A vision for Intelligence at work

What if the workplace of the future isn’t a workplace at all? Why do pay periods still exist? Our lives are on-demand, why isn’t our pay?

These are some of the questions Ceridian CEO David Ossip challenged attendees to ponder during the INSIGHTS 2020 opening keynote at Ceridian’s virtual conference.

Along with new CTO Joe Korngiebel and President and COO Leagh Turner, Ossip shared key workplace trends and a future state for leaders, employees, and businesses.

WATCH NOW: Vision keynote: Ceridian’s vision for Intelligence at work

The new work experience: fluid, on-demand

What does the future of work look like? Borderless. Skills-based. Fluid. Augmented. On-demand.

And to make it possible, technology and the employee experience must come together to enable workers, work experiences, and business agility for that future.

It means that leaders need to solve for new types of challenges as they build the foundation for an increasingly elastic workforce.

For example, while the instant world has created options for today’s workers when it comes to where and when they work, it’s also led to increased liquidity challenges for those workers, whether salaried, hourly, contract, or gig, Ossip said. This creates a cash flow crunch for employees between pay days, and they often turn to credit cards or payday loans to bridge the gap.

That’s where solutions like Ceridian’s Dayforce Wallet come in. It’s a flexible on-demand pay solution.

“On-demand pay is now a fundamental workplace requirement,” Ossip said. The traditional pay period is an artifact of 1940’s batch-based technology, he added. “In every other aspect of our lives, we’re accustomed to instant delivery,” Ossip said, and the same should apply to getting paid.

With Dayforce Wallet, employees can see their net earnings (including taxes and deductions) at the end of every day or shift, and can choose to get paid immediately. There’s no fee for employees or software subscription fee for employers. Payroll admins don’t have to change how they process payroll, and there are also no changes to how payroll is funded.

Ossip shared an example from Buehler’s Fresh Foods to show how continuous access to pay contributes to improving employee well-being and employer competitive advantage: Watch the story here.

Learn more about Dayforce Wallet: Watch Dayforce Wallet: Changing pay changes everything featuring Danone North America at INSIGHTS 2020

Learn more about breaking the payday paradigm in our Reimagining payday white paper

Looking ahead, Ossip talked more about what the future of work will look like, powered by an elastic workforce – and Dayforce. He envisions an infrastructure that empowers people to choose where and when they work, with Dayforce as the platform that holds worker identity and HR information, skills, experience, and verification. With this structure, employees could work for any workplace without the need for on- or off-boarding, and be paid as soon as work is completed.

He likened this skills-based, project-based world of work to other industries, like gaming, in which, depending on the timing and type of game, teams form and dissolve fluidly, and are dependent on skillsets.

“To enable the workplace of the future, we will match skills and work in a more intelligent way,” Ossip said.

Ceridian’s history of innovation and vision for the future

Early in his keynote, Ossip outlined Ceridian’s track record as an innovator in human capital management. In 2020 alone, he added, Ceridian launched several new and game-changing products, including Dayforce Wallet, Employee Safety Monitor, and Benefits Intelligence.

Ossip also noted Ceridian’s recent recognition as a leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises.

He outlined Ceridian’s three-stage vision for Dayforce, which started in 2012 with a goal to eliminate outdated batch processes and the separation of data between HCM modules.

With the launch of Dayforce, Ceridian provided a solution to the separation of data and processing that existed with batch-based payroll solutions, which was creating a payroll processing crunch for HR and payroll administrators. Dayforce provided a single database and single rules engine across all of HCM, meaning at any time, if an HR record or timesheet was changed, net earnings would be calculated immediately, and payroll admins could access data throughout the pay period instead of waiting for the end. The result? Cost-savings, higher quality payroll, and valuable real-time data for the business.

With the foundation of that single database, single rules engine architecture, Ceridian has focused more broadly on improving the holistic employee experience and enabling value creation for businesses globally.

Chief Technology Officer Joe Korngiebel took a deeper dive into how Ceridian’s intelligent technology is designed to help customers stay one step ahead of a changing world.

“Data,” Korngiebel said, “is the fuel that powers our entire application suite, and provides the insights you need to have a competitive advantage in the landscape ahead.” And data, he added, is the foundation that powers Dayforce as a people intelligence platform.

Experiences in an always-on, always-changing world are essential for creating value, Korngiebel added. And those experiences need to meet employees where they are – whatever the device – and make it easy for them to both consume and input the data they need, and deliver intelligence when they need it.

Accenture’s vision for the future of work

The session closed with a conversation between Ceridian’s Leagh Turner and Accenture’s Margaret Smith, Managing Director, Global Geographic Services and Business Operations. Smith has been with Accenture (which is a Ceridian customer) for three decades, where she currently leads the organization’s infrastructure services for over half a million people.

Since March, she said, she’s been leading Accenture’s COVID-19 response, as well as return to work and return to client planning. Since the pandemic hit, the organization has enabled 95% of its people to work remotely around the world.

Smith was clear that companies must be people-centric with their strategies as they move forward – enabling and empowering workers both professionally and personally. “We know the pandemic will have long-term implications for where and how our people work,” she said.

“Workforces of the future will require a more intelligent matching of skills with work,” Smith noted, referencing Accenture’s own People + Work Connect platform that facilitates connecting talent with opportunities. The analytics-driven platform was built to bring companies furloughing and laying off workers together with companies in urgent need of workers.

While initially a crisis response initiative, the platform signals broader shifts in how companies will rapidly identify, hire, and share skilled talent, while helping employees maximize their employment and find new opportunities.

Smith also shared what she called an essential message for leaders: “People are looking to trust you.”

To build trust, she said companies need to meet employees in three areas:

• Physical: the need to feel safe and secure.
• Mental: help build psychological resilience and provide communications and resources for support.
• Relational: the need for connection and belonging to foster culture, inclusion, diversity, and collaboration.

Smith emphasized that flexibility is critical for building and sustaining culture in a more virtual, hybrid workplace model.

“Flexibility is going to carry the day, with a shift toward hybrid workplace models that enable a flexible mix of office and work-from-home capabilities,” she said.

WATCH NOW: Vision keynote: Ceridian’s vision for Intelligence at work