Through the evolving use of technology, the way people work has changed dramatically over the past two decades, but the way businesses reward their staff is still waiting to catch up.
In fact, it can be hard to keep track of how each employee's total package stacks up against what they had at a previous company or compared to colleagues doing the same job in a different country.
This is a problem for both the employee and for the business.
A global Consumer Packaged Goods company had bold ambitions to revolutionise the world of employee engagement but needed an innovative technology partner with the capabilities to support their vision and deliver an end-to-end solution in an agile way. Following a six-week proof of concept, Endava was selected to be that partner thanks to our ability to support the business from ideation to production.
Combining the knowledge of rewards experts, the drive of a HR team with the wellbeing of over 130,000+ staff at the heart of everything they do and the user-centric strategy, design and engineering capability of Endava, a new platform was born, with the power to bring the world of employee engagement into the 21st century. While this ambitious company will obviously benefit from using the platform internally, they are not keeping this exciting solution all to themselves, they are making it available for other businesses to purchase.
The cloud-based platform, built on Microsoft Azure, is multi-tenanted, secure and fully customisable to each business user's brand. It consolidates information from a number of disparate HR systems into one database and surfaces that data in useful ways for both employees and the business in real-time.
Through a clever rule-based system, data is analysed from HR platforms responsible for payroll, pensions, flexible benefits and the employee directory, and combined to provide a holistic overview of each employees' total rewards package. Thanks to the early integration of user feedback and a creative design team, the platform is engaging and easy to navigate, a definite improvement from more traditional HR platforms.
While it is impressive and valuable for staff to be able to see their total reward package in one place, what makes this product remarkable is that it puts the power in the hands of the employee to self-serve their benefit needs meaning they can control the right combination of benefits to suit their circumstances, today and in the future. It will even offer an app which can help employees achieve short, medium and long-term personal goals by suggesting adjusted benefits combinations.
And that is just the start. To support the gig-economy, a trend where highly-skilled employees are choosing to take on short-term engagements as independent contractors, the platform offers a unified benefits experience across all the companies signed up to it. Users will be able to share a single benefits package across part-time jobs or sync their social media accounts to the platform so that the system can intuitively identify benefits that would be best suited to their lifestyle and hobbies.
For businesses, the platform reduces HR workload by removing the need to process individual reward change requests. It will also save considerable amounts of time and money creating statutory reports and can model mobility financials across different locations, where benefits may vary by geography.
Access to accurate, real-time data allows businesses to fulfil strategic objectives and aspirational goals, including reporting on equal pay across diverse groups.
As the future of work continues to evolve, and the gig-economy gains popularity, businesses in all industries need to rethink the way that they reward their staff, for the wellbeing of both the business itself and the people who are part of it.
By adding a forward-thinking solution built on excellent technology, we can all be ready for the future of work today.