BVG: One HR Platform for the Entire Workforce

BVG keeps Berlin moving. Every day, around 16,500 employees transport millions of passengers across the city by subway, bus, tram, and ferry. “Because we love you” is known throughout Germany as the company’s promise to its passengers. With its new HR platform, BVG is extending that commitment to its own workforce. 

As its implementation and transformation partner, MHP supported BVG in introducing Workday as a cloud-based HR platform. The rollout went live within ten months, on schedule and within the agreed budget. The platform serves both office-based employees as well as drivers, workshop teams, and other frontline staff, making everyday HR tasks easier across the organization. 

BVG is in the midst of a comprehensive transformation. The company is electrifying its bus fleet, expanding digital mobility offerings, and piloting autonomous vehicles. These shifts are reshaping roles and staffing across the organization. BVG needs to build new capabilities, develop its existing workforce, and recruit people with the right skills for critical positions. 

These changes also placed growing pressure on internal HR processes. The previous system required extensive maintenance, offered limited scalability, and made transparent workforce planning difficult. BVG needed a modern platform that could support reliable planning and give the organization a clearer view of its HR operations. 

Other public-sector employers face similar constraints. Legacy HR environments often struggle to support complex co-determination requirements and the needs of a predominantly operational workforce. 

Self-service portals, digital requests, and mobile access are already part of everyday work for office-based employees. Frontline operations present a different reality. Drivers and workshop teams work shifts, spend much of their day on the move, and often have no permanent digital workstation. 

Rolling out Workday to 16,500 employees, most of whom work in operational roles, therefore required much more than a technical implementation. The platform also had to reach people whose working day takes place in a bus, train, depot, or workshop. 

BVG selected MHP as its strategic implementation partner to address this challenge. MHP combined technical expertise with a strong understanding of public-sector organizations. Its experience with comparable large-scale programs that extended into frontline operations was an important factor in BVG’s decision. 

MHP supported BVG throughout the project lifecycle. The guiding principle was clear: Workday would provide the standard, while BVG and MHP would determine how best to adapt the organization’s processes to it. 

At peak times, around 100 people were involved in the project, including approximately 30 MHP employees. The program was divided into five main areas of work. 

1. Process Harmonization: Standards Over Custom Workarounds
   During the design phase, BVG and MHP compared existing HR processes with Workday’s standard functionality. Together, they developed a workable balance between operational requirements and the platform’s underlying logic. This approach helped reduce unnecessary customization while ensuring that the solution continued to meet BVG’s operational needs. 
2. Data Migration: The Foundation for Reliable Operations
   MHP supported the extensive preparation of BVG’s organizational and master data before transferring it to the new platform. The data migrations were among the most sensitive parts of the program. Reliable data was essential to the system’s performance and to its acceptance among employees and HR teams. 
3. Localization: A Global Platform, German Compliance
   Introducing an international cloud platform required careful localization. BVG and MHP focused on the requirements of German labor law and co-determination law, ensuring that the relevant local obligations were reflected in the platform and its processes.
4. Change Management: Bringing Everyone Along for the Ride
   A system change of this scale affects the entire organization. Structured change management was therefore an integral part of the rollout. MHP organized the work in two stages. First, it helped HR teams understand the platform’s logic and the changes to their processes. The second stage extended the rollout to employees across BVG. Employees could attend in-person sessions led by MHP specialists or join training remotely. They also received access to training videos, step-by-step guides, and written instructions to help them use the new system with confidence. 
5. Transformation Support: Making Change Happen Together
   The introduction of Workday represented a major organizational change that affected technology, processes, and collaboration across BVG. MHP facilitated coordination between the business functions, HR, and IT. During demanding phases of the project, the team structured complex requirements, brought different perspectives together, and helped the organization reach workable decisions. Close cooperation with BVG, short decision-making paths, and a strong focus on delivery made it possible to address demanding requirements within the Workday standard. A shared willingness to reconsider established processes was central to the project’s success.

BVG and MHP completed Phase 1 within ten months, on schedule and within the agreed budget. 

The platform’s core functions are now live. Employee master data, organizational structures, positions, roles, and compensation are all managed in Workday. 

Phase 2 will add Absence Management, Time Tracking, further Employee Self-Service functions, and Talent and Performance Management. As the platform expands, BVG will gain better tools for managing workforce requirements and responding to staffing shortages. 

What Has Changed in Practice: 

• Employees can submit vacation requests directly from their smartphones
• HR staff can access master data in real time
• The works council is digitally integrated into HR workflows