The decision of whether to invest in a new HCM, both for first-time buyers and companies looking to switch from an existing HR system, is not an easy one. Many CPOs and business leaders ask themselves if the time is right, if they really need the system, and if it will provide them with actual business value. Purchasing an HCM isn’t only a sizable financial investment but also involves a significant time commitment to get it up and running. It can take weeks to months—or even years, depending on the HCM you choose and the size and complexity of your business.
While historically HR has been considered a cost center, modern companies understand the value it brings to the business. However, it can be challenging to prove that business value without the right HCM. Among many other benefits, an HCM helps you save hours of admin time by automating repetitive tasks—and we know that time is money—and provides real-time people data you can share with C-level executives for guiding the company’s long-term strategy and use for regulatory reporting.
Let’s look at how investing in an HR solution like Bob helps you demonstrate actual business value using five metrics intrinsic to today’s modern organizations: agility, efficiency, compliance, retention, and satisfaction. With Bob as your HCM, you can rest assured that your investment will be a smart one.
1. Save money with an agile HCM that aligns with your company size and needs
When choosing an HCM, cost is key. Many HR systems on the market solve a particular need or are designed for a specific company size, which may be a good choice in the short term. But what happens when you are ready to scale and need a more robust system or are forced to downsize due to an economic downturn?
Make a sound business decision by investing in an agile HCM that can handle organizational changes. Whether you’re a company of a few hundred or a few thousand employees, Bob supports your business with a module-based system that you can build on as your needs change.
Take Amanda Edwall, Anyfin’s CPO, for example. When Amanda joined the company, they didn’t have an HCM but used various tools and spreadsheets to manage their HR processes. With a headcount of 150, the company could have held off for another year or two, but Amanda understood the value that implementing an HCM would bring to the business.
After seeing Bob’s capabilities for supporting onboarding, performance management, compensation, and more, Amanda and the CEO/CFO understood that being proactive rather than waiting until they scaled would pay off in dividends. They could be up and running almost immediately, avoid a complex management process in the future, and ultimately save money for the business. Implementing Bob took just one month, and their people took to the platform immediately. Anyfin’s leadership is happy that they made a sound business decision to implement Bob while still small and are ready for whatever the future brings.
2. Save time and increase efficiency by automating HR tasks
HR admins spend a lot of their time manually performing repetitive tasks, such as updating employee information and onboarding new hires, which for growing companies where several people may be onboarding simultaneously, can entail a significant time investment. Research by Brandon Hall Group shows that a successful onboarding process improves new hire retention by 82 percent—therefore, companies must get it right the first time.
For global companies, there are extra complexities related to onboarding, such as local tax forms to fill out for each country and different requirements relating to benefits. Using Bob’s automated workflows, you can set up tasks for each site, job level, department, or any other attribute ahead of time and reuse them each time you onboard new hires to save time and stay efficient. You can include tasks for multiple stakeholders, such as managers, IT, and payroll, and oversee the whole process to ensure that everything moves forward smoothly.
At Airtasker, it used to take five hours of admin time to set up onboarding for each new hire, including manually sending out forms, following up, and entering data into spreadsheets. After implementing Bob, they’ve cut the time to just 20 minutes. Airtasker’s HR team has set up an onboarding workflow with tasks such as sending each new hire an email after signing with the company, reaching out again before their start date to check in and answer questions, and sending a welcome email on a new hire’s first day.
Airtasker’s HR doesn’t need to remember the fine details as they are already set up in their onboarding workflows. Everything runs smoothly without a significant time commitment from HR, and new hires have a positive onboarding experience that reflects Airtasker’s warm company culture.
3. Avoid fines and satisfy legal requirements using people analytics
In many countries and regions, publicly traded companies or companies of a certain size must report to federal agencies on various workforce metrics, such as workforce diversity and the gender pay gap. Collecting this data and showing your progress is a time-consuming task involving several stakeholders across the company. However, if not done correctly, it can incur steep fines and negative press.
Bob’s Analytics makes it easy to gather data on your people for official reporting and internal needs. You can even slice and dice across sites, departments, teams, and more for deeper insights. Using Bob’s data, you can track growth rate, retention, employee turnover, gender diversity, and more for insights on how and where to make changes and set goals for fair recruitment and pay equity.
As a publicly traded Australian company, Novatti must prepare regular reports for its Board and an annual report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) on their gender strategy, including data on pay equity, women in leadership roles, and options for flexible work. Collecting this data was a messy and time-consuming process that involved inputs from their payroll provider and finance team. Since implementing Bob, Novatti’s HR can find all the data they need in Bob in just a few clicks, saving them considerable time and effort and ensuring they stay compliant.
4. Increase retention and boost morale by ensuring fair pay
A study by SHRM Research found that the top reason people leave their jobs is inadequate compensation and that a typical organization would need to increase its compensation budget by 8 to 10 percent to address this pay gap. High turnover doesn’t only cost the company money, which, according to Gallup, amounts to between half to twice a person’s monthly salary. It also negatively impacts productivity and morale, making it harder for companies to attract top talent.
One way to keep your people happy and deter them from seeking employment elsewhere is by providing fair and competitive compensation. A reputable salary benchmarking tool provides data on current salary ranges across job titles and geographies so that you can make adjustments where needed and stay competitive. Using a compensation management tool, you can ensure fair compensation across your company and eliminate pay gaps.
Bob includes various tools for managing compensation and ensuring fair pay. To help you stay up-to-date on current market trends, Bob has partnered with Mercer, the world’s largest benefits broker and a trusted source for workforce data, analytics, mobility, and strategy. Bob’s Compensation Benchmarking Powered by Mercer provides you with a customized, global benchmarking dataset based on Mercer Comptrx data to help you stay competitive. You can also use Bob’s Compensation module to build a robust, global compensation strategy for your people that ensures all decision-makers are on the same page regarding compensation policies and addresses any pay gaps.
TourRadar is a modern, global company that wants to pay its people according to current market rates. They use Bob’s Compensation module to manage their annual compensation review cycle and have adjusted salaries across the organization according to inflation. They have also implemented Compensation Benchmarking Powered by Mercer and plan to use it during their upcoming compensation review to ensure they continue to pay according to current market levels across geographies.
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5. Create a warm employee experience that increases satisfaction and drives productivity
As an HR leader, you want to provide a warm employee experience that contributes to your people’s satisfaction and retention. But did you know that happy employees are also more productive? A study by Oxford University’s Saïd Business School found that employees who were happy at work were 13 percent more productive than those who weren’t.
Keep your people happy by creating a culture of recognition where your people feel seen and appreciated. Check your efforts by collecting feedback from employee satisfaction surveys and tracking your employee net promoter score (eNPS), which measures your people’s overall satisfaction and loyalty to the business.
Bob’s Core HR includes many features for engaging and recognizing your people. Post a Shoutout or Kudos to welcome a new employee, congratulate a team on an achievement, or publicly recognize a meaningful volunteering project. Use surveys to discover more about how your people feel and how engaged they are. Bob includes employee lifecycle feedback surveys to collect feedback at different stages of the employee journey, employee engagement surveys to discover more about employee sentiment and satisfaction, and pulse surveys to gain a snapshot of how your people feel at a specific time.
Bob also has an anonymous reporting tool, Your Voice, that provides a safe place for your people to voice concerns without fear of retribution. These tools help you build a friendly and collaborative culture that your people will appreciate.
Bob customer, The Energy Collective, wanted to find an HCM to help them maintain their warm company culture across business entities in Australia, New Zealand, and India. Using Bob’s Kudos feature for publicly recognizing employees’ achievements and milestones, they increased their eNPS score from 34 to 45 in just a few months. The Energy Collective also uses Bob’s Your Voice anonymous reporting feature as a platform for their people to speak up about important issues. This tool provides an easy, safe, and anonymous way to voice concerns while also satisfying whistleblower guidelines requested by the company’s legal team. Using Bob’s culture and engagement tools, The Energy Collective can provide their people with a warm and welcoming environment that boosts wellbeing, satisfaction, and loyalty to the business.
A sound investment for your people and business
Your HCM is the beating heart of your company, containing the data you need to drive an agile strategy for business success. While requiring financial resources and time to implement, an HCM like Bob is a sound investment in your people and business, helping you steer your company toward growth, efficiency, retention, compliance, employee satisfaction, and, ultimately, business success.
