A focus on employee experience will remain crucial for attracting and retaining top talent for your organisation throughout 2023.

Read on to discover best practices to incorporate into your employee satisfaction strategy. 

2022 was another year of record-high resignation figures across almost every industry, and as a result, employee experience is quickly becoming one of the top priorities as we enter 2023.

If managed strategically, positive employee experiences can have huge impacts across your business – such as reducing staff turnover, improving productivity, differentiating your brand to prospective employees, and much more.  Many HR leaders are now focusing on how they can retain their top performers and attract new talent into their organisations in what continues to be a war for talent.

What is employee experience?

It’s how your employees feel about their jobs, their physical work environment, and the culture within your company, as well as their relationships with colleagues, management, and executives. And each one of these elements is crucial to helping your employees remain engaged, satisfied, and committed to staying with your company. 

But despite the value of positive employee experiences, many organisations still aren’t hitting the mark. In fact, Gartner reports that 87% of employees aren’t fully satisfied with their experience today.

To reduce this dissatisfaction, HR leaders need to refocus their efforts on employee experience by accurately measuring the state of their experiences today and designing strategies that truly consider the needs of their employees.

We’ve gathered some best practices to help you design your employee experience strategy for 2023. These cover steps to creating positive experiences at every step of the employee journey, from the moment they join to their everyday working lives.

An employees’ experience starts from the moment they find your company

Employee experience doesn’t begin on their first day – it starts as soon as they see an advert for their role. Research from HR Grapevine’s Employee Experience Playbook shows that 78% of candidates believe the recruitment experience is a good indicator of what a company’s employee experience will be like. Also, 60% of candidates talk about their application experience to others. This means it’s an essential first step to get right – otherwise, you might be jeopardising your ability to attract top talent.

A good place to start is by looking at your application process. According to the research from the playbook, top performers are more likely to begin applications on their mobile phones, so your website and forms need to be mobile-friendly and also up to date with the latest company info. And consider that a job advert should be ‘selling’ the role and the company to the candidates, not a list of duties, or worse, a job description.

Apply for a role at your company so you can actually experience each step of the early parts of the process – is it a positive one?

You’ll also need to give a realistic overview of the job once you get to interview stage, to help manage potential employees’ expectations and allow them to see if they’ll be a good fit for the role. If you can get each of the steps in the recruitment process right from the beginning, it’s more likely you’ll find committed, well-suited employees for your company. 

Dedicated recruitment and talent management solutions can also help with tasks such as signing contracts, completing essential paperwork, and getting new employees connected with your workplace before they’ve even walked through the door. If these administration responsibilities are dealt with upfront, your new recruits will be able to focus on their roles as soon as they start. The slicker and more streamlined the process, the more positive experience they will have.

Gain insights by continuously listening 

Employee experience isn’t just something to consider for new or potential employees. Continuously listening to your current employees, especially at times of change, can help you gain the insights you need to improve their experience and create a culture of high engagement and productivity.

Research suggests that formal, wide-scale surveys are a great approach to take for understanding your employees’ needs. Annual surveys were once the norm but with the ever-evolving world of work, quarterly ones will give a more comprehensive and real-time snapshot. Delivering employee surveys around important events or big changes in the company can also help you gather insights throughout the year, and help your employees feel their opinions are valued. This might include events such as onboarding, quarterly reviews, employee exits, or changes to your working models.

Surveys are particularly important to understanding how your employees are feeling on a broader scale about their roles and your company culture. To ensure you obtain the most valuable information, and the respondents see this as a positive task, you’ll need to consider what questions you’ll ask, how you’ll manage the data you collect, how you’ll action the feedback and most importantly, timely communication of the outcomes and actions. This is again to allow employees to see taking part as a positive experience as the business is showing they have listened and taken action. 

With the right employee management tools, you can also track and manage the data from these surveys and compare it with fluctuations in productivity and output across the year – and even correlate the results to the actions you take to see if you’re on the right path.

With employee happiness comes success 

The employee experience also extends outside the office, with their health, finances, family, and social life all impacting their overall wellbeing and experience at work. 

There’s a fine line as an organisation between where your influence and responsibilities lie. You can’t seek to support every part of your employees’ lives, but all these factors can have a significant effect on their productivity and engagement during their working day so it’s important to acknowledge the importance they hold.

A good place to focus a respect for their non-work time. If your organisation can make all HR related administration tasks easy, simple, and quick to action, this can prevent them from spending additional time outside of their working day on time consuming but necessary tasks.

For example, introducing an employee portal that’s connected to your central HR system can give your employees a convenient and easy way to book annual leave, report sickness and absences, file requests, update their personal information and communicate with your HR team whenever they need to.

You can also help employees to feel satisfied in their roles by offering a clear sense of direction and progression. This can be achieved with regular catch-ups with line managers, or with a dedicated performance and learning management tool that helps employees track their progress towards goals, rewards, and promotions.

Ready to kickstart your employee experience strategy for 2023?

If you’d like to discuss your employee experience strategy, we have consultants with decades of HR experience across a wide range of sectors – please get in touch to see how we can help. 

On December 1 2022 SAP sold Litmos LMS to Francisco Partners, a private equity company based in California.

Litmos was originally acquired by SAP as part of their acquisition of Callidus back in April 2010. Callidus was purchased for its CRM capabilities with the intention of integrating with Hybris, SAP’s cloud-based e-commerce platform solution for B2B and B2C enterprises. This allowed SAP to offer a stronger proposition in the overall £46 billion CRM market. Callidus had previously acquired Litmos in 2011, specifically for the purpose of generic sales training.

The inclusion of Litmos within SAP’s acquisition of Callidus caused some conflict of interest as SAP already had a market leading LMS within their product suite. This was a challenge in particular for the SAP SuccessFactors product strategy as the Litmos LMS didn’t fill any gap or meet a specific market need. It was regarded as a simple learning platform with a fantastic user interface that required little effort to set up. Unfortunately, it did have some weaknesses, if you can call them that, which Jigsaw found to be its restrictive functionality and limited features.

However, it was the perfect tool to deliver discrete learning content to a discrete learning audience, a point solution as a learning platform. Where it wasn’t so strong was in its ability to fulfil the role of a corporate learning infrastructure platform.

In 2021 Jigsaw Cloud was assigned and invited by SAP SuccessFactors to work with Litmos as a value-added reseller and service partner. The Litmos services available for customers to access via partners like Jigsaw was very restrictive as the product is quite simple with a strong ‘do it yourself’ sales proposition. The opportunity for us was only limited to customers who had no inclination or motivation to do it themselves, a bit like paying someone to assemble your IKEA furniture.

Our CEO, Paul Rae, comments: “What surprised me was that Litmos was more expensive than the SAP learning and only out classed it on aesthetics and rapid deployment.”

Paul goes on to explain, “I was also taken aback by the number of times customers of SAP Litmos reached out, asking if the system could fulfil incremental business requirements and on almost every occasion, the answer was always no.

It became apparent that Litmos was never going to be in a position to be anything other than an expensive luxury points learning platform for four point learning content. This does not compete with the overall value proposition of SAP Success Factors, which is a tier one, globally, enhanced functionally rich end to end, HXM infrastructure for corporations.

As a partner, we found Litmos to have great people and culture and their customers were very interesting, but ultimately, it was not an enhancement to SAP SuccessFactors.”

As a result of the Litmos sale by SAP, Jigsaw Cloud will no longer be offering Litmos LMS support or implementation to new customers as part of our suite of services.

Jigsaw Cloud appoints Jane Corbett as Chief Customer and Operations Officer and Executive Board Director.

Our CEO, Founder & Owner, Paul Rae, says, “This is a great day for Jigsaw and for Jane and I am delighted that she will be assuming this vital leadership role and joining our board. Jane has written the book on the delivery of quality SuccessFactors implementation projects and under her leadership, Jigsaw won the SAP partner ‘blue ribbon’ award for Cloud Service Delivery in 2021 and in 2022 – an unprecedented achievement.”

Jane has overseen more than 150 SuccessFactors implementations and has developed Jigsaw’s world-renowned packaged solution, ‘SmartStart’, which has been phenomenally successful as well as Jigsaw ‘Best Practice’ implementation methodology. Both these programs have resulted in the efficient delivery of SuccessFactors allowing for much greater competitiveness and time-to-value.

In September 2020 Jane assumed the leadership of Jigsaw Support Services and quickly set to work to improve the quality, efficiency and depth of the delivery proposition which has seen significantly improved customer satisfaction, retention, and returns.

Paul Rae also says, “This is a well-deserved promotion and appointment and I firmly believe that Jane has transformed Jigsaw into one of the best service delivery partners in the SAP eco-system. I am proud of her achievements and have no doubt that the best is yet to come.”

If you would like to understand more about Jigsaw’s world leading SuccessFactors implementation services or SuccessFactors support, then please contact Paul Rae on 020 3432 3351.

This is the second of a two-part review of the HR Trends, Challenges & Priorities for 2023.

In a nutshell, our team of HR specialists and consultants at Jigsaw Cloud have identified that:

In part 1 we looked at four emerging trends of the eight identified: Talent Scarcity, Remote & Hybrid Working, Effective Leadership & Management as well as Managing Change Fatigue. This article explores the other four HR Trends for 2023.

Employee Experience

In the Gartner Top Priorities report, Employee Experience was cited by 47% of global respondents as a top priority for 2023. The ongoing war for talent means that positively engaging with employees and offering a great experience at every touchpoint, must become the norm, not just a token gesture.

A study by Workhuman found that employee retention (47%) culture management (34%) and employee management (31%) were also a high priority concern to HR leaders. Many issues within these broader concerns can be managed by facilitating an open culture in the organisation, a critical component of offering a positive and inclusive employee experience.

Creating a positive company culture is a key area that employers can use to further distinguish themselves, especially if they have made a long-term choice to embrace the remote working model.

According to Indeed’s Work Wellbeing 2022 Insights Report, 90% of respondents believe that how they feel at work matters, yet only 49% of people report their company is measuring happiness and wellbeing. So, it comes as no surprise that after pay & benefits, stress, lack of satisfaction, and happiness are the leading reasons people look for new opportunities. This means that measuring and understanding employee wellbeing is becoming vital to both attracting and retaining talent.

Indeed’s 2022 research indicates that expectations around wellbeing at work are increasing following the pandemic with:

Glassdoor research shows similar trends, stating that in the US, the UK, Germany, and France, workers who are more satisfied with their current jobs are less likely to begin an application for a new job elsewhere. Alongside employee experience, enhanced benefits can also help to mitigate staff attrition, and this is the focus for our next trend.

Enhanced Benefits Can Give Employers a Competitive Edge

Compensation remains the top priority for many in the current cost of living crisis. And for job seekers, higher pay was the most often selected reason that many start to search for a new job. This is being reflected across wage levels, where there has been substantial nominal wage gains over the last 12 months as employers try to attract and recruit the talent they need.

What’s the answer if offering higher salaries is not an option though?

Lower paying roles and sectors where remote working is not an option will have to get creative with what they offer if they want to attract, recruit, and retain new staff.

Holistic benefits have become a more critical part of compensation packages, which give employers ways to differentiate their organisations and make job offers more appealing, especially in occupations at the lower end of the wage scale that typically require in-person attendance, like childcare or food preparation and service. On Indeed’s US job platform three major benefit categories have climbed exponentially across the entire market, these are healthcare, retirement plans, and paid time off. For example, from August 2019 to August 2022, paid time off as a benefit rose from 21.3% to 38.8% in low-wage sectors like personal care and home health.

Those already employed are seeing their portfolio of benefits increasing. Previously onsite workers in tech companies could expect stocked kitchens and free lunch as standard but post pandemic reviews on Glassdoor show that free lunches are on the rise in sectors such as manufacturing and transportation/logistics.

Similarly, access to commuter benefits grew in many of the industries that do not have a remote work option, including free parking, public transportation reimbursement, and even money for fuel. However, perhaps the most critical benefit growing across all industries is that of mental health care, this trend has increased throughout 2022.

Offering a benefits package to suit the needs of today’s workforce is one step towards attracting new employees but with so much competition for talent, one aspect that often gets overlooked is recruitment and onboarding, which is our next trend to explore.

Making Recruitment and Onboarding a Great Experience

The reality of low supply and low retention doesn’t change the fact that bad hires can result in a fall in team morale and a drop in productivity. This is reflected in Gartner’s Top Priorities report which sees 46% of HR leaders prioritising Recruitment with 36% stating their sourcing strategies are now insufficient for finding the skills they need in the current candidate driven market.

Recruitment and onboarding are steeped in opportunities to offer a positive experience to both attract and retain the most suitable people, and this specific element is aligned to the ‘employee experience’ trend we have already covered.

HR technology is long past just attractive landing pages and reliance solely on third party job boards and company reputation to ensure you can hire the best available talent. By having a dedicated HR cloud system in place to collate data and identify talent, then attract, recruit, and ultimately retain these individuals is only going to become more relevant in years to come.

A considered and consistent end-to-end automated system is becoming a crucial aspect for a business if they wish to remain competitive when it comes to recruiting, onboarding, and retaining staff. Considering the entire candidate journey as a means of recruiting for any vacancy, let alone those that are tagged as ‘hard to fill’ is a trend that will grow exponentially over the coming months. Having the tech to keep candidates ‘warm’ right from the beginning of the hiring process until long after onboarding is going to give those organisations who embrace it a huge competitive edge.

Research from Glassdoor states that 89% of job seekers use their mobile for job searching while 68% Millennials, 54% of Gen Xers and 48% of Baby Boomers use social media as their primary means of job searching. Having a system to support this preferred mobile application method gives more power to HR to be able to adapt to meet talent requirements, sourcing options and changes in the market. One of the emerging talent requirements is the importance of any potential new employer to clearly support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), so this is the last trend we explore.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is Front of Mind for Job Seekers

According to the results of a September 2022 survey from Indeed & Glassdoor, benefits such as employee resource groups, diversity training, and mentoring programs surged in 2020 and 2021 in the USA, Canada, and the UK as social justice and equity issues came to the fore. Here are just some of the findings:

For employers, a lack of clearly defined DEI initiatives could have a negative impact on their hiring and staff retention because the workforce of tomorrow will care even more deeply about these than the stats above show. Instead, organisations need to use these programs to continue to differentiate themselves in the candidate driven market we are going to be in for the foreseeable future.

None of the trends Jigsaw Cloud have identified in this or Part 1 of this report are going to be a flash in the pan. There is a fundamental shift in the workplace and those that shift with it and embrace those trends will thrive rather than just survive throughout 2023 and beyond.

If you’ve not read part one of this two-part series on HR Trends for 2023, we looked at: Talent Scarcity, Remote & Hybrid Working, Effective Leadership & Management as well as Managing Change Fatigue.

Jigsaw Cloud are a team of HR specialists and consultants who work alongside customers across most sectors both within the UK and internationally. This expertise and access to a wide variety of SME and larger multi-nationals gives us indepth knowledge of the HR landscape.

It’s the season to be gathering and reviewing data to make more informed decisions in preparation for the start of a new year. 

Having reviewed all the latest HR research, Jigsaw Cloud finds that the perennial challenges within HR are still, well, perennial. We’ve identified 8 key HR trends for 2023 and beyond.

This is the first of a two-part feature and covers four of the eight key HR trends we have identified for 2023.

Talent Scarcity

Many believe that as the fallout from the global pandemic recedes so will the war for talent but there are many elements that dictate that this is not the case.

Demographic trends show many countries, including the USA, the UK, France, and Germany, will continue to experience a worker shortage due to their aging populations, according to the Indeed & Glassdoor’s Hiring and Workplace Trends Report 2023. In addition, this report identifies that supply dynamics will continue to create a persistent and wide gap between employer demand and candidate availability. These include the absence of sustained immigration, an increase in labour productivity, and a lack of focus on attracting non workers of all ages to join or return to the workforce.

Even as many economies slow or fall into recession and employer hiring decreases, there will be a shortage of candidates to fill long-term demand far beyond 2023. This means workers will continue to have the leverage to request higher pay, increased benefits, scheduling flexibility, and a variety of other elements which could be relevant to their role, industry, or specific employer.

However, according to the Indeed & Glassdoor report, there are 3 clear areas emerging to offset the shortage of candidates:

  1. Attracting workers from abroad is an effective way to promote hiring when talent and skills are in short supply. Several countries are reviewing immigration policies to allow certain worker categories to gain right-to-work status more easily.
  2. Many employers are also tapping into groups of workers often passed over, such as those with criminal records, as well as doing more to accommodate workers with disabilities by adopting more flexible work policies. Offering flexibility in areas such as work scheduling will also attract and retain an older work force and more women as well, who could not previously re-join the workforce due to childcare responsibilities.
  3. Investing in artificial intelligence and other technologies to negate the need for humans to carry out certain types of work may be controversial but data shows that they can boost productivity and can actually help to fill gaps in workforce supply.

But none of these are overnight solutions so in the meantime the continued talent scarcity has a knock-on effect for the workplace as a whole. Recruitment will become more challenging, the importance of managing the candidate journey and then ongoing employee expectations will come to the forefront along with the need to update skills to manage hybrid and remote workers. So, most of the trends we focus on are as a direct result of talent scarcity.

Remote & Hybrid Working

Once seen as an occasional perk or frowned upon because ‘workers can only be productive at work’, remote working became essential for organisations to continue to function during the pandemic. Online meetings are an enduring image of working life during this time but because of this forced ‘work from home’, many employers discovered that remote work was actually a great business model for their business and their people.

A result of the ability to be more flexible with work was that many took the leap to change profession, company, or industry, resulting in what many coined the ‘The Great Resignation’. However, it could be argued that it wasn’t resignation, instead people felt motivated by the wider cultural acceptance of their change in priorities and what they wanted from work. More than avoiding early starts, long commutes, and donning office appropriate attire, mainstream remote working finally allowed people to re-evaluate their lifestyle and, for some, find that elusive work-life balance.

Intuition, a leading global knowledge solutions company, collated data on the growth in popularity of remote working and found that 62% of employees now expect their employers will allow them to work remotely moving forward.
While the necessity to work from home has ended, the ability and option to work from anywhere is now thriving. The number of job postings on Indeed that advertise remote work are well above where they were prior to the pandemic and searches for remote work roles remain extremely popular with job seekers too.

Talent scarcity and workers’ preferences will ensure that remote and hybrid work will become the norm for some jobs and across some industries. But it’s not all about employees as employers also benefit as offering remote work opens the door to more talent pools for whom commuting or working within an office environment may not be feasible.

However, only about a third of occupations are suitable for remote work; Food can’t be prepped, deliveries can’t be made, surgeries cannot be performed, retailers cannot open their doors for business and construction workers can’t build. Which means organisations that cannot offer remote working are seeing their talent pools diminish as workers choose to gravitate toward work that lets them ‘work from home’. One response to this has been to offer signing bonuses to compete with those organisations who are able to accommodate remote working occupations.

The long-term impact of embracing a remote or hybrid working model are yet to become clear, or fully felt but there are a couple of immediate positives as it:

If managed with the correct framework and technologies, flexible, remote working as a long-term model is a win-win in aligning the health of an organisation’s bottom line while respecting the work-life balance of employees. By supporting the work and life needs of individuals, it could mean a much higher retention rate at a time of increasing staff attrition and scarcity of many skills.

However, there are some caveats. Bill Schaninger, a partner at McKinsey, warned in a recent McKinsey podcast that total isolation of employees may lead to burnout, saying “We’re thirsty for interaction with others. We’re not meant to be isolated.” But he also warned that businesses should consider returning to in-person work as “A dimmer switch, not an on/off switch.”

Effective Leadership & Management

There is an emerging skills gap in many organisations between the more traditional leadership and management models and the new ways of working that many have chosen to embrace long term in our post pandemic world. The challenge is to ensure leaders and managers can carry out their roles effectively, no matter where their teams are located or how they deliver their work requirements.

Treating entire teams with a one-size fits all approach is no longer going to engage employees or encourage them not to explore other opportunities should they feel they are not receiving the support, leadership, and encouragement they need to be their most productive.

Authenticity, empathy and adaptivity, three leadership traits that were once listed as ‘nice-to-have’ qualities, are now emerging as must haves from an employee perspective, according to Gartner’s research on the Top Priorities for HR Leaders in 2023. This research has identified that leader and manager effectiveness is a top priority for 60% of respondents. It also states that the environmental shifts of socio and political turbulence, work-life balance and flexible work will redefine the leader/manager and employee dynamic into a much more individual ‘high touchpoint’ experience and human to human relationship.

This brings us onto our next trend.

Managing Change Fatigue

With rapidly rising inflation and interest rates, political instability at home and abroad, the war in Ukraine and still cautious steps into life after the pandemic, certainty is not a luxury many can afford. According to Gartner’s Top 5 Priorities report, 53% of HR leaders see organisational design and change management as one of those five, while 45% say their employees are suffering from change and uncertainty fatigue since the onset of Covid.

Back in 2016, 74% of employees were willing to change their working habits to support organisational change, but by 2022 this dropped to around 38%, according to Gartner. So prioritising change management to best navigate through continued disruption and uncertainty is key as high employee change fatigue and increased work friction correlate with high staff attrition.

Dynamic organisational change can be the crux of what makes a business able to evolve with market changes, so it’s clear that these Gartner stats are a potential cause for concern when the workforce has had enough of constant change. Again, the trend for a more human to human approach comes to the fore; one that is less prescriptive and instead focuses on a more collaborative style where employees are fully consulted and involved in any change process.

The next few years will test the boundaries and measures that businesses put in place to meet challenges and implement change to adapt to them. Planning and a well-equipped arsenal of HR tools and cloud-based systems could make uncertainty less of a vague prospect and instead a clear opportunity for success, management development, business growth and, in turn, keep staff turnover to a minimum, reducing costs and increasing employee engagement.

That’s the first four of the eight HR trends we’ve identified for 2023.

Jigsaw Cloud are a team of HR specialists and consultants who work alongside customers across most sectors both within the UK and internationally. This expertise and access to a wide variety of SME and larger multi-nationals gives us the ability to identify trends as they emerge.

The remaining 4 trends will be shared very shortly where we look in more detail at employee engagement and experience, enhanced benefits, the candidate journey to becoming an employee and the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in today’s jobs market.

In the early days of HR, only large businesses had the budget to invest in HR specific tools, tech, and software. But times have changed, and HR management software is now widely available for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at a fraction of the cost of those early systems.

So, how do you choose the right HR software for your SME? This blog post explores some of the important factors to consider before making your decision.

HR Management Software: An Overview

HR software will help your business manage employee data, track their performance, their learning & development as well as streamline and manage payroll and benefits.

It can also help with onboarding new employees and compliance with employment laws.

Most HR management software is offered as a cloud-based subscription, which means you pay a monthly or yearly fee to access it. Some software providers also offer on-premise versions of their software, which means you would need to install the software on your own servers.

On-premise software can be more expensive than cloud-based software, but it may offer more features and customisation options and ultimately be the best option for both your current and future needs.

Factors to Consider When Choosing HR Management Software

There are a lot of different options for you to choose from, and that can easily become overwhelming.

When choosing HR management software for your SME, there are a few important factors to keep in mind.

Let’s look at those:

Your Company Size

The number of employees you have will impact the features you need and the price you pay for your software. For example, if you have a small team of fewer than 25 employees, you may not need all the bells and whistles that come with some of the more comprehensive HR software packages, those elements that support multi location, or even country and the different legislations and bank holidays, for example.

On the other hand, if you have a large workforce, you will need an HR management solution that can handle a high volume of data, multiple regions and employee records.

Your Budget

As with any business purchase, you need to consider your budget when choosing the best HR management software for your SME.

Be sure to compare the costs of different options and get quotes from multiple vendors before making a decision.

The Features You Need

When considering which HR software to buy, make a list of the features you need. Some common features ones to look for include:

Once you understand the features you need, you can start narrowing down your options.

Your Industry

The industry you are in may also dictate the type of HR management software you will best you’re your needs.

For example, if you are in a highly regulated industry such as healthcare or finance, you will need an HR solution that can ensure you can consistently and easily meet compliance requirements.

On the other hand, if you are in a more creative industry, you may want an HR solution that offers more flexibility and customisation.

Common HR Management Issues
It’s also important to understand some of the common HR management issues you may face within your organisation, such as:

Addressing these issues is essential to keeping your employees happy, motivated and your business running smoothly.

The right HR management software can help you address these issues and keep your employees engaged and productive.

Common HR Management Software Issues

Once you have a good understanding of the different types of HR management software available and the factors to consider when making your decision, it’s time to take a look at some common issues which can impact implementation and cultural adoption of this type of software.

These include:

Data security

Whatever the size of your business, when choosing HR software, be sure to select a solution that offers robust security features such as data encryption and user authentication.

Employment Law Compliance

Be sure to choose an HR solution that can help you meet compliance requirements for your industry. This can be even more critical if you have staff in different geographical locations around the world or operate within highly regulated industries.

Integration with other business systems

Lack of integration with other key business systems within your organisation is another issue you may face when choosing HR software. Choose an HR solution that offers the most seamless integration with your existing business systems and consider sourcing an integration partner who can help you with the implementation.

User Friendly Interface

Any company-wide HR management system absolutely has to be user-friendly as, if your team cannot navigate the system properly, it will not be effective. We talk a lot as an organisation about employee experience and any adopted HR software has to offer a good user experience.

Main Features of HR Technology for SMEs

Now that you have a good understanding of the different types of HR management software available and the factors to consider before making your decision, it’s time to take a look at some of the main features of this type of software.

Key features include:

Employee self-service

This allows employees to access and update their own records, put in requests, or record annual leave and sick leave, and other general HR admin tasks. This can be a useful tool for reducing the workload of HR staff.

Performance tracking

This feature allows you to track the performance of individual employees and can be extremely useful for identifying areas where employees need improvement or training and also for setting goals.

Recruitment and onboarding

Automating many of the more time intense activities involved in any recruitment campaign can reduce the workload of HR and streamline the entire process.

Likewise, by offering a consistent onboarding process, this will help new employees get acclimated to your company, quickly up to speed and productive and engaged from the start.

Payroll and benefits management

Being able to streamline and manage payroll and benefits for your employees, wherever they are based can again reduce time and ensure consistency of benefits and timely pay for your entire workforce.

HR Management Software Costs

HR software can range in price from a few hundred pounds to several thousand pounds per year, depending on the features and solutions you need.

However, now that HR software and technology have become more accessible with many offering a cloud-based solution, SMEs can now benefit from the same features and solutions at a fraction of the cost.

To get the most bang for your buck, it really is crucial to fully compare the features and costs of different HR management software solutions before making your decision.

Summary

The bottom line is that HR management software is a valuable tool for SMEs however, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It shouldn’t be complicated, expensive, or time-consuming – the key is to find one that meets the specific needs of your business, not just now but for the foreseeable future too.

Jigsaw Cloud can help you find the right HR management software solution for your business and we offer a free no-obligation consultation so that you can learn more about our solutions and how they can benefit your business.

Schedule your free software assessment today!

The world has changed with employees wanting choice, slick process, and flexibility. From an HR perspective, this means ensuring people are aligned, engaged, and properly skilled. It means having an agile, often remote, workforce that can quickly adapt to change and is more diverse and inclusive. And it means providing experiences that attract and retain top talent and empower everyone to do and be their best in an ever-changing work scenario.

If you are an SME, time-consuming HR tasks can deter from a focus on improving employee performance and an overall increase in productivity. Consider how much time it would free up if you had a streamlined HR system that allows you this focus?

Your people are the heartbeat of your organisation. When they’re engaged – feeling supported, trained, rewarded, and motivated – they’ll do what it takes to win, remain loyal and stay with you.

An automated, streamlined system can also help you to strengthen the connection between HR and operations by bringing together core HR and payroll, talent management, recruitment, learning, people analytics, and employee experience management with other applications and processes within your organisation. As a result, you can ensure employees are aligned with the goals of the business and, in these uncertain times, feel a sense of belonging and recognition. So important, especially if your business has moved permanently to a remote or hybrid working model.

One centralised system means you can continuously listen and act on feedback and drive operational improvements. And you can help shape careers and minimise staff attrition by providing personalised learning and development opportunities.

Put people at the centre of your business

Whether you choose automation for candidates, new hires, employees, managers, or leaders – a centralised HR system will help keep everyone engaged and productive while smoothly connecting HR across your organization to allow your people to feel connected, empowered, and supported.

A robust HR system such as SAP SuccessFactors offers embedded feedback and analytics tools across the employee journey, allowing you to continuously listen and take the right actions to impact engagement; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I); productivity; and innovation. It offers the opportunity for comprehensive insights, analysis, and guided action planning.

Drive efficiency & productivity

Any system you choose should be simple to use and make it easier for your employees to access everything they need from a single-entry point. One intuitive workspace that brings together applications and processes, information, workflows, and communication that everyone needs so they can quickly prioritise work and access what’s most important to them.

If your people could also access career exploration tools, anytime coaching and feedback, personalised learning recommendations, and intelligent mentoring, all could empower them to take charge of their careers. And, for HR, you gain access to a wealth of data and insights into each individual’s capabilities, aspirations, motivations, and preferences, which would allow you to anticipate their needs and take steps to meet and exceed their expectations.

Create a Future-Ready Workforce

It continues to be a candidate driven market so having strategic talent management solutions for your workforce, you can build the skills and agility needed today and for the future of your organisation. A system like SAP SuccessFactors will allow you to upskill and reskill your workforce to fill gaps and mobilise teams quickly, provide individualised recommendations for learning and development opportunities, and enhance the culture of your organisation to allow always-on learning to inspire and engage employees to achieve their goals and also keep staff attrition to a minimum in the current market.

You can also help employees find the best possible work for the skills they have today – and the skills they want to gain. They could have visibility into new opportunities, such as short-term assignments, dynamic teams, mentors, learning recommendations, and role recommendations.

Make informed decisions

With the right system in place, it can help you remove bias from hiring, pay, and promotion decisions. Using company-wide data, you can plan, measure, and improve DE&I and well-being. And you can help individuals expose their current skills and capabilities to allow equal opportunity for growth.

With visibility into your internal and external workers, you can also plan, staff, onboard, and pay your total workforce using a consistent and optimized experience. SAP solutions provide real-time visibility into your workforce so you can ensure alignment of your talent with your workforce plan.

You can also standardize and deliver on-time, accurate, and compliant payroll. With a proven payroll engine, you gain highly reliable payroll data for financial planning and funding purposes, which continuously adapts to the latest compliance standards, delivering an average of 1,700 legal updates annually.

In addition, one centralised HR system means you can have real- time workforce reporting – and can, for example, see which locations and teams are over and underperforming and why. You can also understand how workforce decisions and investments impact organizational outcomes.

Tackle companywide compliance with confidence

A system like SAP SuccessFactors takes the pressure off managing regulatory needs right across your organisation. New regulations impacting HR, privacy, and security are continually tracked globally by SAP who automatically push changes direct to you, allowing you to better meet and stay ahead of compliance requirements, wherever your people are based.

Increase the Strategic Value of HR

When you invest in your people, you increase the strategic value of HR. Why? Because better employee experiences will shape your customers’ experiences – and the success of your organisation.

Automating and centralising HR process and admin, you can maximize the ROI of HR and people investments within your organisation. You can connect HR across your business by integrating, extending, and building applications to fully optimize HR and operations.

You can also align people related decisions with business priorities – the key to improving profitability. Access to real-time, accurate people data to power comprehensive processes and experiences. And by leveraging insights from your chosen system, you can align talent decisions with organizational performance.

An HR system such as SAP SuccessFactors enables you to engage people in new and inspiring ways, create a culture of productivity and purpose, and improve organizational agility to build a sustainable workforce. At the same time, you can run your business more effectively by:

Realize the benefits of a centralised & automated HR system for your SME

A single, centralised HR system such SAP® SuccessFactors® Human Experience Management Suite helps provide individualized experiences designed to keep everyone across the organization happy, productive, engaged, and continuously improving. You can simplify HR compliance globally, build a future-ready workforce, and align people decisions with organizational priorities.

Objectives

Solution

Benefits

Traditional human capital management (HCM) systems were not built with employees’ needs and wants in mind. By transforming HCM into HXM (Human Experience Management) you can help your customers transform the way they engage with their people and deliver the experiences their employees have always wanted.

This industry-leading cloud-based human experience management (HXM) suite uses the latest SAP technology to help you win the war for top talent, connect people to purpose, and drive results across your business.

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

Do you need a core HR system that meets the global needs of your people and your business? 

Learn the key benefits of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central during this 60 second product journey video. 

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Service Center: Serve Your Employees

Watch this short demo video on the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Center Service Center to learn how to reinvent the employee experience by delivering the HR services your employees need when and where they need them.

In this piece we explore ways to ensure HR leaders meet their responsibilities to support their employees’ mental health and wellbeing.

There’s an abundance of health and safety legislation in place within the UK to protect physical wellbeing, and prevent any discrimination based on it. But when it comes to mental health and wellbeing, the responsibilities aren’t quite as clear – despite stress, depression, and anxiety accounting for 50% of all work-related ill health cases between 2020/21.

Speaking with HR leaders every day, it’s clear that the topic of mental health is one that’s increasingly important in the workplace – which means it’s crucial to understand where you’re responsibility lies.

Your responsibilities as an HR leader

When thinking about HR leaders’ responsibilities, it is best to look at the minimum legal requirements and work upwards from there.

ACAS simply states that employers have a “duty of care”, which means HR leaders must do all they reasonably can to support their employees’ health and wellbeing. Also, CIPD adds that disability discrimination provisions in the Equality Act 2010 encompass many mental illnesses, so they need to be legally treated as a disability.

This leaves HR leaders and employers with very little legal responsibility at all. But we know that most will want to go far beyond this bare minimum to support their people.

We’ve all seen the effects mental health and wellbeing can have on the day-to-day running of the workplace, from lower morale and motivation to poorer performance – and in extreme cases, even conflict. But along with the effects on your workplace culture, there’s also a major cost impact. The Stevenson-Farmer review found that mental health issues can cost employers up to £1,205-£1560 per employee every year, due to combined factors such as absenteeism, presenteeism, and staff turnover.

These are just a couple of the reasons why it’s so important you treat mental health and wellbeing as equally as you do physical health. It’s also a chance to show your employees that you’re invested in them as people, and that they’re a valuable part of your organisation.

Ultimately, this means looking beyond your minimum legal responsibilities and exploring the actions you can put in place to support your workforce.

How to support your employees’ mental health and wellbeing

While you can’t provide all the support your employees will need to manage mental health challenges, you can build supportive structures within your workplace to create a welcoming environment for everyone. Here are three of the key lessons to helping HR leaders address their workforces’ wellbeing challenges:

Team and line managers are a crucial part of driving your mental health and wellbeing strategy and setting the culture within your workplace. That means it’s important they’re effectively equipped to support employees with any issues they might face.

Mental Health Charity Mind recommends normalising conversations about mental health in regular one-to-one catchups between employees and line managers, to build trust and give employees a chance to raise any problems they have at an early stage.

Of course, this means your line managers will need the right soft skills to ensure they’re approachable and confident talking about these topics. Fortunately, there are plenty of convenient eLearning courses available today. SAP Litmos, for example, offers dedicated courses for health and wellbeing, leadership and management, and mindfulness – along with dozens of other courses around soft skills and communication.

After the disruption in recent years, everyday working looks different for everyone. Without the right policies in place, it can quickly lead to additional stress that can have a negative impact on employees managing mental health issues.

One of the Harvard Business Review’s key recommendations for supporting employees’ mental health and wellbeing is to officially update policies that might have become outdated or made obsolete during or since the pandemic. This includes looking at your rules around remote and hybrid working, paid time off, communication, and unpaid leave.

Once you’ve updated your policies, it’s important the changes are clearly communicated to your teams. This is much easier if you’re using a central employee HR system that allows your people to access the information they need whenever they want – and serve themselves when it comes to reporting sickness, booking annual leave, and other essential tasks.

Following the pandemic, many HR leaders and employers placing more of a long-term strategic focus on mental health and wellbeing. In fact, in Headspace’s global study, 71% of employees said their company had an increased focus on mental health due to the pandemic – but only 25% said their employer has maintained that focus in the past year.

To ensure you stick to your mental health and wellbeing goals, I’d recommend incorporating them as part of your company-wide strategy.

This will look different for every organisation, depending on the industry, workforce, and size. But regardless of what your organisation looks like, there are a lot of valuable resources available to help you assess how you’re currently supporting mental health in the workplace, and where you can take actions to improve.

One useful tool is BUPA’s workplace mental health audit – which provides a step-by-step way to assess the policies and procedures in your workplace. Similarly, Mind offers a Workplace Wellbeing Index, a system designed to benchmark your policies and highlight places you can become more supportive.

Discover some of the common challenges HR leaders face with remote recruitment, and see how some of the biggest organisations have adapted to overcome them.

Most organisations had to quickly adopt remote recruitment strategies during the pandemic – sometimes leading to disjointed and makeshift practices. Now, remote recruitment and hybrid working are part of the new normal, organisations need to reflect on their processes and adjust their strategies to make sure they’re in the best position to gain and retain talent. 

According to the CIPD, 43% of organisations are taking an ad hoc approach to recruitment, so now’s the time to get ahead of the competition and ensure your remote attraction, onboarding and retention strategies are effective – to help win the best talent, wherever they are. 

In this blog, we’ll look at some of the most common challenges HR leaders are facing with remote recruitment, and how leading organisations have adapted their processes to overcome them. 

The challenges of remote recruitment: from time zones to dodgy IT 

Remote recruitment offers a unique set of challenges that start before you post your job advert and can last more than a year into employee contracts. Here are some of the most common challenges HR leaders are facing: 

Organisations are spoilt for choice

Endless geographical limits to sourcing new talent mean organisations often get more applications and face more competition. With a large virtual stack of cover letters and CVs to read, HR leaders need to put aside a lot of time to manually sort through them. And when it comes to conducting interviews, HR leaders face new logistical problems like different time zones. 

On top of staying late for interviews, it can be hard to build rapport online. Virtual interviews can feel awkward and unnatural, making it difficult to offer someone a job having met them only virtually. It can take a leap of faith, which can be too much for some organisations. 

Poorly organised onboarding is common 

Onboarding a new hire remotely isn’t easy. They have new working relationships to form, new systems and processes to learn, and people to impress – all while working from home. 

And it doesn’t help when they’ve no idea what they can expect, or have little chance to prepare. With pre-boarding, new hires have the opportunity to learn their company’s systems and meet their teams in advance, accelerating their time to productivity. But this process involves a lot of resources to prepare and relies on the availability of your new hire and current teams.

Unlike working in-person, new hires can’t ask questions or make connections without having to make a call, which can feel more awkward and scary than meeting at the water cooler for a quick chat. And without the right, functional tech, new hires can’t make those calls at all. 

Remote onboarding presents a different set of technical challenges to in-person experiences – from undelivered log-in details to not having the right technology. And it can lead to isolated employees who are at a loose end and waiting on tech support.

If unhappy, employees are more likely to leave 

It’s harder to keep employees engaged, happy and productive when they’re working remotely. According to Deloitte, 39% of people find it harder to stay motivated when working from home, and 33% of people said they felt more isolated or lonely. 

And with 26% of jobseekers not prepared to stick with a job they think isn’t a good fit, even when they haven’t got another offer, organisations need to make sure they’re supporting their employees as much as they can. 

HRGrapevine reports that 90% of businesses believe that employees make their decision to stay within their first year of employment – potentially making it the most important period for organisations to focus on retaining their staff. 

With so much to keep track of, and so many possibilities for processes to go wrong, what does it take to be successful with remote recruitment? 

Learn from the best 

Some of the biggest organisations have faced similar challenges, and they’re working to overcome them. Here’s how three leading organisations have adapted their onboarding processes over the past couple of years. 

IBM

IBM, an American multinational technology corporation, moved all its recruitment and onboarding online in March 2020. When in-person, IBM’s induction groups were as large as 50 people, but to help make virtual experiences more engaging and interactive, the company split its sessions into smaller groups. 

Now, IBM uses creativity to help new hires make connections. Digital virtual collaboration tools help IBM run fast-paced scavenger hunts and ‘draw last night’s dinner’ warm-ups. These induction sessions are designed to be quick and fun, to help new hires stay focused and engaged, and to help them avoid camera fatigue.

As a result of the changes, IBM has seen satisfaction scores for virtual inductions much higher than they were for in-person events – both from the attendees and from IBM’s team of trainers, who now spend less time travelling to different locations. 

Salesforce 

Salesforce is an American cloud-based software company that already had a remote version of its onboarding programme in place prior to COVID-19. And in early March 2021, the company transitioned to a fully remote onboarding experience globally. 

This involved completely revamping its core onboarding programmes to help new employees build connections with different people across the organisation. The new programme introduced networking opportunities for employees to meet colleagues throughout their region, rather than just those in their office – broadening the number of potential connections. 

Also, Salesforce invites its tenured employees to present about the organisation’s culture and showcase different experiences at the company. And the organisation even offers volunteering for all its employees in their first week, to help build new connections within teams. 

In one year, Salesforce onboarded 10,000 people remotely, and feedback scores improved by 4% compared to its in-person programme. 

Vistaprint 

Vistaprint, a design and marketing partner to millions, is a global and remote-first company. Like Salesforce, it also wanted to help its new hires build personal connections, and get a sense of the organisation’s culture and community.

To achieve this, Vistaprint holds a live, virtual orientation day to introduce new team members to the organisation and tell them everything they need to know about HR and IT. It also runs a virtual new hire social on day one that gives its new team members the opportunity to get to know each other using group games, and one-on-one breakout rooms. 

Vistaprint has a remote-first handbook that details different virtual engagement ideas teams can use for ongoing virtual gatherings, to ensure onboarding continues beyond the starting week. The organisation is also in the process of implementing a learning management system, which will allow it to expand and streamline formal onboarding to a 100-day programme. 

What results can you expect?

According to Gartner, organisations with successful recruitment strategies see more than a 20% increase in employees’ discretionary effort and up to 15% in employee performance. Furthermore, committed employees work 57% harder and are nine times less likely to leave.

You can’t guarantee everything will always go smoothly with remote recruitment, but there are steps you can take to minimise disruption and ensure you’re putting your best foot forward as an employer.

In 2022, managers’ roles look a lot different to how they did five years ago. They’re facing new challenges like hybrid working, remote recruitment, and shifting work behaviours. As a result, many don’t feel like they have the tools and skills they need to lead productive teams. In fact, Microsoft recently reported that 74% of managers said they don’t have the resources to make change for employees.

HR leaders have a responsibility to support the development of their managers – and any potential future managers – to ensure they have everything they need to keep teams motivated, whether they’re working in person or remotely.

In this blog, we’ll look at why managers are so important and how you can build an organisation that supports them. We’ll also share some of the best tools you can equip your managers with to help them get the most from their teams.

What impact do managers have on their teams?

Managers have a responsibility for their direct reports’ wellbeing, performance, and motivation – all factors that drive positive employee experiences, and successful individual and team outputs. For example, Gartner research found that managers who drive sustainable performance can help develop employees who are 17% more productive and 1.7 times more likely to stay at their organization than other employees.

But despite how valuable managers can be, they aren’t being nurtured effectively in many organisations. Another Gartner report revealed that 24% of HR leaders believe they don’t effectively develop mid-level managers – which is an even bigger problem considering the new working challenges and growing responsibilities managers face.

For organisations to be successful into the future, HR leaders need to prioritise supporting their managers’ development and streamlining their responsibilities to help them lead productive and efficient teams.

How to nurture successful managers

Creating an effective environment for managers to grow and lead their teams requires support from the very top of your organisation. Your CEO and board members will set the baseline for what’s expected from managers, and managers will look to them for support when they need it.

Senior leaders in your organisation will also be responsible for establishing and refining your approach to behavioural and performance-based rewards. With a consistent, fair reward framework to work from, managers will be empowered to remunerate and reward their team members more effectively – and there’s less likelihood of discrepancies among different managers in your organisation.

You can also nurture successful managers by ensuring you have the right people in managerial roles and beyond. With the right succession development tools, you can identify employees with the skills and potential to become effective managers in your organisation, which can even inform your recruitment plans.

And to help build on the skills current and potential managers will need, you can adopt learning management systems to develop softer, more human skills – which, according to 84% of HR leaders, will be more important for managers in hybrid settings.

Soft skills like communication and empathy can help build stronger working relationships, and establish a shared sense of belonging, community, and trust between managers and their direct reports. This is especially important, as nearly 80% of employees who highly trust their employer feel more motivated to work.

Equipping your managers with the tools they need

In addition to consistent training and development opportunities for your managers, you can equip them with specific tools to help them get the most out of their teams, and manage their own workloads and responsibilities.

In 2020, 1 in 4 companies adopted new technologies to passively monitor their employees, in turn helping managers to lessen their manual workload. For example, a performance management system can help your managers get a clearer view of their team’s performance and cut out some of the additional work associated with overseeing employees.

Using the right performance management system, managers can set goals, identify their best performers, and link employee performance to rewards – automatically visualising the information they need to recognise great work, better motivate their teams, and retain talent throughout their organisation. Plus, it can give managers more time to spend on the development of their direct reports, which currently only makes up 9% of their time.

For new generations entering the workforce, these factors will be incredibly important. Gen Z list positive feedback and recognition, and a manager who will help advance their career, as two of their top five priorities while looking for jobs.
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Empower your managers

If you’d like to learn more about how you can develop and equip your managers to lead productive teams, we have consultants with decades of HR experience across a wide range of sectors – just get in touch to see how we can help.