ADP: Analyst Day Priorities

Last week, ADP held its annual industry analyst day in NYC. Its priorities for the event included communicating its identity and progress as a global HCM company, its innovations in talent management, and its benefit services. Of course no ADP analyst day would be complete without product demos.

To begin the day, Carlos Rodriguez, CEO, spoke about the company’s vision to become the global HCM market leader. With workforces expanding globally, talent shortages, and the need to be more strategic, the international HCM opportunity is huge and ADP is determined to be at the center of it all. Given its large client footprint for its payroll and time and attendance solutions, integrating talent management functions including learning, compensation, and performance will be paramount for global domination in the HCM market.

Well-timed with the analyst event was ADP’s announcement that it launched an integrated end-to-end platform for talent management. In addition to talent acquisition, compensation and performance management, and succession, the talent management suite now leverages advanced learning management tools, learning content from Bersin and Associates, and an enterprise competency framework, and will be available for both its GlobalView and Vantage platforms.

ADP’s HCM toolbox is loaded and ready to be used. The GlobalView platform is available in 81 countries; the general availability date for Vantage has moved up to June; and WorkforceNow, which includes integrated HR, payroll, time and labor management, benefits, and talent management will soon support Canada. On the back-end, it would be great to see some HR BPO opportunities beyond payroll arise, and the company has been busy making enhancements to this portfolio as well.

In addition to its acquisition of the The RightThing, which brought in RPO capabilities, ADP has been quite busy building up its benefits business. There is great potential for benefits outsourcing due to changing regulations and complexities, not to mention the fact that an HCM market leader would not be complete without a strong benefits offering. Investments began with the Workscape acquisition, and continued with Asparity (for decision-support tools, analytics, and reporting) and SHPS (for reimbursement account administration and absence management). Finally, it added a Strategic Advisory Services offering to provide value-added analytics and advice to clients.

Amy L. Gurchensky, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

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Global Growth Requires Global Mobility and Global HRO

No country is an island, even if some are surrounded by water. Each country, its employers and workforces are part of a globally intertwined macro economy and an employer in any one country can be competing for sales and talent with competitors from around the world.

Global growth requires developing global workforces to: increase a middle class of consumers; develop in-country sales, service, and/or production employees; and take advantage of right-shoring labor pools. Employers also need to access skilled talent in short supply in-country and yet importing talent can find an employer caught up in the turmoil of political as well as logistical issues.

The EU can be especially difficult to navigate. According to a new Accenture study issued at the European Business Summit 2011, “Europe in Tomorrow’s World,” one issue Europe needs to address to get back on track for future growth is the graying of the workforce and how to both develop and access more skilled labor.

As reported by Worldwide ERC, many EU countries are already wading in the waters of culture and immigration and are either considering or taking action to improve opportunities to augment local workforces:

• Sweden reduced its “Experts Tax” by 25% to attract more highly skilled expats, especially in the areas of science, research, and engineering;
• Austria opened its doors to workers from the eight Eastern European EU countries to bring in both highly-skilled and lower-skilled workers for industries such as construction and food service because of its aging population;
• Denmark’s major businesses called for relaxed immigration policies because six of the country’s ten largest businesses say they need to attract foreign employees within the next three years, and most businesses believe that current immigration policy is preventing them from hiring the foreign employees they need.

There are many ways for HRO service providers to assist in globalizing workforces including:

• RPO: Top-tier RPO providers continue to expand coverage into more and more countries.  RPO vendors can also help navigate the work visa process in-country.
• Mobility: Expat assignments are a key tool to developing global leaders, one that must be carefully managed due to cost and complexity. Who better to assist than a workforce mobility expert?
• HR systems and payroll: Managing a multi-country workforce requires timely and accurate data and that is hard to come by without access to a top-notch employee data and reporting system. Services and systems are available from HRO payroll and multi-process HRO providers.
• Consulting: Before acting, a global workforce strategy and polices are needed to guide expansion. A HRO provider with an industry leading reputation in HR consulting can provide you with a one stop resource for transformation planning, implementation, and change management as well as operations.

Whether your company is a major MNC entering into new markets or a mid-sized company expanding into just one additional country, a resource skilled in the dynamics, logistics, and legalities of global workforce growth can be invaluable — check out your friendly HRO global community.

Linda Merritt, Research Director, HRO, NelsonHall