Most people say that it took a pandemic to turn the traditional work experience into an outdated relic. But we think it has been increasingly irrelevant to employees all along. Here’s what really happened: It stopped working well for businesses too.
HR leaders certainly have their hands full right now. But this is not the time for adopting a patchwork of technology to solve everyday problems. Workplaces need innovations that embrace the digitalization and psychology behind how people want to be engaged, supported, and motivated to realize their fullest potential.
People seek a work experience that is not only great, but also reflects how they behave and work and what they need to feel connected and productive. But at the same time, based on IDC research, organizations still need to produce cost savings and increase productivity when undergoing any work transformation initiative.* Unfortunately, this is a balanced employee experience that most businesses don’t know how to achieve.
What happens now? For many SAP customers, the answer is creating a personalized and more intuitive digital workplace experience with a clean slate of possibilities available in SAP Work Zone for HR.
Options, Options, and More Options
Think about the frustration of switching between various screens to get work done. Whether using five, 10, or 25 applications every day, employees must sign in, search for information, close out, sign off, and go to another application several times a day, leading to hours lost and lower productivity. Even worse, this fragmented, confusing, and jarring system landscape negatively impacts the overall employee experience, no matter if employees work within an on-site, remote, or hybrid workplace.
To simplify this common workplace experience, SAP developed SAP Work Zone for HR. It provides one unified place for fast, intuitive access to relevant human experience management (HXM) solutions from SAP or third-party applications, as well as processes, information, and communication. Individual employees can leverage guidance across various functions, technologies, and devices – continuously surfacing the right data, learning content, recommendations and insights, and actions needed to get work done faster, simpler, and more confidently.
Suppose an employee submits a request for parental leave. Once the request is approved, the employee receives a summary of next steps that must be taken for a smooth transition to being out of the office. Such activities may include updating tax withholding and a benefits profile, sending an announcement, triggering an out-of-office e-mail reminder, and calculating a return-to-work date. In this case, the employee knows exactly what to do, when to do it, and which application to use.
Since the experience can be hyper-personalized, SAP Work Zone for HR is like an art studio with a blank canvas and a wide variety of tools and mediums just waiting to be used to paint an engaging, motivating, and meaningful work experience.
SAP Work Zone for HR offers a range of settings when configuring workspaces to suit the requirements of different personas. We’re not just talking about switching out fonts and background colors and inserting a company logo; the entire layout of the page, process flow, and mobile and desktop user interfaces can be designed and tailored to furnish everything necessary to get work done efficiently, responsively, and securely.
Creating Simpler Work Experiences with Best-Practice Services
With so many options available, SAP Work Zone for HR is not a site made up of services and tools that should be configured once to define a process or address a specific employee need, then left alone for perpetuity. It’s a constantly evolving experience that should be refined, expanded, reimagined, and extended as business requirements and employee needs change. Besides, very few things in people’s personal lives and workplaces stay the same for a long time anymore.
For this reason, SAP offers the execution service for SAP Work Zone for HR to enable our customers to delve into the flexible tool kit available through SAP Work Zone for HR, including pre-built elements that can help create rich and powerful employee experiences.
Delivered with a series of workshops, the service drives a comprehensive and leading practices-based implementation with a clear focus on predefined product features, platform setup, and pre-built HR content. Furthermore, it lays the groundwork for future expansion of SAP Work Zone for HR with additional use cases, integrations, and extensions that our customers can add.
The execution service also guides our customers through activities focused on feature exploration, administration configuration, branding, HR content deployment, and user and role management. Concepts around integration and extensibility are introduced to give insight into future next steps. Plus, knowledge is transferred to our customer to help ensure the content, design, and assets created in SAP Work Zone for HR can be continuously enhanced and transformed as needed, even after the initial go-live.
People Working Smarter, Faster, and From Anywhere
The world of work is evolving rapidly and continuously – and rightfully so. Every adjustment in how people work, learn, and engage with each other is an opportunity to enhance collaboration more effectively, respond to market dynamics more confidently, and resolve challenges more innovatively.
To take advantage of each change, businesses must hear and understand their employees while keeping them informed, productive, and connected wherever they work. And now they can with SAP Work Zone for HR – equipping everyone with a more flexible and equitable digital workplace.
Learn more about SAP Work Zone for HR and explore our execution service by contacting your SAP representative.
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Mark Weinmann is practice director at SAP SuccessFactors HXM Services.
Florian Buech is business process senior consultant at SAP.