Formula E moves fast.
Featuring electric racing cars that can hit 0-60 mph in just 1.8 seconds, the all-electric stablemate of Formula 1 has expanded to 21 race locations worldwide while continuing to push the boundaries of innovation on and off the track.
As the organization grew, its People Team needed to keep pace. The goal was to go beyond HR processes and help leaders make better decisions, create a seamless employee experience, and support a global business.
Today, HiBob plays a central role in helping Formula E do exactly that.
Growing into the next stage
Formula E is at an exciting stage of its business lifecycle. Hayley Mann, Chief People Officer at Formula E, explains: “We are not a startup, but we’re also definitely not a grown-up.”
“We are at that spotty teenager stage. We have great potential and opportunity in front of us, so we need a people platform that can grow with us.”
As the business matured, the expectations placed on the People Team changed, too.
What began as a function focused largely on administration and supporting growth has become a strategic partner to the wider business—helping leaders make decisions and shaping employee experiences.
This has created new expectations for the Formula E People Team: senior executives within the organization increasingly expect access to the kind of insights only a people team can provide.
Meeting those expectations required a different approach.
Creating one connected experience
Formula E had already been using HiBob as its core HR platform for many years. But over time, it became clear that Formula E’s broader people technology landscape had become fragmented.
Different tools handled different processes. Data lived in separate places. Employees moved between platforms for routine tasks. The result was unnecessary complexity for employees and time-consuming administration for the People Team.
Formula E decided to expand its use of HiBob across Talent, Learning, Engagement, Payroll, and Compensation.
For Ollie Brenig-Croft, Senior Learning and Culture Manager, the value was in simplifying processes. “We found that HiBob is a perfect example of us not adding something new. It’s not ‘yet another HR tool’. We’ve actually consolidated everything into one place to make it more cohesive and efficient.”
The platform also felt aligned with Formula E’s culture and identity. “HiBob feels very Formula E,” says Hayley. “It’s the professional, all-in-one platform that a cutting-edge organization like Formula E needs.”
Whether they are booking time off, completing mandatory learning, responding to engagement surveys, or accessing payslips, the experience is connected and intuitive.
“To do anything connected to People services, our people have a single portal to go to,” says Hayley. “They just think, ‘Oh, Bob. I go to Bob, right?’ To do my holiday, to answer my engagement survey, to do my mandatory training, to get my payslip… all in one place.”
And the benefits go well beyond convenience. Behind the scenes, there is much less admin. Less duplication, simpler processes, smoother reporting, and faster decision-making.
Turning people data into business decisions
Today, the People Team plays a much bigger role in helping Formula E make business decisions.
“Earlier in the company’s development, we were mainly just hiring people and paying them,” says Hayley. “But today, thanks to HiBob, we’ve really started to do all of the value-add stuff… we’ve become enablers across the whole business.” That shift has changed how the function is perceived internally.
Rather than returning later with reports or manually pulling information together, the team increasingly has answers available in real-time, in the moment.
“Before Bob, we’d often be presenting a PowerPoint deck to our board or senior leadership team, and any questions that came up would mean we’d have to reply sometime after the meeting once we’d pulled the data,” Hayley explains. “But with Bob, we can pull up the answers there and then, in real-time. It’s in the moment. It’s live.”
The process of analysing Formula E’s annual engagement survey showed just how much had changed. During a leadership discussion, Formula E’s CEO wanted to understand whether one particular trend was reflected across different employee groups.
Rather than leaving the meeting to analyse the data and come back later, the People Team filtered the information live in Bob and answered the question immediately, allowing the discussion to continue there and then.
Much of this real-time insight is delivered by Bob’s integrated AI, Bob AI. It also played its part in Formula E’s performance review process. Managers now receive AI-generated summaries that highlight the key themes, allowing them to spend less time preparing and researching and more time having meaningful development conversations.
“The AI is fantastic because it takes the mental load away from managers. They can focus on the real conversation,” says Ollie. “For me, it frees up headspace to focus on what’s next rather than having to deal with operational tasks.”
Today, Formula E’s People Team has built real strategic credibility and a stronger voice in conversations that shape the future of the organization.
An electrifying new chapter
Formula E’s next phase of growth isn’t about adding more people. It’s about helping the people it already has perform at their best.
“We’re not planning on growing our headcount in any significant way in the next two years,” says Hayley. “Our job from a people perspective is to make sure we’ve got brilliant people operating at a very high level, unshackled by unnecessary inefficiencies or processes. And HiBob really is a key part of our future.”
Today, employees know exactly where to go for people and culture-related needs. “People really get Bob,” says Hayley. “They want to use it. You go on it and it doesn’t just look like a traditional boring HR page.”
For Formula E, success has always depended on moving quickly, adapting continuously, and making confident decisions under pressure.
With one connected platform supporting employees, managers, and leaders, Formula E is building a stronger employee experience while giving the business the insight it needs to stay ahead.
Main takeaways
- Bob helps Formula E become a central strategic pillar of the entire business.
- Bob has become Formula E’s one-stop-shop for all things HR, from Talent and Core HR to Payroll.
- Bob acts as Formula E’s single source of the truth across their People Team.
- HiBob’s AI features have helped Formula E’s People Team get real-time answers to questions from the wider business.
