What is in the new Sage People FY22.4 Product Release?
The launch of the new Sage People features and functionality as part of the Y22.4 release is being deployed by Sage People to their customers, according to a new staggered 4-phase release deployment schedule. This schedule is based on the customer's name. (Please get in touch with your Sage People CSM if you are unsure what name is listed on your Sage People contract).
- # - Ai: November 7-8, 2022
- Aj – Ch: week of November 9-11, 2022
- Ci – K: week of November 21, 2022
- L – Z: week of November 28, 2022
Note: For customers not part of the regular release cadence, all customers must be on the Y22.4 release by 31 December 2022.
General Availability (GA)
Admin Experience
Background
HR has become more influential but at the expense of a more extensive workload. Research undertaken by Sage People (Report: HR in the moment: Changing expectations and perceptions of HR) highlighted that 60% of HR leaders have seen an increase in their workload since the shift of seeing HR as simply 'Human Resources' and towards being more 'People' focused. HR are now spending more time on strategic tasks such as developing company culture, driving the people strategy, creating great employee experiences, employee engagement and driving organisational agility. This increased responsibility has been accompanied by an increase in the administrative tasks for HR, including flexible working policies, workplace safety, managing workplace policies, employee benefits and pay, disciplinary conversations, and holiday requests.
HR has become more visible, leading accelerated change and driving new ways of operating, with c-suite members recognising HR as equal leadership partners for them in the organisation. However, the c-suite are underestimating HR leaders' workload and still seeing HR as too admin-focused, with 57% of the c-suite still seeing HR as largely an administrative function.
Administration and implementation experience
After listening to customer feedback, the administrative burden and complexity of the platform was highlighted as a key reason for customer dissatisfaction. As a result, Sage People is improving the administration and implementation experience of the platform. Improvements will begin in the Y22.4 release and continue to be rolled out in phases by simplifying and streamlining the implementation and day-to-day administration of the Sage People platform.
Australian and US onboarding forms
For customers who need to onboard employees in Australia and the US, implementation consultants must manually create onboarding forms for Australian employees to capture compliance and tax details or Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) status for US employees. With this new release, these forms are pre-configured and can be automatically deployed. Apart from reducing implementation time and costs, the pre-configured forms help to reduce the admin time and effort required of HR teams to onboard new employees.
Migration to Salesforce Flows
As previously announced, Salesforce Workflows and Process Builders is being retired, and users are encouraged to migrate to Salesforce Flows. For the Y22.4 release, Sage People has removed Salesforce Workflows and ProcessBuilders from the standard configuration and now supports Salesforce Flows, enabling customers to use Salesforce Flows and associated best practices confidently.
Talent Acquisition
Sage People is further enhancing its Talent Acquisition offering by introducing two new features: support for Multiple Hiring Managers (General Availability) and Enhanced Screener Questions (Early Adopter) in Recruit.
Multiple Hiring Managers in Recruit
Currently, only one hiring manager can view and move candidates through the interview and assessment stages while providing input on candidates within the recruitment pipeline. With this release, assigning multiple hiring managers to each vacancy is now possible. As a result, candidates can be moved through the stages, their status reviewed, and input provided on their suitability by multiple people within the organisation. Roles within the hiring team that can assess candidates include the authorising manager, the hiring manager, interviewer(s), and recruiter(s).
Early Adopters (EA)
Enhanced Screener Questions in Recruit
With many countries having different rules and regulations when it comes to hiring, it is currently challenging to support these country-specific requirements within Sage People.
When hiring for global or multi-territory roles (where certain criteria must be met for specific vacancies for candidates to be able to progress), the enhanced screener questions within the new Candidate Experience enable customers to specify specific questions based on the country or vacancy. As a result, the candidate selection and screening is automated, saving time for hiring teams and candidates, increasing the quality of hire, ensuring hiring teams are compliant with local legislation, and enabling hiring to flow.
Microsoft teams and outlook integration for Absence
Hybrid and flexible work is here to stay. The latest research indicates that 84% of workers in the UK (Office of National Statistics) and 87% of workers in the US (Prudential's Pulse of the American Worker Survey) who worked from home during the pandemic want to remain as hybrid workers in the future.
According to the CIPD, more than half (51%) of employees in the UK say they have flexible working arrangements in their current role, and this number looks set to grow. In the last six months, more than a third of organisations (37%) have seen an increase in requests for flexible working.
To ensure hybrid work is effective and that the workforce remains productive and engaged, organisations have become more reliant on video conferencing and collaboration platforms, with platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, and Google Workspace all seeing increases in adoption rates. As a result, there is now a desire to create more seamless, in the flow of work experiences by integrating commonly used apps into these collaboration environments.
Absence is one of the most used processes by Sage People customers. Microsoft Teams customers can now view their absence requests, approvals, and balances directly within Teams using the Sage People, HR & Payroll Teams app. Employees can interact conversationally with a digital assistant (chatbot) within the Microsoft Teams app to request leave balances, raise leave requests, and be notified of any absence approvals and/or rejections. Managers can also use the app to get notifications of any pending absence approvals, process absence requests from their team members, and generate reports using the bot. In addition, any booked absences are automatically added to managers' and employees' Outlook calendars.
Watch the webinar
In case you missed the Sage People Product Release webinar, in which they covered the highlights of the new release, a recording of this session is available online.
Help is at hand
If you require further information regarding these updates or support in implementing any changes to your Sage People System, please get in touch on tel +44(0)1908 030360 or email: info@tugelapeople.com. Alternatively, complete the ‘Get in touch’ form, and a member of our team will contact you directly.
As established Sage People partners, Tugela People are here to help you get the most out of your HR System. We can ensure that the HR software meets your requirements and can provide full support from system selection to scoping, project management, implementation and training. Once your HRIS has gone live, our Managed Services team will support you and your team to ensure that you make the most of your Sage People HRIS and maximise your investment.