Every­one has had a job they dis­liked — it’s just a fact of life. We’ve all been in the sit­u­a­tion where our man­ag­er is a taskmas­ter, micro­man­ag­er, or there’s just a clash of per­son­al­i­ties that makes work­ing life painful.

Usu­al­ly, in these sit­u­a­tions, the employ­ee turns to the human resources (HR) depart­ment for a res­o­lu­tion. As most of us may know, HR man­agers are usu­al­ly tasked with train­ing and recruit­ment, but they also often play the role of the sym­pa­thet­ic, under­stand­ing ​“ear” that we need to get through life in the workplace.

The ques­tion we need to ask our­selves as we get on the road to dig­i­tal­ly trans­formed data-cen­tric, cloud-native busi­ness is, ​“Will auto­mat­ed, dig­i­tal­ly dri­ven HR be less human?” With this spe­cif­ic con­cern in mind, SAP used its Suc­cess­Con­nect con­fer­ence in Las Vegas to rein­force many of the areas where SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors tech­nolo­gies are mak­ing the whole employ­ee-to-HR rela­tion­ship even more human and enriching.

Dig­i­tal-to-Human HR Connection

The com­pa­ny has not­ed that the num­ber of SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors Per­for­mance and Goals solu­tion cus­tomers has now sur­passed 5,000. Greg Tomb, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors pres­i­dent, argues that we can bridge the dig­i­tal-to-human con­nec­tion in HR by accu­rate­ly track­ing work­force goals and per­for­mance, and that this is vital for both employ­ee hap­pi­ness as well as achiev­ing busi­ness objectives.

At least one SAP cus­tomer agrees. Byron Duarte, CIO of Guatemalan food pro­cess­ing busi­ness Arro­cera Los Cor­rales S.A., said, ​“SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tions have been crit­i­cal to improv­ing our oper­a­tions and facil­i­tat­ing ongo­ing dia­logue between employ­ees and man­agers to ensure they are pas­sion­ate, engaged, and ade­quate­ly trained. This high lev­el of employ­ee expe­ri­ence has earned us recog­ni­tion as a ​‘Great Place to Work’ in Guatemala and direct­ly impacts our customers.”

Although it’s not sur­pris­ing to hear pos­i­tive feed­back from a cus­tomer that’s been select­ed by SAP to share it, there do appear to be tan­gi­ble, human ben­e­fits com­ing out of SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and its con­tin­u­ous per­for­mance man­age­ment process­es. They encour­age mean­ing­ful, time­ly con­ver­sa­tions at all lev­els and facil­i­tate engage­ment to accel­er­ate both recog­ni­tion and per­son­al improvement.

A Mod­ern­ized Employ­ee Experience

Let’s talk about the employ­ee life cycle man­age­ment and its impor­tance to the HR func­tion. These process­es include dig­i­tal onboard­ing pro­ce­dures (where arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence advan­tages will help cre­ate employ­ee pass­es, order com­pa­ny lap­tops, grant access priv­i­leges, and so on), through to employ­ee train­ing (dur­ing work­ing life), and final­ly to review tools to assess employee’s depar­ture sta­tus (when they leave a role or are laid off). These are the life cycle ele­ments that SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors is address­ing to cre­ate what we can now call a mod­ern­ized employ­ee experience.

In terms of plat­form specifics, there are sev­er­al SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tions that are devot­ed to work­force plan­ning, glob­al HR com­pli­ance, and com­pen­sa­tion and ben­e­fits management. 

“SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tions have enabled our human resource func­tions to now play a strate­gic role in meet­ing our busi­ness goals,” said Mar­cus von Pock, Kongs­berg Auto­mo­tive exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of HR and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. ​“As we look to offer a mod­ern­ized employ­ee expe­ri­ence, hav­ing a one-stop shop for all HR process­es makes it eas­i­er for us to deliv­er excep­tion­al ser­vices, while also estab­lish­ing a cul­ture of ongo­ing employ­ee train­ing and development.”

Peo­ple and Per­sonas in Pro­duc­tive Processes

In terms of major col­lab­o­ra­tions announced dur­ing SAP Suc­cess­Con­nect Las Vegas, the com­pa­ny not­ed that Ernst & Young LLP, a mem­ber of the glob­al EY orga­ni­za­tion (EY), has worked with both SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and SAP Qualtrics XM to release the EY PX360 Peo­ple Expe­ri­ence Trans­for­ma­tion Plat­form.

SAP says it is focused on curat­ing bet­ter ​“peo­ple expe­ri­ences” as a result of using Qualtrics expe­ri­ence data (X‑data) with oper­a­tional data (O‑data) from mul­ti­ple SAP and non-SAP sys­tems. Man­agers can use EY PX360 to view a ​“per­sona-based” man­age­ment dash­board inter­face that pro­vides action­able insights with drill-down capa­bil­i­ties to get at root caus­es of expe­ri­ence indi­ca­tors. Once again, this is the inter­sec­tion point of peo­ple issues and tech­nol­o­gy designed to make work­ing life better.

The Con­nec­tions Between Employ­ee Expe­ri­ence and Com­pa­ny Success

SAP has for some time insist­ed just how laser-focused it is on address­ing human expe­ri­ence man­age­ment. Speak­ing at the SAP Suc­cess­Con­nect keynote, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors Pres­i­dent Greg Tomb took this posi­tion fur­ther and explained that SAP is now focused on HXM (human expe­ri­ence man­age­ment) as a core oper­a­tional fundamental.

“We know that there is a key cor­re­la­tion between employ­ee engage­ment and com­pa­ny results.” Tomb said. ​“Bet­ter employ­ee engage­ment dri­ves com­pa­nies to high­er lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and low­er lev­els of staff turnover. With Qualtrics we can mea­sure employ­ee expe­ri­ences as they are hap­pen­ing in real time through­out the total employ­ee jour­ney. We do this because we believe that employ­ee expe­ri­ences will draw the divid­ing line between win­ners and losers.”

Also of note, SAP announced a part­ner­ship with Skill­soft to offer an SAP Solu­tion Exten­sion. This col­lab­o­ra­tion allows SAP to sell an inte­grat­ed solu­tion fea­tur­ing SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors Learn­ing, Skillsoft’s own con­tent, and the Per­ci­pio learn­ing expe­ri­ence plat­form. The con­tent man­age­ment of the learn­ing mate­ri­als here is dig­i­tal, but the con­nec­tion points to the con­tent man­age­ment admin­is­tra­tors who need to get train­ing mate­ri­als to employ­ees is very human. Skill­soft also pro­vides Skill­soft Aspire, which offers prac­ti­cal on-the-job learn­ing jour­neys specif­i­cal­ly built to sup­port indi­vid­ual employ­ees’ pro­gres­sion paths.

Peo­ple Are the Bot­tom Line

The bot­tom line is this dis­cus­sion comes back to peo­ple. We spend more on peo­ple than com­pute or stor­age. And there is a glob­al tal­ent short­age for many of the new and emerg­ing skills that we need for roles that, in many cas­es, we have yet to ful­ly define due to still-nascent plat­forms like blockchain, quan­tum com­put­ing, and the wider realms of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI).

Dig­i­tal HR might have a few more shiny apps and alerts, but the core con­cern here is peo­ple, wel­fare, and hap­pi­ness, and the onward impact that all has on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The new world of work is here. Though it is tech­nol­o­gy-enabled, it still includes the human touch. 

Reg­is­ter for the ASUG Expe­ri­ence for HR & Pay­roll Oct. 16 – 18 in Toron­to to learn from peers how to strength­en your work­force tech­nol­o­gy and meet your busi­ness goals.

Pho­to cred­it: SAP