“We very gladly recommend Leapsome at DONE!Berlin, because we simply love the usability. It is clear, friendly, and conceptual. You are very, very flexible and have very well-thought-out processes.”
How DONE!Berlin reduced manual admin and freed up time for strategic work with Leapsome
“We very gladly recommend Leapsome at DONE!Berlin, because we simply love the usability. It is clear, friendly, and conceptual. You are very, very flexible and have very well-thought-out processes.”
DONE!Berlin is a Berlin-based HR transformation consultancy working with founders and organizations across Germany since 2013. The firm has helped build people functions at some of the country's most recognized companies, from Airbnb and N26 to Volocopter, working closely with leadership teams at every stage of growth. With a team of around 20 consultants and a 97% client return rate, DONE!Berlin has grown almost entirely through referral.
The approach has stayed consistent: challenge what is not working, and leave every organization better equipped to run independently.
When DONE!Berlin starts a new engagement, one of the first things it tries to understand is how the HR function is structured and what it is managing across a typical working week. Where the requests go and how the team's time is distributed tells DONE!Berlin more about what the function needs than any formal document does. The HR team is carrying out real and significant work, and the work is constant. The shape of that work, and what it leaves room for, is what shapes every engagement from the start.
“When you look at your own work, and 70% is just admin, you might as well not start. You can't even begin with strategy — it just becomes a label you like to have in your title or your goals. And if 'Strategic HR Manager' is in your title but you are spending 70% of your time on written administration, that is not really strategy. That is label poker.”
Marie Kanellopulos, CEO at DONE!Berlin
Getting the operational side right is the strategic work at DONE!Berlin. A people function that cannot answer a basic question without routing it through one person's inbox, or assemble an onboarding without starting from scratch every time, is not in a position to have meaningful conversations about development and performance. Without reliable data and headspace, the conversations the role is meant for simply do not happen.
“Admin is always the unsexy stuff, but the most important stuff. You can't draw strategy over it. You have to collect and organize everything first.”
Marie Kanellopulos, CEO at DONE!Berlin
For years, DONE!Berlin's own people operations ran on Google Suite, with employee records in spreadsheets and all requests handled through email. As the firm grew, the setup started to strain: documents were static, and an org chart updated one week was already outdated the next time someone joined. Every onboarding had to be built from scratch. Myrto maintained the whole operation directly, keeping it running through sustained attention and manual effort. The setup worked, but running it was taking more and more of Myrto's time. As the team grew, DONE!Berlin decided it was time for something more structured.
“Errors are human. But we are a personnel consultancy, and in the HR department, errors should not happen. It was time to professionalize and take the next step.”
Myrto Tzani, HR Generalist at DONE!Berlin
Senior Consultant Joy led the first phase of the implementation, bringing direct experience of building HRIS systems for client organizations. She worked closely with Leapsome's onboarding team throughout, guided by a structured plan that adapted to DONE!Berlin's own pace.
“The collaboration with Jamie is really, really great. There is a very structured plan she gave us, and at the same time, she pays close attention to our pace and the topics we want to address first.”
Joy Brandt, Senior HR Consultant at DONE!Berlin
The first phase gave every employee at DONE!Berlin direct access to their own records for the first time. Absence management, document generation, and calendar sync now run from one system. For a team that had previously routed every data update through Myrto, the shift was immediate. A note Joy raised early about how role permissions were displayed appeared in the product a few weeks later.
“I find it amazing to see the tool developing alongside us.”
Joy Brandt, Senior HR Consultant at DONE!Berlin
DONE!Berlin's people team has a word for what a well-functioning HRIS does: a noise-killer. The administrative tasks in people operations accumulate steadily, dozens of them, and the weight of tracking them sits with whoever is responsible. Knowing what is outstanding, what needs following up, which document needs creating for which person: that is not in any job description, but it occupies real space in the working week. When those tasks move into a system, that weight moves too.
“An HRIS is a noise-killer. HR has so many small tasks that really eat time, and they are extremely numerous. Only after automating the administrative work can you take time for the strategic things, for culture, the most important thing of all, which always gets pushed aside because the daily tasks have to be checked off first.”
Myrto Tzani, HR Generalist at DONE!Berlin
For a firm whose consultants work inside other organizations' HR functions every day, the pattern was one the team recognized well. The administrative load they help their clients reduce was something DONE!Berlin's own people team was navigating through workarounds and sustained attention, with a calendar that left limited room for anything else.
"For me, the best part is that the mental pressure is easing a bit, no longer having to constantly keep track of things or processes in my head, because the tool now handles them automatically. It covers so much manual work like creating documents and contracts, bringing a bit more structure to the process while providing that automation, so everything is centralized in one single place."
Nathalie Riegel, Managing Director Associate & Marketing Consultant at DONE!Berlin
The change extends to the whole team. When people can update their own details and submit requests directly, the questions that used to interrupt the day slow down considerably. The people function gains back the kind of uninterrupted time that conversations about development and performance actually need.DONE!Berlin calls the employee experience a digital feel-good manager: a setup where every person can get to what they need directly.
Performance reviews come next, connected to the same system that now holds every employee's profile and history. Development conversations will have a data foundation behind them that did not exist before. A time tracking setup designed around how the firm bills its clients is already being tested. The sequence follows the same logic DONE!Berlin applies with every organization it works with: operational layer first, strategic layer after.
With the operational layer in place, the team now has what it needs to work proactively across the whole organization, with conversations about people that are grounded in actual data. The conversations about performance, development, and culture that always got pushed to later now have the space and structure to happen.
“The people and HR department will be leaner, more effective, and more human. Because we will free ourselves from the things that cost us an extraordinary amount of time”
Marie Kanellopulos, CEO at DONE!Berlin
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