up. Within 5 days they provided Cansativa – even before the official project kick-off – with Personio’s recruiting module. The project “Interim Head of HR” and “Personio Implementation” started immediately with a Partner Consultant from Edl Consultant in the project management.

With the experience from regular implementation projects, Edl Consulting as a certified Personio implementation partner, together with detailed guides from Personio, was able to realize a successful implementation of the HR software for Cansativa.
After coordinating the hiring plan with the Edl Consulting team, 27 job ads were written and published on the Cansativa website thanks to the straightforward Personio integration. Together with Cansativa’s IT, Edl Consulting was able to set up a completely new career page and integrate the Personio job overview into it.
All jobs were online and visible – to the day of Cansativa’s enormous media attention. The entire recruiting process from application receipt to hiring was up and running. All people who applied via the “Apply Now” button on the website or became aware of Cansativa jobs via Personio’s multiposting options now automatically ended up in Personio’s recruiting tool.
Edl Consulting took over the applicant management: screening of incoming applications, candidate* communication and interview coordination is done transparently and quickly within Personio. Using feedback and evaluation requests as well as the comment function, the Edl Consulting team was able to communicate effectively with Cansativa’s hiring managers and thus establish a professional and fast recruiting process with the best candidate experience.

Subsequent implementation of employee management

First things first: After the recruiting module was successfully implemented, Personio’s entire employee administration module followed suit and various existing as well as newly defined HR processes were added. Thus, both applicant management and internal employee administration were in one place, which gave the company great added value: Data transparency, automatic creation of employees, and automatically initiated workflows.

Now employees can be created and managed, attendance and absence processes can be used by all employees, onboarding and offboarding processes can be tracked, the org chart can be created and updated automatically, and the digital personnel file and preparatory payroll accounting can be managed centrally.

Accompanying change through coaching and training

New systems as well as rapidly growing teams always mean new challenges, processes, communication and responsibilities in the company. Edl Consulting accompanied the associated challenges as a trainer and coach.

Edl Consulting trained employees and hiring managers on the Personio software and showed the new possibilities; step by step all users were introduced to the system. But also other related topics such as a successful organizational structure, the restructuring of recruiting processes and their successful implementation, the importance of internal and applicant communication with the associated employer branding could be successfully addressed and integrated into concrete processes and implemented.

The result:

• Cansativa has grown by more than 30 additional employees, through the support of Edl Consulting and with the help of Personio’s recruiting module. This has subsequently led to improvements on many levels. Especially in the following areas:
  • Greatly improved communication with applicants. Through the recruiting module 80% to partly 90% of the hiring process can be automated.
  • 70% higher inflow of applications due to multiposting and partner offers like Join Recruiting
  • 60% less effort for the hiring managers at Cansativa. Especially due to Edl Consulting’s approach of thinking a bit more about the persona and channels before filling a position, thus significantly increasing the quality (matching of requirement and offer)
• As Edl Consulting is responsible for the technical implementation of Personio as well as for the strategic and content-related process and structure development, Cansativa could be empowered in a comprehensive, pragmatic and solution-oriented way.
• Cansativa’s initial request for short-term support has developed into a trusting and comprehensive, successful collaboration lasting several months – a valued partner at eye level.

In conclusion, Cansativa and Edl Consulting are a great example of a good and stable working partnership, which is strengthened by Personio as a professional HR software and has led to a successful and qualitative cooperation at eye level through regular exchange with each other.

We wish both companies continued success and a long joint partnership.