Edgewell Personal Care: Building a foundation of joy and agility with a data-driven HR strategy
Cultivating agility and joy through clean data
Edgewell Personal Care is transforming HR to support 7,000 global teammates and “win the shelf” in a competitive market. It transitioned from on-premises legacy systems to an integrated SAP cloud landscape and established a rigorous data steward program. It now has 96% accurate data—a strong foundation for a future driven by predictive insights and AI.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Consumer Products | Shelton, Connecticut | 7,000+ employees |
average data accuracy, up from a 29% baseline
system errors, down from a 2,700 baseline
accuracy predicting employee turnover within first 11 months
Global Director, HR Systems, Edgewell Personal Care
Empowering an agile workforce to win the shelf globally
In the hyper-competitive consumer products industry, Edgewell Personal Care—the force behind iconic brands like Schick, Hawaiian Tropic, and Banana Boat—knows that success depends on the ability to win the shelf. For Edgewell, this means ensuring its products have maximum visibility and consistent availability to meet consumer needs at the moment of purchase. With more than 25 brands across 50 countries, the company relies on a people-first culture to drive multi-billion-dollar net sales. To maintain the agility symbolized by its hummingbird logo, Edgewell ensures the joy it delivers to consumers by empowering its 7,000 global teammates.
Following its spinoff from Energizer Holdings, Inc in 2015, establishing an independent HR system became critical for Edgewell. The company made the strategic decision to move away from its on-premises SAP ERP Human Capital Management solution and go straight to the cloud with SAP SuccessFactors HCM—chosen for its configurability and ability to support complex employment laws across 50 countries.
However, while the technology provided a foundation for global scale, a global framework for data ownership had not yet been established. As data was managed via inconsistent, siloed local processes stretching from China to Mexico, accountability became diffused. By 2022, this gap between the new cloud infrastructure and old governance habits caused data accuracy to plummet to 29%, with 2,700 errors identified across the landscape.
Without reliable data, accountability was diffused and errors were compounded in regions where local processes remained siloed. Leaders couldn’t make informed hiring decisions or track compliance, making workforce trends mere guesswork. To regain the agility needed to win the shelf, Edgewell had to bridge the gap between fragmented data entry and strategic clarity.
Global Director, HR Systems, Edgewell Personal Care
Establishing data ownership to unlock a unified HR ecosystem
Edgewell’s transformation required a simultaneous shift in technology and culture. On the technical side, the company doubled down on its commitment to an integrated cloud landscape. By leveraging the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution alongside SAP Cloud ERP solutions and SAP Concur solutions, Edgewell created a continuous flow of people data through HR, finance, and travel systems. To close the remaining gaps in this end-to-end process, the company began transitioning its global payroll to the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll solution, further automating the HR lifecycle and helping ensure data integrity from hire to retire.
However, technology alone could not fix the foundation. To address the lack of clear ownership, Edgewell launched an in-house HR data steward program to shift accountability to the people who knew the data best. Designated stewards within the HR business partner community receive weekly error reports and are trained on the business consequences of poor data quality. By empowering these stewards to resolve errors and educate colleagues on proper data entry, Edgewell maximizes first-time-right data capture. This approach means the capabilities of its SAP solutions are backed by a culture of data integrity.
Global Director, HR Systems, Edgewell Personal Care
Driving predictive insights and personalizing the employee journey
The shift from on-premises legacy systems to a clean cloud foundation has allowed Edgewell to finally realize the full value of its SAP investment through its policy of “one voice, one data set.” Today, data accuracy holds at 96%, transforming HR from a reactive function into a driver of global business value. “The impact of having one voice means we can truly start to analyze information, look for trends, and focus our efforts on areas that will have the most impact,” explains Colin Emery, global director of HR systems.
By systemizing annual global processes like goal management, performance ratings, and merit cycles within a single ecosystem, Edgewell has removed the administrative friction that once slowed down personnel actions. This transparency provides the leadership team with a clear understanding of the workforce’s organizational structure. As Emery notes, “Leaders can then look at the people data and make more informed and better people business decisions.”
These data-driven decisions create a ripple effect of engagement. When leadership has the insights to make the right decisions for their people, the internal culture thrives. By utilizing story reports in SAP SuccessFactors HCM, the people analytics team uncovered a short-term turnover issue that had previously been hidden by inconsistent data.
In direct response, the company launched a program called Joyful Journey—a strategic initiative designed to bring more joy to teammates from the candidate stage through their first year of employment. By streamlining the recruiting and onboarding experience and providing specialized training to managers, Edgewell can now help every new hire feel supported. This mission is further empowered by predictive analytics built on a solid SAP data foundation: with over 80% accuracy, the company can now identify teammates at risk of leaving within their first 11 months. This allows managers to have proactive “stay conversations” and address what is impacting a teammate’s experience. Ultimately, a more joyful internal culture enables teammates to remain focused on their goal: to win the shelf and deliver joy to consumers worldwide.
Global Director, HR Systems, Edgewell Personal Care
Scaling innovation with SAP Business AI
Edgewell is now preparing to scale its agility through SAP Business AI. The company plans to leverage the Joule solution to guide users through HR processes and deflect routine inquiries from service delivery teams. By integrating Joule with Microsoft Teams, Edgewell aims to meet employees where they work, providing immediate satisfaction and clearing the path for HR business partners to focus on higher-value strategic initiatives. Emery believes SAP is uniquely positioned to make AI a reality because the AI layer is fully embedded across the whole suite, helping Edgewell “embody those hummingbird attributes of agility and joy—moving quickly and reacting to what our customers need.”