Oslo-based human resources company 4human HRM is helping customers like Saint-Gobain Brødrene Dahl, Jackon, Bauda, Würth and Coop make that happen by giving organizations an easy way to manage the entire employment lifecycle.

4human, the market leader of HRM/HCM SaaS solutions in the Norwegian market, provides solutions that allow organizations to handle everything from onboarding and holidays through performance tracking and offboarding — all while making sure the employer remains in alignment with Norway’s probationary, training, and termination milestones. But where 4human customers really see a benefit, says 4human CTO Rolf Henrik Bekkstrand, is in creating a proven system of programmatic actions that help employees who are really sick return to work faster — and ensures regular and appropriate communication from the employer.

In Norway employees are entitled up to 52 weeks of sick leave. Although beneficial, some employees take more time than they actually need. The Norwegian government has a legally-regulated follow-up process for long illnesses, says Bekkstrand. “The employer actually has a big responsibility for getting you back to work whenever you are sick.” In Norway, workers are paid 100% of their pay for the first 16 days of their illness, then the state covers wages for up to 52 weeks, reports the Telegraph. The costs of this benefit are high for both companies and the state. 4human’s solutions have been proven to reduce sick leave by 1 percentage point due to better follow-up during sick leave. That one percentage point equals 1 million NOK per year for a company with 100 employees.

4human has devised a process to securely handle the myriad of forms required to meet legal deadlines — all while adhering to Norway’s strict data protection policies which came into effect in 2000. For all employees, the data stored in 4human’s solutions is critical.

“Your personal identification number is in there, your salary is inside the system. Your performance talks and those kind of things are in the system. It’s very sensitive data. So our customers are really serious about it,” says Bekkstrand.

Digitally Transforming Public Norway

Full integration with the public system means that the Norwegian government is not only trusting 4human with critical data, but relying on them to contribute to the digital transformation of public Norway. To help make that happen safely and securely, 4human turns to Auth0.

“As a CTO, I really don’t want to be responsible for a data leak that showed passwords and user logins and those kinds of things. I’m 100% sure that Auth0, a company that is built around this, will have better ability to take care of the security than I’m able to do — your entire business depends on it,” says Bekkstrand.

No-Hassle Solution Packs a Big ROI

But a secure system needs flexible functionality or it won’t get used. Through Auth0, 4human is able to offer modern features like social logins while still allowing core customers to store data in Active Directory and help manage BankID, as well as offering multi-factor authentication (MFA). “One thing that I really like about Auth0 is that it’s so simple. You shall be able to do this without a hassle and you shall be able to do it without calling a consultant for 1,000 hours,” says Bekkstrand.

Originally, Bekkstrand looked into building the solution in-house, but given the range of needs decided to spend the talent in other areas. “In 2005, you wrote the code yourself,” says Bekkstrand. “I would spend 2 million NOK just to make something that I think is good enough for the application. It was faster to do it with Auth0. But it was also about stability — we can rely on Auth0.”

4human is currently entering a new stage of its own digital transformation, creating the next-generation human capital management platform, with plans to take it first to other Nordic countries and then Europe.

“Just by selecting Auth0, I’m saving probably 2-3 million in Norwegian krone already. And of course, I have to pay for the logins. But I mean, from my point of view, I would also have to maintain the interfaces. So I would say that I had a return on investment from day one, more or less.”