How does a Services Company Benefit from an Integrated Work and People solution?

Industries: Information Technology (IT), IT Enabled Servcies (ITES), Financial Services, Advertising Agencies, Design Companies.

Software systems are built to cater to various processes used for operational efficiency across various industries; at least that’s what they did in the last 2 decades. The SAPs and Oracles of the world created gigantic software’s to cater to these intricate requirements, across various processes. However, the worlds changing, and users prefer easy to use, highly mobile software’s that can process with a click of a button or a voice command for that matter.

One such systems is to manage People, and systems associated with people to achieve operational efficiency. While, this was always a highly important requirement, it has been ignored since always, until now. People systems comprise of Hiring, Onboarding, Lifecycle Activities, Performance, Talent, Learning and Offboarding, also extended to other administrative systems such as Time, Absence, Shift management. Statutory Compliances that affect Payroll, constitutes a major and important system, especially benefits such as Provident Funds and Taxes that need to be submitted to the government. Payroll on the other hand, is considered one of the most critical systems driving organizational growth. Multiple Calculations, Heads and compensation policies drive the system.

In this discussion we are going beyond people, we have selected a topic involving how can we positively Improvise Operations with an integrated People & Work management- to achieve the desired Work Performance. On, why and how an integrated People and Work management system can support improved Work Performance, better achieve Organization Goals and many others. That projects & deliveries can be aligned with Organizational Goals at all levels, and can generate detailed analysis of Employee Performance, and ultimately even provide insight into Psychological factors such as Motivation. A Work management system can do more than provide People- Work Analytics, Goal status. It can fulfill a larger objective of Project Management, Timesheet Management, Portfolio Management, Costing and Analytics and more. Therefore, the question- whether an integrated system benefits at all?

1. Work Performance Analytics

Would it benefit if you know that an Employee spends adequate time at work? In some industries this is directly affects productivity, therefore productivity analysis. For e.g. while one expects 160 hours of work in a month to bill that many hours, it become s habit for some only to work for 140 hrs a month. Now, tracking that across the company is extremely difficult, except when Project Management data is collected simultaneously. Manager’s performance viz a viz Projects and Employee performance can be measured and aligned with attributes such as Team Management and Team Player.

One Examples: KPI’s, graphically represented could provide real time information, a heat map could provide a more High level output. Drill down to teams, across Departments, Service lines, Production Lines, Manager’s.

2. Informed Decision Making

Further, action could be initiated based on the data procured, such as Performance Review adjudicated to the set of employees. Integrations and actions stitched together allows the HR, Manager and the HOD to act upon a potentially critical situation.

Employee motivation, and Risk mitigation when it comes to Succession Planning & Workforce Management.  Learning and Training activities could be aligned based on the data collected, be it performance on tasks or projects of certain skill sets. Appropriate Learning programs could eb suggested based on pre-defined algorithms for Skills or Competencies.

3. Measurable Goals

Organizations set goals, cascading to the employee. Employees work on those goals, that ultimately add up to fulfilling the Organizational Goal. However some of these goals and targets are also mapped with certain projects, in some industries. Integrated with Project or Work management, these goals could be associated with single or multiple projects. Performance of these projects overall would affect the corporate goal.

4. Rewards & Benefits

Project Performance can be directly integrated with Incentives or Allowances. Incentives could be configured into the system with certain % associated based on project performance, and incentives based on its Profitability.

Goals achievements could also be associated with Annual Performance Incentives based on overall performance of the organization. Various reward and benefits, that ultimately affect employee motivation sit on the same platform.

5. Collaboration

Other benefits associated with system deployment for an integrated People & Work management system, include ease of adoption within workforce due to single platform and seamless workflows. Few system driven qualities:

1. Collaboration: A common tool for Work and daily HR Activities, while collaborating across functions and sub functions, from updates, applications to alerts and notifications.
2. Single Access: Employees are not hassled to get used to different systems, instead can use ONE uniform system for HR and Work requirements.

To answer the question- Is it worth? Yes, it is, in more ways than non. Then why don’t we have systems catering to this very vivid requirement. Some software companies are working on such solutions, and even if the systems are still more integrated and jointed, we have them available. One such solution People & Work management still exists which has a clearer objective to cater to this requirement.