About Yellow Hive

Yellow Hive is a dynamic group of financial services providers that is growing rapidly, mainly through acquisitions. The organization supports individuals, entrepreneurs, and businesses in achieving a financially carefree future. With more than 1,250 colleagues and over 40 brands, it delivers solutions in insurance, mortgages, pensions, and financial advice.

The challenge

For years, Yellow Hive’s HR administration ran on Nmbrs. The system was used for both HR administration and payroll processing. It worked well for payroll, but Yellow Hive increasingly ran into limitations with broader HR processes.

“Nmbrs is a good package,” says Rens Schouenberg, manager HR Services at Yellow Hive. “We still use it today, but purely for payroll processing. That’s where it excels.”

Dozens of companies, dozens of administrations

The biggest challenge stemmed from how Yellow Hive grows. Many acquired companies continue operating under their own name, while others are integrated into existing organizations within the group. As a result, HR Services deals with different BVs, administrations, and employment conditions. Because each BV existed as a separate administration in Nmbrs, gaining a clear overview across all companies was difficult.

“If we wanted to calculate the absenteeism rate, for example, we had to run forty exports and combine them into one group-wide figure. Producing reports was absolute hell.”

This fragmentation also affected other reporting needs, such as CSRD and lease cars. Basic information wasn’t recorded consistently everywhere. “With one company we acquire, everything is super well organized,” Rens explains. “With another, it’s less so. But ultimately, we’re the ones who have to deliver those reports.”

Growth requires less manual work

Daily HR processes also involved a lot of manual effort. Confirmation letters for job changes, hour adjustments, or salary changes were still created by hand. And when an employee had a question, the HR team first needed to gather background details: which company do they work for, under which administration do they fall, and where is the correct data?

For Yellow Hive, it was clear: HR administration needed to change. Rens: “We had to work more efficiently so we could keep growing without constantly expanding the HR team.”

The solution

First, get a clear picture of what HR needs

The new HR solution had to fit Yellow Hive’s reality: multiple companies, different employment conditions, and further expansion, including outside the Netherlands. At the same time, the system needed to remain workable for HR Services, managers, and employees.

worldofwork™ helped Yellow Hive sharpen those requirements. In workshops with HR, HR business partners, and other key stakeholders, they mapped out where the organization was getting stuck, which processes took too much time, and what was needed to support HR better and more efficiently.

worldofwork™ then guided the selection process. Based on Yellow Hive’s requirements, a large portion of possible HR systems were quickly ruled out. A key factor was seamless integration with Nmbrs, since Yellow Hive wanted to keep payroll processing there. International applicability also played a role.

Personio as the HR layer around Nmbrs

Yellow Hive ultimately chose Personio as the central HR layer around Nmbrs. Personio is where HR data, changes, processes, and documents come together. Nmbrs remains in use for payroll processing. “We record all HR data in Personio and automatically push it to Nmbrs every day,” says Rens. “It happens in a standardized way, so we hardly have any extra work.”

The approach

Tailored per company, within one shared approach

After selecting Personio, worldofwork™ helped translate the decision into a concrete implementation plan. This was not a standard project. HR Services supports the companies in the group centrally but deals with dozens of organizations, different employment conditions, and varying starting situations. The plan needed to accommodate all those differences without losing cohesion. Rens: “It felt like forty little plans in one: one shared approach, with the right choices per company for data, configuration, employment conditions, schedules, documents, and transition timing.”

Phased go-live, step by step cleaner

The implementation was divided into six waves (one per month). The foundation was prepared in the months leading up to the waves. Then, starting in January 2026, a group of companies moved to Personio each month. Yellow Hive deliberately started with a smaller BV where the administration was already well organized. This allowed the project team to gain experience before tackling more complex parts.

A key part of the project was cleaning up the existing situation. Due to previous acquisitions, employees weren’t always administratively placed where they actually worked. The implementation provided the opportunity to organize this better. Where needed, employees received a contract with the BV where they are truly active.

There was also a lot of substantive work: employment conditions, policies, documents, and schedules. The existing Nmbrs administrations alone yielded 235 unique schedules that all had to be reviewed and configured.

Choosing what needs to happen now and what can come later

worldofwork™ supported Yellow Hive with the project approach, configuration, and the connection between Personio and Nmbrs. This wasn’t just about technology—it was also about making choices: what needs to be set up correctly now, and what can wait? This phasing kept the timeline feasible and ensured a solid foundation.

The migration was standardized as much as possible. Because Yellow Hive was not only implementing Personio but also moving to a new Nmbrs environment, the project was extra complex. worldofwork™ helped extract data from the old Nmbrs environment, migrate it to Personio, and limit the use of Excel files and conversion tables where possible.

The result

One system for HR data and payroll changes

With Personio, Yellow Hive now has a central HR foundation. “Employee data is no longer spread across separate administrations. We now have all the data together in one system, which immediately provides overview,” says Rens.

The way changes flow to payroll has also transformed. Mutations no longer need to be collected via separate emails, exports, or reports. “We have an enormously simplified payroll run. All changes happen directly in the system and flow automatically to Nmbrs, instead of collecting them through email or a hundred other channels.”

Reports without forty exports

Reporting has become much simpler too. HR Services can now pull information across all companies from one system. “Running reports is now a piece of cake. We can export all the information we have stored in the system for the entire group in one go.”

More self-service, fewer loose ends

Another major benefit is that managers have better access to employee data. “They can view the information more easily and submit changes directly,” says Rens. The system is also more accessible for employees. “It looks much more attractive and is more intuitive. Both managers and employees have a much better user experience. And that obviously applies to HR administration too, since they work in the system all day.”

Changes now go straight to HR Services. The team checks the correct documents and sends them out. Employment contracts and confirmation letters are digitally signed and then automatically stored in the personnel file. This replaces the old process of printing, signing, scanning, returning, and manually archiving.

For HR Services, this makes daily work much more manageable. Not because the work disappears, but because information, changes, and documents come together in a more logical place. The team spends less time searching, connecting loose ends, and fixing things afterward. This creates more room to further improve HR services.

The next step

With Personio, Yellow Hive has laid a foundation that fits the next phase of the company. The Dutch organization is now on much firmer ground. From there, Yellow Hive can look toward international expansion, for example to Germany and possibly Spain in the longer term.

For Rens, the biggest win is that HR Services can move along with the organization without the department needing to grow at the same pace. “We can grow again without hiring extra people, because we’ve made major efficiency gains.”