How Desotec eliminated manual HR tasks to focus on strategic impact.
Any payroll cycle triggers a familiar pain: employee data scattered across disconnected systems. Salary updates live in payroll, role changes sit in HR, and benefits sit elsewhere. Managing multiple versions of the truth causes errors, erodes employee trust, and burns valuable team hours.
At Desotec, a Belgian company with over 450 employees, this manual burden was a daily drain. Eveline Pattyn, HRIS and Payroll manager, knew a change was required: “Nobody likes double input, and it leads to more mistakes.”
Building the central foundation
Before 2023, Desotec’s HR operations relied on scattered spreadsheets and manual processes. To solve this, Desotec implemented Personio to centralize employee records, recruitment, and onboarding into a single source of truth.
“I don’t want a system full of features that look nice but don’t do the job,” says Eveline. “Personio does what it has to do, and that’s exactly what a payroll or HR system needs.”
Strategic integration over double entry
Desotec processed payroll through SD Worx eBlox, a specialized platform for Belgian employment law. Rather than replacing it, they partnered with payroll specialists at PeopleSync to build a targeted, one-way integration between Personio and SD Worx eBlox.
Instead of syncing every available field, the team applied smart selectivity:
- Pragmatic field choices: Belgian hourly wages require four decimal places, while Personio uses two. Instead of forcing complex workarounds, they omitted that field from the sync.
- Proactive validation: Built-in checks catch missing data (such as partner details after a marital status change) at the source before data hits payroll.
- Domain ownership: Payroll stays in SD Worx eBlox, core employee data lives in Personio, and other departments (like Procurement or Finance) manage their relevant fields directly.
The results from the collaboration
| Metric / Focus | Impact |
| New Hire Admin | Saved ~30 minutes per new hire |
| Routine Changes | Saved ~15 minutes daily |
| Weekly Time Saved | ~2 hours recovered per week |
| Data Accuracy | Early validation prevents mid-cycle payroll errors |
While the time savings add up, Eveline views transparency as the ultimate gain:
“For me, the biggest benefit is transparency. People can see the data behind their pay. If something like their marital status is wrong, they spot it immediately, because it’s the same data that feeds payroll.”
Shifting from admin to strategy
Recovering administrative hours allowed Desotec’s HR team to shift focus from manual data entry to long-term organizational planning. Over the past year, the team built a complete job architecture: mapping out clear career paths, defining roles, and establishing growth frameworks across the company.
Key takeaways for HR leaders
- Focus on targeted connections: Don’t build interfaces just for completeness; sync only the data that cuts errors and saves meaningful time.
- Fix errors at the source: Use pre-sync validation checks so payroll never receives incomplete records.
- Empower employees through visibility: When staff can view their own data, accuracy improves and administrative bottlenecks disappear.
- Reinvest recovered time: Use automated operational capacity to execute high-value strategic initiatives.