Ear­li­er this year, we learned about the chal­lenges orga­ni­za­tions are fac­ing as they think dif­fer­ent­ly about employ­ee expe­ri­ence and what that means for over­all busi­ness suc­cess. Dur­ing the ASUGFOR­WARD vir­tu­al event focused on employ­ee expe­ri­ence and human resources, we heard from var­i­ous thought lead­ers and busi­ness users with­in the HR space about how tech­nol­o­gy is play­ing a piv­otal role in adapt­ing to change and dri­ving the con­ver­sa­tion for what the space will look like in the future. 

Last week dur­ing the Suc­cess­Con­nect vir­tu­al event, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors Pres­i­dent Jill Popel­ka laid out the road map for the present and future of the SAP human expe­ri­ence man­age­ment (HXM) plat­form.

“One year ago, we made a bold claim with the intro­duc­tion of HXM as a new cat­e­go­ry,” Popel­ka not­ed. ​“It sig­naled a shift from treat­ing peo­ple as com­pa­ny assets to right­ly plac­ing them at the cen­ter of busi­ness. Our peo­ple deter­mine whether we suc­ceed or fail. The expe­ri­ences we deliv­er, and how we address the moments that mat­ter for every indi­vid­ual, impacts busi­ness growth and how quick­ly an orga­ni­za­tion adapts to change.”

This year’s theme dou­bled down on that expe­ri­ence and put it at the front and cen­ter of every­thing SAP is work­ing on in the HR space. 

How the Employ­ee Expe­ri­ence Affects an Organization’s Success

Near­ly every orga­ni­za­tion — large or small — has had to adjust how its work­force func­tions and pro­duces dur­ing COVID-19. Most have thought about how these changes will affect not just cur­rent employ­ee pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, but also how they will play into future oper­a­tions. Using Qualtrics, ASUG sur­veyed its mem­bers to gauge pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and employ­ee morale dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic and found that by and large, the work­force remained extreme­ly pro­duc­tive while work­ing remote­ly. Many orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing ASUG, were active­ly mea­sur­ing employ­ee sen­ti­ment as they adopt­ed new process­es suit­able for this work environment. 

Accord­ing to the Thrive XM Index 2020 Report, it turns out those orga­ni­za­tions that put a heavy focus on employ­ee expe­ri­ence were not only pro­duc­tive, but they in fact grew rev­enue on aver­age by 16% year over year.

“What we learned from our research — and in work­ing with many of you as you sup­port your peo­ple — is that expe­ri­ence wins,” Popel­ka said. ​“We need to deliv­er an expe­ri­ence every day that brings out the best in your employ­ees and cre­ates a work envi­ron­ment that feels less like work and more like pur­pose, and where peo­ple have the tools that they need to get their jobs done.”

SAP HXM Deliv­ers Tools to Deliv­er an Employ­ee Experience

Dur­ing the morn­ing and after­noon keynotes, SAP made sev­er­al announce­ments on new prod­uct inno­va­tions, as well as part­ner­ships to help dri­ve the HXM platform’s suc­cess. Also up for dis­cus­sion was if the recent Qualtrics IPO announce­ment will have any effect on the SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors road map.

“Many of you have asked about the Qualtrics IPO,” Popel­ka com­ment­ed. ​“It does not change the com­mit­ment to our strate­gic part­ner­ship, deliv­er­ing HXM to all of you.” She added, ​“We can’t ignore the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy to keep busi­ness mov­ing for­ward. In recent months, we’ve used tech­nol­o­gy to con­nect peo­ple across the globe and access the data and insights that we as lead­ers need to make fast and intel­li­gent deci­sions. As HXM con­tin­ues to guide every­thing we do from our reimag­ined user expe­ri­ences to our prod­uct inno­va­tion, we’ve made it our mis­sion to make tech­nol­o­gy work for humans and not the oth­er way around.”

Among the announce­ments, the speak­ers dis­cussed a new home­page for SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors HXM Suite, SAP Work­Zone for HR, as well as SAP Busi­ness Beyond Bias.

SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors HXM Suite Gets an Update for Now and the Future 

Dis­cussing prod­uct devel­op­ment for SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors was Amy Wil­son, SVP of prod­ucts and design. ​“One of the things I am fre­quent­ly asked is if our prod­uct strat­e­gy has changed giv­en the extreme glob­al change in the past eight months. I’ve also been asked if human expe­ri­ence man­age­ment is still even rel­e­vant.” Wil­son assured atten­dees that HXM has remained a con­stant despite all these shifts, and is in fact more rel­e­vant than ever before, albeit dif­fer­ent­ly rel­e­vant. ​“It has gone from being about employ­ee reten­tion to mis­sion-crit­i­cal action,” she said. 

As SAP con­tin­ues to deliv­er on its vision for HXM, the com­pa­ny is also work­ing on uncov­er­ing new ways to bring val­ue in the cur­rent HR land­scape. Wil­son and her team unveiled what’s in store for the Novem­ber 2020 release of SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, includ­ing a new home­page. ​“The new home­page is a vital entry point into Suc­cess­Fac­tors,” Wil­son said. Although the new home­page pro­vides a bet­ter user expe­ri­ence, she not­ed that the employ­ee expe­ri­ence does­n’t begin an end with just HR activ­i­ties. ​“Con­sid­er every­thing that goes on in an employ­ee’s work life, from learn­ing and devel­op­ment, to dai­ly tasks between catch­ing up on emails. The expe­ri­ence can feel frag­ment­ed and jar­ring,” she said. 

SAP Work Zone for HR is the lat­est prod­uct that will pro­vide a uni­fied dig­i­tal and per­son­al­ized work­place expe­ri­ence. Each employ­ee gets per­son­al­ized access to all appli­ca­tions, guid­ed expe­ri­ences and process­es, knowl­edge base, col­lab­o­ra­tion work­spaces, train­ing, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions through a sin­gle home page. ​“What excites me about SAP Work Zone for HR,” Wil­son said, ​“is that you can extend and brand it beyond SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and cre­ate work­flows span­ning mul­ti­ple prod­ucts and expe­ri­ences. Cus­tom con­tent and col­lab­o­ra­tion can also be baked direct­ly in for a ful­ly immer­sive and seam­less por­tal for your teams and orga­ni­za­tion — tru­ly the expe­ri­ence for an intel­li­gent enter­prise.”

But beyond just the tech­nol­o­gy and tools, orga­ni­za­tions need to pro­vide a work envi­ron­ment that allows for employ­ees to come as their whole selves. 

SAP Intro­duces a Whole-Self Work Experience 

SAP first intro­duced Busi­ness Beyond Bias in 2016. ​“We want­ed to help SAP cus­tomers elim­i­nate inher­ent bias­es in their work­place prac­tices,” Popel­ka said. ​“We thought about every­thing from recruit­ing and hir­ing to devel­op­ing, grow­ing, and com­pen­sat­ing their peo­ple.” Since its intro­duc­tion near­ly four years ago, the tech­nol­o­gy with­in SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors has helped HR pro­fes­sion­als elim­i­nate inher­ent bias around age, race and eth­nic­i­ty, dis­abil­i­ty, and LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ties. ​“But this is only part of the solu­tion,” Popel­ka said. ​“Last­ing change requires strong lead­er­ship with a clear and action­able point of view, a cul­ture with core val­ues of learn­ing and trans­paren­cy, and a will­ing­ness to lis­ten and dis­cuss the issues, even when it’s uncomfortable.”

SAP has made a com­mit­ment to dou­ble the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Black and African Amer­i­can employ­ees in the U.S. with­in three years. It has also estab­lished a diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion (DE&I) coun­cil with­in the SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors orga­ni­za­tion. And, it has also ini­tial­ized a series of focused DE&I con­ver­sa­tions with cus­tomers to look at how the soft­ware com­pa­ny uses tech­nol­o­gy to get to the root of the problem. 

“The last eight months have sur­prised me with how cre­ative you all have been with get­ting the most out of SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors,” Wil­son said. ​“We are all deeply moti­vat­ed to do more for you and to co-cre­ate with you this vision togeth­er. The more we can enable peo­ple to bring their whole self to work, and to max­i­mize on what expe­ri­ence tru­ly entails for the indi­vid­ual and opti­mize their abil­i­ty to work and learn, the high­er an orga­ni­za­tion’s chances will be to emerge from chal­lenges with resilience.” 

ASUG mem­bers can watch any of our on-demand web­casts that will pro­vide you with more infor­ma­tion regard­ing SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and more.