e-Book

Transformation
through automation
Five ways to raise your HR game
Overview

Why is automation a game-changer?

Here’s another way to put it. How would you feel about freeing up 30% of your team’s time?

With automation, HR and People teams can do just that, allowing them to concentrate on
what really matters: building great experiences for their people.

Just as Personnel evolved to become HR in the 1980’s, so HR is now changing to become a

‘People’ function, an organization in which people are the most valuable asset and company
success is contingent upon a successful workforce. Forward-thinking leaders are embracing
the changing face of HR and getting ahead by automating processes to free up their HR
teams, enabling them to focus on their People.

In this eBook, we’ll explore how automation and technology play a vital role in transitioning a
traditional HR function to a modern HR and People function, in support of the transformation
to a People Company.

We’ll explain the benefits of automation for your People function, your workforce experience
and your business growth.

Moreover, we’ll break down the five key outcomes you can achieve by embracing an
automation strategy and explain how Sage People, our powerful cloud HR and People
management solution, can help.

Five ways to raise your HR game 2

Contents
Introduction 4

Why automate? 7

Five outcomes you can expect from HR automation 9

Some of the cost benefits of automation 15

What our customers are saying 16

Read further 17

Five ways to raise your HR game

Introduction

37%
The world of work continues to change – and the pace and Workforce including
complexity just stepped up a notch. freelancers,
contractors and gig
Today’s workforce is more diverse, mobile and technology-enabled than ever. Everything is
workers is expected to
24/7, on-demand and increasingly disparate. As a result, employee expectations are higher,
and businesses need to be more responsive and adaptive than ever. rise by 28-37% by 2020*
Five generations are now working together in the workplace, all with different skills and *The Workforce Ecosystem; Managing beyond the enterprise, Deloitte, 2018
backgrounds. Alongside this is a growing contingent workforce, including freelancers,
contractors and gig workers, that is expected to expand 28%-37% by 2020 according to a
recent Deloitte survey*. This diversity presents new challenges for HR leaders, who must now
manage a variety of expectations regarding how, when and where employees work.

Five ways to raise your HR game 4

Introduction

Technology also continues to change its pace. We’ve become so accustomed to having
everything at our fingertips, from switching on the heating using a smartphone to turning
the lights on through voice recognition, and this expectation has reached the workplace as
well. New technologies are also emerging, such as big data, machine learning and artificial
intelligence, marking a distinct evolution in how we gather and interpret data, which in turn
exposes us to meaning and patterns we couldn’t identify before. For HR, this evolution can
completely transform a business’s understanding of its workforce and how it plans for the
future, e.g. through use of predictive insights, or its ability to understand sentiment or intent
through analytics.

Five ways to raise your HR game 5

Introduction

Not only are workplace expectations changing, but so are the

demands being placed on business leaders.
New regulations, like the GDPR, are impacting the way businesses manage the workforce
data in their possession, thus driving new requirements and safeguards for employees.

The global skills crisis continues unabated, making it more difficult and competitive to find
and attract the right people. It’s even harder to retain them, especially given the stronger
culture of mobility, with employees changing jobs more frequently. In addition, maximizing
employee output continues to be a challenge, with both productivity and engagement levels
remaining stagnant.

With these rapidly shifting dynamics, businesses find themselves at a crossroads.

The businesses that choose to embrace the changing face of HR and adapt have an
opportunity to thrive and transform into truly people-centric organizations whose
employees are truly motivated.

But how does this happen? Many HR leaders are looking to modern HR technology to
facilitate progress, and at the center of this strategy lies automation. By applying automation
throughout the employment life cycle, businesses can free up valuable HR time, deliver a
much more appealing workforce experience and increase productivity across all functions.

If only this transformation were as easy as giving Alexa a spoken command. The reality is that
most HCM solutions struggle to keep up with the rapid pace of change in technology and
digital processes, hence becoming outdated and no longer adequate. Leaders therefore must
think carefully about the changes they wish to make and seek a solution that will not only
solve their immediate problems but withstand the test of time as well.

Five ways to raise your HR game 6

Why automate?

Automating HR processes is arguably one of the most beneficial investments a business % of activities that
can make. When you think about how time-consuming, repetitive, resource-intensive and can be automated
increasingly outdated transactional HCM processes are, there is no denying that now is the
time for change.

At the process level, automation streamlines many day-to-day manual administrative tasks,
thus improving productivity and efficiency while reducing costs and the risk of human error.
But the bigger picture is the subsequent impact across the business. As a key consideration,
automation frees up a significant amount of time for both HR managers and employees,
allowing them to focus on adding real value, as in nurturing and developing their people as
well as strategizing and innovating.

McKinsey estimates that 60% of all job functions entail 30% of

activities that could be automated.
Consider the impact your team could have if they had 30% more time to focus on employee
experience, advance planning and business growth.
Source: McKinsey, A future that works: automation, employment and productivity 2017

Five ways to raise your HR game 7

The benefits of HR automation

The automation of HR processes can transform how your business operates and revolutionize your workforce experience. The key to this
success though lies in selecting a well-designed, innovative and forward-looking solution that can evolve with you.
Sage People is a global cloud solution that addresses the needs of both HR and the workforce, helping transform how organizations understand, manage, engage and develop their people.

Increase productivity Improve workforce visibility

Streamlined processes and automated workflows allow your HR team
to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on high-value
interactions, all the while improving productivity across the workforce with
quicker and easier ways of working.
With automated reports and easy-to-consume dashboards from a single
source of truth, you can streamline access to real-time people data. This in
turn frees up HR staff to analyze the data, thus improving credibility with
managers and the c-suite by providing actionable insights with more robust
and pertinent recommendations.

Deliver world-class
workforce experiences
Deliver great experiences across the entire employment journey with
intelligent automation during the on-boarding, operations and off-boarding
processes, all the while saving both time and money. HR and management
can then focus on people, strategy and innovation, resulting in greater
engagement and business growth.
Ensure both global and
local compliance
Automation reduces the risk of human error, non-compliance and penalties,
with audit trails and workflows for the various types of legislation. Spend more
time enforcing global policies and enabling managers to remain compliant.

Five ways to raise your HR game 8

Five outcomes of HR automation

Five outcomes you can expect from HR automation:

1 2 3 4 5
Empower Actionable
Great
Flexible employees insights,
on-boarding An engaged
performance through data-driven
experiences and motivated
management self-service decisions
Deliver a seamless workforce
and consistent Say goodbye to bulky, Relieve your HR team Replace clunky board
Empower your time-consuming and
on-boarding journey, employees – as well and managers of packs with accurate
in keeping new hires ineffective annual unnecessary and up-to-date
as HR and the People appraisals in favor of a
engaged throughout team – to do their administration by interactive
and reducing the more people-focused giving employees dashboards, offering
best work. approach.
time to competency. ownership of their actionable insights at
own information. your fingertips.

Five ways to raise your HR game 9

Outcome 1:
Great on-boarding experiences
First impressions count. An on-boarding journey is an opportunity to make employees feel
welcome and confident, in addition to placing emphasis on how you’ll engage with them.
Moreover, great on-boarding and pre-boarding experiences can significantly reduce the time
required for employees to get up to speed with their role and begin adding value.

What are you looking to achieve?

• Stay connected to employees from the point of hire to their first day, ensuring they’re
engaged and excited
• Sign contracts and complete administrative tasks ahead of start dates, without having
to scramble
• Provide new hires with easy access to a suite of helpful resources, ensuring they feel
confident and motivated
• Empower employees to understand policies and complete all mandatory training as
early as possible
• Obtain accurate employee details with no manual input from HR, e.g. re-keying data into systems

Deliver a seamless and consistent on-boarding journey with Sage People:

• Send personalized emails ahead of start dates, in welcoming employees, directing them
to resources and getting them up to speed faster
• Streamline the hiring process with electronic signatures and automated reminders to
complete tasks in less time with less effort
• Provide online forms, checklists, company videos and policies from an on-boarding
portal and track new employee progress; reduce the involvement of HR and Managers
• Drip-feed content so that employees receive it in stages, thus lowering their risk of
being overloaded
• Enable employees to input their details into the system, with no manual HR input required
• Send timely surveys, helping you continually develop your on-boarding process with real-
time feedback

Five ways to raise your HR game 10

Outcome 2:
An engaged and motivated workforce
Employees who feel engaged and motivated do their best work. This is turn increases
productivity and profitability while improving customer experiences. By automating HR tasks
across the entire employment life cycle, HR personnel and managers can spend more time on
valuable interactions, as well as on planning for their employees’ future.

What are you looking to achieve?

• Seamless and personal experiences over the end-to-end employment journey
• Improve employee engagement, productivity and retention while reducing absenteeism
• Allow HR and Managers to focus more on strategizing, coaching and mentoring
• Promote clear and regular two-way communication between the business and
the workforce
• Understand what employees really think of their workplace and employer
With Sage People, you’re able to spend more time connecting and engaging with
your workforce:
• Deliver customized communications to groups of employees, e.g. based on locations
or functions
• Design basic or complex automated workflows in order to minimize administration for
HR staff and managers
• Stay connected to your people when they’re on the go with secure access on any device
• Send targeted pulse surveys to better understand your levels of engagement and drivers
across different groups
• Enable employees to provide recognition for their peers

Five ways to raise your HR game 11

Outcome 3:
Flexible performance management
Traditional approaches to performance management, such as annual appraisals, are time-
consuming and fast becoming outdated. Businesses are starting to move towards a more
sustainable approach centered on continuous conversations that yield regular, iterative
improvements, resulting in greater engagement, productivity and growth.

What are you looking to achieve?

• Implement new, more effective ways to appraise performance
• Facilitate performance-based conversations on a continuous and regular basis
• Instill a culture of peer recognition, celebrating each other’s achievements
• Reward colleagues so they feel valued for the contribution they have made
• Understand performance across the business as well as who your top talent is
Reinvent your approach to performance management with Sage People:
• Automate regular and ad hoc review processes, in order to capture performance
conversations at any time
• Align and track performance with respect to individual goals, linking them to company
objectives so people understand the nature of their contribution
• Capture and share instant colleague recognition and feedback at any time
• Use configurable performance overviews to easily access key performance data
and insights
• Send customized dashboards to management, in communicating performance
throughout the business
• Understand who your key talent is, as well as the risks to the business should these
individuals leave
• Track employee performance and link to a set of comprehensive succession and
compensation planning tools

Five ways to raise your HR game 12

Outcome 4:
Empower employees through self-service
We’re used to self-service in almost all aspects of everyday life, such as online banking and
automated checkouts; employees are also seeking to be empowered in the workplace.
Enabling your people to be self-sufficient with an automated, consumer-like and intuitive
system will help improve their workforce experience and lighten the administrative load for HR.

What are you looking to achieve?

• Reduce HR requests, freeing up time to focus on more valuable interactions and
strategic planning
• Maintain accurate and up-to-date employee details, stored in a single accessible and
secure location
• Enable employees to view their pay information, manage leave requests and
access policies
• Equip managers to approve leave requests and manage absences efficiently
• Provide quick identification and contact details of colleagues across the business and in
other regions
Give employees ownership of their personal information with Sage People:
• Employees can securely manage their personal information and access confidential
data, such as their pay advice
• Employees can access company communications and policies from any device at
any time
• Employees and managers can manage leave requests, with approval workflows and
policies applied automatically
• Employees can easily identify and connect with other colleagues across the business

Five ways to raise your HR game 13

Outcome 5:
Provide more actionable insights
Obtaining accurate and accessible people-related data has long been a challenge for HR, yet
it remains critical to the future success of a business. With a single source of truth that is both
reliable and accessible, businesses can instantly get a better view of their workforce, allowing
for much smarter and faster decision-making.

What are you looking to achieve?

• Ensure key decision-makers are receiving real-time insights from a single reliable source
of truth
• Show and monitor key metrics for the entire workforce that enable swift decision-making
• Obtain the necessary information instantly, without compromising accuracy
• Receive and share information in an easy-to-consume format, tailored to
different audiences
• Access information from any device, at any time

Get accurate, actionable insights at the click of a button with Sage People:
• Receive real-time insights regarding the workforce through comprehensive analytics
• Understand what’s happening ahead of time with predictive insights
• View multiple pre-built global reports and dashboards on demand with
a one-click refresh
• Keep management informed across the business with scheduled reports
and dashboards
• Enable managers to subscribe to reports notifying them of exceptions or conditional
circumstances, such as high rates of absenteeism
• Allow for the rapid identification of trends using charts, tables and other graphics with
data visualization tools
• Spot potential business problems before they occur with early warning
systems reporting

Five ways to raise your HR game 14

Some of the cost benefits of automation

30% <13
Free up 30% of your
Quickly generate ROI
team’s time to reinvest in
from an automation-
high-value and creative
enabling HR system in
months
tasks, like creating great
less than 13 months3
workforce experiences1

90
Get set up and see the

31%
Make your workforce benefits of using a
31% more productive modern HR and People
using technology to
d ays
system in as little as
enhance processes in 90 days4
a user-friendly way2

1
Sage People TEI of impact of Sage People
2
McKinsey: “Harnessing automation for a future that works”
3
Sage People “Unleash the people power in your business in less than 90 days”
4
Goldsmiths University of London: “Make Work Human”

Five ways to raise your HR game 15

 What our customers are saying

“
We immediately saw Through the Sage Sage People gives us Using Sage People Managers are saving
benefits, especially People system, we’ve so much more value. gives us the ability to time and effort, so
regarding efficiency decreased the time Now we can easily find do some of the hard they can focus on
and talent, with 20% needed to manage data, build reports, work automatically and customers and their
initial reductions in annual salary reviews upload resources and provide data to assist experience in our
administrative work. by 50%. generate real-time with decision-making stores, and the need is
global visibility of in a timely manner. gone for our people to
Stacie Alexander Paula Parker our workforce. call HR for things like
Senior Director, Human Former HR Director, Claire Webber address changes,
Resources, AVEVA
Nicola Clark HR Director,
benefit questions,
Worldwide Clinical Trials Lovehoney
HR Director,
review dates and more.
Ubisense

Cindy Burdt
HR Director,
Theisen’s

Five ways to raise your HR game

” 16
Read further

Discover the benefits of Sage People today at www.sagepeople.com.

Sage People, as part of the Sage Business Cloud, improves how you
attract, manage and retain your workforce.

Through smart and efficient automation, you can transform your

entire workforce experience, improving productivity and freeing up
your HR team to focus on growing your people and your business.

By automating the end-to-end people journey, Sage People provides

the technology and services needed to embrace the new ways of
working both today and into the future, in addition to growing as
you do.

Request a demo

Five ways to raise your HR game 17

Find out more by visiting: www.sagepeople.com

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