Hybrid and remote working have become a flashpoint, as many businesses wind back programs instituted or accelerated during the pandemic. However, while leaders typically cite in-office collaboration, mentoring and camaraderie as driving the change, cyber security, data capture and accelerating technologies are also key factors according to human capital management business Dayforce.
“Today’s workforce is fluid, always-on and borderless,” explains James Saxton, VP for Product in Asia Pacific and Japan, Dayforce. “We call this the boundless workforce and, unfortunately, it comes with a complexity crisis that most companies and their IT systems are ill-equipped to handle.”
Overcoming challenges and striking the right balance
The challenges businesses face include increased risk and compliance obligations, managing workplace flexibility, and how automation and AI are changing the nature of work. “Each of these challenges forces leaders to make difficult trade-offs,” explains Saxton.
“Through conversations with our customers, we find leaders perpetually balance employee needs such as flexibility and empathy with business requirements such as compliance, productivity and budget realities.”
By providing a unified human capital management platform, Dayforce helps leaders overcome challenges and strike the right balance in working with the boundless workforce.
The Dayforce platform features embedded privacy controls and helps ensure compliance with data regulations. Its rules-based payroll engine manages jurisdictional and industry-specific requirements, and role-based security ensures that only appropriate users can access sensitive information.
“We also have a team of dedicated professionals who monitor and understand key legislation and ensure the platform maintains a rigorous standard of security compliance reflected in its SOC II, NIST 800-71, and ISO certifications,” says Saxton.
Dayforce continues to be recognised by industry analysts like Gartner for compliance leadership, ranking first for the fourth year in a row in the Gartner Critical Capabilities report.
With a secure, centralised and scalable architecture, the platform minimises technical burdens and reduces risk. The platform is also extensible, allowing businesses to build functionality on top to address the unique needs of their people operations.
In addition, a holistic feature set, delivered via a single database that supports a range of modules, eliminates the need for customers to run multiple systems to engage and elevate people.
“We help organisations rise above today’s complexities by delivering simplicity at scale,” says Saxton. “Dayforce combines human resources, payroll, talent management and workforce management into a single platform, providing real-time employee data and analytics to inform decision-making.
“This allows businesses to manage labour with the agility needed to increase efficiency.”
The company also enhances its management tools with AI to help businesses attract, develop and retain top talent across diverse global workforces.
For example, Dayforce has announced the launch of Dayforce Co-Pilot, a new suite of features powered by AI that automates repetitive tasks and serves as a hyper-personalised guide for employees.
“Platforms like ours that come with ethical, trustworthy and transparent AI can transform work and drive value by enabling employees to find information faster, automate tasks to refocus a workforce onto high-value activities and reduce errors,” says Saxton.
AI ethics initiatives taken by Dayforce include the establishment of Dayforce Labs, which consults with teams across the business that use AI, and the AI Ethics Principles that guide product development. The business’s new AI framework guides product and technology teams and senior leaders, in how ideas are evaluated across the company.
Working closely with a skilled partner network
Dayforce has established a robust presence in Australia and New Zealand, with offices in Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Wellington hosting 600 employees. These offices complement a further 10 across Asia and Japan.
Working closely with its partner network, Dayforce helps customers realise the value of its platform as quickly as possible. “With deep product expertise and industry knowledge, our partners deliver innovative, best-in-class services and solutions that help customers achieve their goals,” says Saxton
The network includes community partners that help clients evaluate how Dayforce can benefit their organisation and administration partners that help customers manage and enhance their Dayforce solution. Consulting partners provide client-side advisory, technical consulting and configuration services, while systems integration partners lead complex implementations and accelerate human resources transformations.
Finally, software partners design and deploy solutions that integrate with Dayforce to enhance capabilities and deliver a seamless user experience.
Reducing employee turnover and achieving savings
The Dayforce platform has already enabled several prominent customers to improve their people operations. For example, Harris Farm Markets achieved significant benefits from its implementation of Dayforce in August 2020 for payroll, workforce management, recruiting, onboarding, learning, performance, compensation, and succession planning.
The new online, mobile-enabled system has recorded high adoption rates among its workforce, and employee turnover fell from 54% to 46% post-implementation, with Harris Farm Markets setting a stretch target of 20%. “In implementing Dayforce, we’ve been able to create a better candidate experience from the beginning,” says Nichol Trueman, Head of Safety, People, and Culture. “Dayforce will help us provide better service to our employees throughout every step of their lifecycle.”
The retailer believes its ROI on wage costs from Dayforce could be as high as $2 million, through better management and rostering of its people.
In addition, not-for-profit Bankstown Sports Club, which employs 520 people, has reaped the rewards of selecting Dayforce for payroll, workforce management, recruiting, onboarding, performance, and learning. These include a 75% reduction in the time needed to process payroll, access to real-time labour data and $1 million in potential savings through Advanced Scheduling.
“Dayforce is the solution for businesses to elevate their people operations, today and tomorrow,” concludes Saxton.