DSM Keukens partnered with TriHD for a flexible HR solution in payroll and beyond
4 February 2025Maintaining continuity in HR processes is essential for ensuring workforce stability, productivity, and legal compliance. When faced with a temporary gap in their HR team, DSM Keukens partnered with TriHD for the first time. HD Consultant Jana Van Wanzeele stepped in for five months, taking over the responsibilities of HR Manager Lies Baert. Jana succeeded in delivering immediate expertise, ensuring operations as usual and facilitating a smooth handover at the conclusion of the assignment. Her swift integration showcases the value of TriHD’s flexible HR solutions during transition periods.
- Seamless HR continuity: TriHD ensured uninterrupted HR operations at DSM Keukens during a maternity leave, providing a highly skilled consultant for a temporary role.
- Perfect match: HD Consultant Jana Van Wanzeele’s expertise in payroll and HR, combined with her alignment with DSM Keukens’ culture, made her an ideal fit for the position.
- Knowledge-sharing advantage: Jana leveraged TriHD’s internal network and systematic follow-ups, enabling her to access additional expertise and deliver the best solutions to the client.
Ensuring continuity thanks to a perfect match
“Ahead of my maternity leave, we reached out to TriHD for short-term support to cover my responsibilities and allow us to continue developing our HR services while I was away. We knew exactly what kind of professional was required for the job: someone with a strong background in payroll, the maturity to handle a wide range of HR responsibilities and on top of that a personality that would match the DNA and culture of DSM Keukens. We looked at a number of choices before getting in touch with TriHD, but none of them could cater to the full scope of responsibilities. TriHD, however, was able to precisely identify our needs and match them to a consultant with the suitable profile. From the very first meeting with HD consultant Jana, it turned out to be a perfect fit", explains Lies Baert, HR Manager at DSM Keukens.
Jana has a profound experience in payroll and aspired to expand her expertise into a more all-round HR responsibility. As such, she was immediately highly motivated to take on the role of HR Manager at DSM Keukens. “This project presented an ideal mix between payroll and HR Business Partnering, making it the perfect next step in my professional growth”, says Jana.
"The range of tasks is just that much more varied and thus more challenging because DSM Keukens is a SME with a relatively small HR department," Lies adds.
We knew exactly what kind of professional was required for the job and TriHD was able to precisely capture our needs and propose the perfect profile.
Lies Baert, HR manager at DSM Keukens
DSM Keukens is a Belgian family-owned kitchen built-in furniture specialist. With a diverse team—including sales professionals, interior designers, warehouse staff, and kitchen installers—and 16 showrooms across Flanders and Wallonia, DSM Keukens continues to grow. The company employs approximately 120 office staff and 20 workers.
A broad HR role
Ensuring payroll continuity was one key element in this project. Jana was able to take this up with ease because of her experience in the field. “I was genuinely impressed by Jana's expertise; she has a very extensive knowledge of social legislation and hard HR in the broad sense. This ensured that she was up and running very quickly. She also documented our company payroll processes very accurately during our initial handover period, leaving me confident that the job package was in good hands during my absence. Jana also integrated very well within our organization in that short period of time. She blended well into the HR team and was very accessible to all employees”, explains Lies.
An overview of the key responsibilities during the project:
- Payroll: processing time registration & payroll and ensuring accurate and on-time payment of salaries each month
- Pre- & onboarding follow-up: drawing up contracts, complying with all legal obligations, ordering devices and tools from IT, coordinating with managers on welcoming new employees
- Transferring fleet management to the new fleet officer: setting up procedures for handing in and transferring cars
- First line HR contact: answering questions from employees and handling all HR administration (career suspensions, medical examinations, exit documents ...)
- Preparation of HR reports (payroll, FTE, absenteeism...)
- Advising management on salary agreements and HR policy
Because I was actively involved in managing the complete employee lifecycle and shaping DSM Keukens’ HR policies, I was able to establish strong connections with the organization and employees in the various departments.
Jana Van Wanzeele, Human Development Consultant
While Jana brought her payroll expertise and adaptability to the project, she could also rely upon TriHD’s broad internal network of HR specialists.
“TriHD is a knowledge-sharing organization. Our Human Development consultants form a close-knit team that reaches out to each other for advice. This way, they draw on the collective knowledge and experience and can bring it to their project. Moreover, thanks to systematic project follow-up by our TriHD internal BaseCamp team, we ensure that together with the consultant we find the best solution to specific challenges. This can include, for example, providing ad-hoc training or pairing the consultant with an appropriate mentor”, explains Karolien Baeten, Business Manager at TriHD.
For DSM Keukens, this meant not only finding the right person for the job but also benefiting from the collective strength of a connected organization.
With such a broad range of hard HR tasks, balancing the different payroll responsibilities during busy periods, like monthly salary processing, can be challenging. How did Jana handle this?
“My trick is to create clear checklists and maintain strict planning. For instance, there was often only a very short timeframe between the hiring of a new employee and their startup date. But by using my checklists, I was able to keep everything organized and running smoothly.”
“Because I was actively involved in managing the complete employee lifecycle and shaping DSM Keukens’ HR policies, I was able to establish strong connections with the organization and employees in the various departments. Also, DSM Keukens is a company where colleagues genuinely support one another, which made my work as a consultant incredibly rewarding", concludes Jana.
Would you like to learn more about how temporary support from our TriHD Consultants can strengthen your business? Don't hesitate to contact us at info@trihd.be