Customer story
Luminor
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Manufacturing

How Luminor aligned HR and Payroll across the Baltics – and gave the HR team back its week

A regulated bank. 2,500 people. Three countries. One platform.

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At a glance

HR and payroll at Luminor before and after consolidation onto one platform.

25%

Of HR time reclaimed from ad-hoc questions

3

Baltic countries:
EE · LV · LT

2,500

Employees

6

Predecessor banks merged

Company overview

  • Industry: Banking — regulated by ECB

  • Region: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

  • Group: Luminor — formed from Nordea and DNB Baltic merger in 2018

  • Scale: 2,500 employees, 37 nationalities, hybrid working model

What changed

  • Fragmented HR across six predecessor banks consolidated to one source of truth

  • Salary review: 230 password-protected Excel files replaced by direct data flow into contract amendments

  • HR stopped being the default inbox — managers and employees answer their own questions

  • Cross-country compliance configured automatically based on country of employment

  • Pay transparency readiness — employees see salary, level and salary ranges in the system
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Lina Vaitiekūnienė on what changed for HR at Luminor.

Lina Vaitiekūnienė, Head of People Partnering & Talent Acquisition, Luminor.

Chapter 1 · Before

Fragmented HR across six banks. No shared employee database.

Luminor is a regulated bank. Every policy is documented. Every process must be evidenced. The European Central Bank is on the other end of any question about how something is actually done.

Inside a bank of 2,500 people across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, that demand for evidence travels down the corridor. It lands on the desk of the HR partner who needs to know when a probation ends, what a vacation balance is, and which manager is waiting on a salary letter today.

The current Luminor structure was created in 2018 when Nordea and DNB merged across the Baltics — in practice, a merger of six banks. The HR and Payroll architecture inherited from that merger was a stack of country-specific tools held together by email and human memory. There was no shared employee database. There was no employee self-service. Everything moved as attachments.

Frame 350-3

Lina Vaitiekūnienė

Head of People Partnering

Chapter 2 · The decision

Four capabilities the new system had to deliver, in one place.

After a diligent vendor selection process, Luminor concluded that Hermetis was the only solution that met all four requirements at the standard of security and compliance a regulated bank requires.

The decisive factor was the depth of local legislative compliance.

Personal data

  • Employee database across all Baltic countries
  • One source of truth for all HR data
  • Employee and manager self-service
  • New-hire self-entry before day one
  • Emergency contacts and family data

Leave & time

  • Leave requests by type
  • Real-time absence balances
  • Team vacation calendar
  • Working time and attendance tracking
  • Business trips and expense control

Pay & contracts

  • Payslips — secure, monthly
  • Salary information and salary ranges
  • Contract details and history
  • Pay level and band positioning
  • Remaining vacation balance

Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian labour and tax rules differ in shape and in interpretation — sometimes substantially.

Chapter 3 · The build

Redesigning HR processes around the system, not around email.

Inside a 2,500-person organisation, a system change is also a process change. Hermetis was not deployed onto Luminor's existing way of working. Luminor's way of working was re-examined as part of the deployment.

The team mapped the HR processes that mattered most — hiring and onboarding, contract management, salary review, probation, business trips, expense reimbursement, post-probation feedback.

For each one, the questions were the same: where does this start, where does it end, who needs to know, what document is produced, what would it look like if the system carried this work instead of an inbox?

“The salary review cycle was the obvious example. For years, HR had run the cycle by sending around 230 password-protected Excel files to managers by email, collecting them back, and manually transferring approved figures into contract amendments. The process took weeks and introduced typos at the worst possible point.

Frame 350-3

Lina Vaitiekūnienė

Head of People Partnering

What was redesigned

01

Hiring and onboarding

New hires enter their own details before day one

02

Contract management

Country-specific rules applied automatically

03

Salary review

Approved data now moves directly from the system into documents prepared for signature. No file handling, no passwords, no manual re-entry.

04

Post-probation feedback

Runs as a structured process with response rates high enough to analyse — replacing what used to be a symbolic exercise nobody trusted.

05

Business trips and expenses

Submitted with receipts, approved by manager, forwarded automatically to accounting.

Chapter 4 · The Day-to-Day Now

What changed for HR, managers,
employees and people partners.

HR teams have their week back. Salary review takes a structured cycle instead of two weeks of file-chasing.

Managers can answer their own questions. Employees can find their own data.

For HR

From inbox to insight

Before

HR was the default inbox for any question about contracts, vacation, probation, or salary.

A real proportion of the working week was spent answering questions that the asker could have answered themselves, if there had been a system to ask.

After

Those questions go to Hermetis. Managers and employees see what they need directly.

HR stops being the routing layer. Post-probation feedback runs as a structured process with response rates high enough to analyse.

For Managers

Visibility without an HR ticket

Before

A manager who needed team vacation data, salary band positioning, or contract status would email HR. Sometimes more than once. Then wait.

No real-time visibility into team data. Every question required an HR intermediary.

After

Managers see salaries, emergency contacts, team availability in one place. Vacation approvals handled in the system.

During salary review, managers see budget usage and salary distribution in real time. Contract signature status is immediately clear.

For Employees

Confidence in their own record

Before

Checking vacation balance or a pay slip was a small administrative project. Email HR. Wait.

Bank details updated by someone else under time pressure, risking errors in the record.

After

One portal. Employees enter and update their own personal and bank information directly.

Contract details, salary info, pay slips, remaining vacation balance — all visible at any time.

For People Partners

Proactive instead of reactive

Before

People partners spent time chasing managers for things after deadlines had been missed.

Corrective conversations instead of preventive ones. Reactive by default.

After

Notifications on hiring, probation endings and fixed-term contract deadlines sent proactively.

People partners engage managers ahead of deadlines. The role becomes about the conversations that chasing used to crowd out.

Evidence

Across HR, Payroll, managers, employees and people partners, the structural shifts are the same: less manual coordination, more visibility, less dependency on individuals.

The reclaimed

  • HR no longer the default inbox for routine questions on contracts, vacation, or birthdays.

  • Salary review cycle compressed: 230 password-protected Excel files replaced by data flowing directly into prepared contract amendments.

  • Two weeks of file-chasing during salary review removed from the HR calendar.

Consistency

  • Core HR processes follow the same structure across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, with country-specific rules applied automatically.

  • Pay, level and salary ranges visible to employees, reducing ad-hoc HR explanations.

  • People partners receive proactive notifications on hiring, probation and fixed-term contract deadlines.

Risk reduced

  • Automated reminders for probation and fixed-term contract endings replace memory and personal follow-ups.

  • Post-probation feedback response rates risen from too-low-to-analyse to usable data.

  • Manual data entry at point of hire replaced by new-hire self-entry before day one.

Chapter 5 · The Frame for the Future

The foundation, not the project

 

Because the data is visible and the processes are traceable, Luminor's HR team can systematically identify the next area to bring into the system rather than waiting for the next crisis to force the choice.

The shift that has been won is more fundamental than any specific feature. HR has stopped being the default inbox for the bank's routine questions. The 25% of the week that used to be spent on ad-hoc requests is now available for the work the role was actually designed to do — retention, capability building, partnership with the business.

“There's still complexity, still pressure, still the same regulatory load. But the questions don't all land on us anymore. Managers can answer their own questions. Employees can find their own data. We can  get better and improve.”

Frame 350-3

Lina Vaitiekūnienė

Head of People Partnering

Möller Case Study

See how Hermetis works for regulated, multi-country organisations

If your organisation runs HR and payroll across multiple Baltic countries and needs one source of truth, Hermetis was built for exactly this.

Read full Möller story
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See whether a multi-country HR and Payroll software can work for you

One meeting is enough to walk through what controlled, measurable administrative cost would look like for your organisation, and what it would take to get there.

Learn more about HR & Payroll

Other organisations on the platform.

Other companies operating across two or more of these markets have moved their
HR and payroll onto one platform.

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Manufacturing
Latvia

“Full transparency with our employees”

Uldis Vilks

Head of IT, Kronus

Read the full story
moller logo
Automotive
Lithuania

“Möller went from 5 systems across the Baltics, to one”

Agnius Dambrauskas

Project Manager, Möller

Read the full story

Frequently asked questions

We know that choosing an HR and payroll system for a multi-country, regulated organisation is a serious decision. Here are the questions we hear often.

 

Didn't find your answer? Get in touch — we'll get back to you.

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How does Hermetis handle legislative differences across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?

The system was designed for the Baltic regulatory environment from the ground up, not stitched together from per-country instances. Country-specific rules - probation periods, parental leave entitlements, vacation types, tax calculations - are configured to apply automatically based on the country of employment. Employees see only what applies to them.

What does the implementation process look like for a large organisation?

Implementation is a process redesign, not just a software install. Rather than deploying Hermetis onto your existing way of working, we map the processes that matter most - hiring, contract management, salary review, probation, expenses - and rebuild each one around the system instead of the inbox. We scope and sequence that with you before anything goes live.

How does Hermetis support pay transparency compliance?

Hermetis gives organisations the foundation that pay transparency depends on: salary, level and salary ranges are visible to employees directly in the system, rather than assembled on request. The salary review cycle runs as a structured, traceable process - managers see budget usage and salary distribution in real time, and approved figures move straight into prepared contract amendments. This makes pay data consistent and auditable across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which is the groundwork most pay transparency work builds on.

Can the system integrate with our existing HRIS or group-level tools?

Yes. Hermetis connects through an open, versioned RESTful API that supports both push and pull - no proprietary connector, no middleware. A global HRM like Workday, SAP or CatalystOne can stay your primary system while Hermetis handles working time and local payroll for your Baltic and Polish entities. SSO (OpenID Connect / OAuth2) and SCIM 2.0 provisioning from Azure AD / Entra ID are included as standard.