A roundup of important HR updates from September 2020 so far.
With organizations now well entrenched into remote working, there is news of how the overall well-being of the employees is suffering. From Google’s announcement of a collective well-being holiday to the national polling results indicating that 58% of the workers are facing burnout, these are trying times. In addition to that, several products are being launched to support organizations to communicate better with their workers.
Let’s dive into the significant events in HR and HR technology in September 2020 so far.
Table of Content
- Zensar Receives the U.S. Patent for Its Tool Zenverseâ„¢
- Zoho Workplace Launched by Zoho
- Visier Launches the Largest Update To Deliver People Insight
- SmartLinx Launches Touchless Time Clocks
- Kronos and Ultimate Software To Rebrand as “UKGâ€
- Unicorn HRO and the Unicorn Group Partner To Support Non-Profit Organizations
- Quantum Workplace and BKD CPAs and Advisors’ Collaboration Wins Award
- WorkLife and Smart Pension Partner To Support Small Business Employees
Findings from Major HR Surveys and Research
- CEO Compensation Is 320 Times More Than That of a Worker
- Employee Burnout Is Rising as 58% of the Workers Report It
- Teams That Work Out More Can Have a Positive Impact on Their Productivity
- Wellthy Survey Reveals That Employers Increased Support for Employees Amid Pandemic
- Which States Are the Happiest To Get Back To Work Post-Lockdown
Major HR Tech Update
Google Gave Employees Friday off as a ‘Collective Well-Being’ Holiday Ahead of Labor Day
As per CNBC, a one-time paid holiday for “collective well-being†was announced by GoogleOpens a new window for its full-time employees and interns to add an off day that would make the Labor Day holiday into a four-day weekend.
The purpose is to prevent burnout due to an extended period of remote working. However, workers who are temporary or are vendors or contractors will not be eligible for the same. Also, some support teams will not be able to take the day off since they need to respond to customers.
Google also said that the holiday is due to the current pandemic situation and will not be added to the annual calendar.
HR Tech Funding Update
Deel Raises $30 Million in Series B Funding
DeelOpens a new window has just raised $30 million in Series B funding, led by Spark Capital. The earlier $14M Series A round funding was closed in May, led by Andreessen Horowitz. This new funding brings up Deel’s total funding to over $48 million, which includes seed investment and participation from YC Growth Fund and angel investors including Nat Friedman, Ryan Petersen, John Zimmer, William Hockey, and Alexis Ohanian.
The platform provides contracts and templates which are legally vetted so that they can be used as tax forms, as well as other aspects like automated payment, invoicing and receipts, and customer support.
“We’ve squashed the conventional notion that there’s a particular radius in which you can attract talent,†said Deel co-founder and CEO, Alex Bouaziz. “By bridging localized compliance and payments and then automating it, we are making a complex and manual process seamless and redefining U.S. companies’ hiring pool to include qualified candidates from anywhere.â€
Major HR Tech Product Updates
Zensar Receives the U.S. Patent for Its Tool Zenverseâ„¢
ZensarOpens a new window has been granted the U.S. patent for its tool ZenVerseâ„¢ which enables employees to have a direct conversation with the organization’s leadership. These interactions are carried out at an individual level and since its launch, it has had 68 releases over 2.1 million sessions which have been used by more than 9000 global associates. Zenlabs, Zensar’s innovation hub, has created an AI-based platform. Some new features that have been added are sentimental analysis to assess the mood, conversations which allows associates to ask queries on specific matters directly to the leaders, organization-wide town halls, and the C1000 meetings module.
Zoho Workplace Launched by Zoho
Zoho WorkplaceOpens a new window which is a consolidated software platform for collaboration, productivity, and communications tools has been launched. It includes nine applications, which are built on a common data model connected through AI across one dashboard. It allows companies to remove barriers between different business process apps, like CRM and Invoicing, and employee productivity apps, like mail and communications.
“The nature of work has undeniably changed, and Workplace has grown to meet that change,†said Vijay Sundaram, Zoho’s chief strategy officer. “Businesses are not looking to solve a collaboration problem, they are looking to solve a custom invoicing problem or sales enablement problem or support problem. Collaboration platforms need to facilitate better business outcomes, not just improve productivity. Workplace, through pre-built integrations with powerful business apps and context and continuity across applications, devices, and departments, stands alone in having the vision and functionality to meet the broad business needs of today.â€
Visier Launches the Largest Update To Deliver People Insight
VisierOpens a new window has announced the launch of its new product capabilities in the Visier People® Summer release. This upgrade will provide more capabilities for customers to enhance employee experience and increase workforce productivity. The updates include monitoring for organizations, cohort analysis, email push analysis, new ‘What-If’ models, and a new series of people analytics. By providing platform capabilities to their partners Visier’s already ensured a faster acceptance and adoption of its global collaborations.
SmartLinx Launches Touchless Time Clocks
SmartLinxOpens a new window has just launched its SmartLinx Touchless Time Clock, which is a state-of-the-art time and attendance management system. It is built for long-term care, post-acute care, continuing care retirement communities, and assisted living operators. The system provides secured and fast access, protection of residents, and support for attendance policies
Employees can punch in and out of work six times faster than traditional electronic time clocks, through this device.
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Major HR Tech Partnerships
Kronos and Ultimate Software To Rebrand as “UKGâ€
Ultimate Software and Kronos IncorporatedOpens a new window have shared their plans to rebrand the company. The combined company’s new name will become UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group). Its products and services are aimed at driving productivity, visibility, and workplace compliance while empowering all employees from salaried to gig workers. UKG will connect employees to their work and their colleagues more seamlessly.
“Our new brand, UKG, truly unites Ultimate Software and Kronos, both as a business and as people,†said Aron Ain, CEO of the joint company. “Our new brand is rooted in our combined passion and history of focusing on people at work. We believe the UKG brand represents our continued commitment to our employees, customers, and their employees while at the same time giving us a modern new identity for our future together as one organization. Separately, Ultimate and Kronos have proven that remarkable cultures led by inspired people drive success, and now we are together as UKG, one company with people at our core.â€
Unicorn HRO and the Unicorn Group Partner To Support Non-Profit Organizations
Unicorn HRO,Opens a new window which is a leader in fully integrated and configurable human resources, benefits, and payroll solutions, has shared that it will partner with The Unicorn Group to support non-profit organizations. Those non-profit organizations that are using Unicorn HRO’s payroll and human resources (HR) service bundle can be eligible to receive a donation from the foundation. The Unicorn HRO’s iCON platform has the new payroll and HR bundle is built specifically to address the needs of non-profit organizations.
Quantum Workplace and BKD CPAs and Advisors’ Collaboration Wins Award
Quantum WorkplaceOpens a new window has announced that its customer, BKD CPAs, and Advisors, was named the winner in the 2020 Brandon Hall HCM Excellence Awards. BKD in collaboration with Quantum Workplace had redesigned its performance management program so that it can improve and support more timely feedback for employees. The new program received the recognition by Brandon Hall Group for reinventing performance management programs. Excellence Awards winners will be honored at Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Excellence Conference, on January 26-28, 2021, at the Hilton West Palm Beach, Florida. Select winners will also be presenters in breakout sessions to share their leading practices during the conference.
WorkLife and Smart Pension Partner To Support Small Business Employees
WorkLife which was launched by OpenMoney and works towards supporting the benefits needs of small businesses is going to partner with Smart Pension to add workplace pensions to its list of service product offerings on its digital platform. Due to this partnership, Smart Pension will be available to WorkLife’s customers at a preferential rate.
This is aimed at helping to ease the burden on small businesses since as part of the WorkLife platform, benefits and pensions will now get integrated with a company’s payroll. This will make it easier for both employers and employees. The purpose is to support the financial wellbeing of Britain’s 16.5 million small business workers.
Paul Bucksey, director of distribution at Smart Pension, said, “Smart Pension and OpenMoney share a common goal of making life easier for employers and their employees. We look forward to working with OpenMoney’s WorkLife platform to provide clients with a high-quality, tech-enabled workplace pension.â€
Major HR Hiring Watch
Sabine Bendiek Appointed as New CPO and Labor Director at SAP
SAP has announced that the Microsoft Germany Management Board Chairwoman Sabine BendiekOpens a new window will join the SAP Executive Board as the chief people officer and labor director in early 2021.
She will lead the Human Resources organization and people strategy for SAP. At Microsoft Germany, she leads an increase in cloud growth of 50% in 2020. Before Microsoft, she has performed various roles in companies including Nixdorf, Siemens Nixdorf, McKinsey, Earlybird Venture Capital, Dell, and EMC. Bendiek is a member of the supervisory board at Schaeffler.
Findings from Major HR Surveys and Research
CEO Compensation Is 320 Times More Than That of a Worker
Economic Policy Institute has recently released the findings from its new studyOpens a new window , which shared that CEO compensation increased by 14% in 2019 to $21.3 million. CEOs currently earn 320 times as much as a typical worker. The large CEO-to-employee pay gap has got further amplified. This ratio has been going up steadily from 21-to-1 in 1965, 61-to-1 in 1989, and 293-to-1 in 2018.
This report is a part of the series, through which the trends in CEO compensation are monitored. The pay trends of CEOs of the 350 largest U.S. firms (by sales) are compared year-on-year. The report also covers CEO pay and how it is correlated to the growth of the stock market. The growth indicates the inequity between the employees at the lowest levels and the top rungs, and instead of closing, it is becoming bigger. The analysis is indicating that even after the pandemic, CEOs who are volunteering to take salary cuts are not giving up a lot of the pay that comes from stock awards and options.
“It is disheartening to see new research from the Economic Policy Institute found CEO compensation surged 14% in 2019 to $21.2 million. While the current economic crisis has likely impacted the compensation of CEOs, companies must still take action to ensure a 320-to-1 gap does not occur again. Pay gaps contribute to perpetuating inequalities throughout every level of an organization and if steps are not taken to close them, those most in need will gravely suffer when disaster strikes.†said  Tanya Jansen, co-founder, beqom “Organizations have a responsibility to ensure compensation is aligned across the organization, while always taking fair pay philosophies, such as determining an employee’s salary based on unbiased attributes like performance history, into account. It’s far past time for businesses to reflect on their pay practices, especially if their CEO compensation far exceeds that of their average employee.â€
Employee Burnout Is Rising as 58% of the Workers Report It
The national polling of the U.S. workforce has revealed that 58% of the employees are burnt out, which has increased from 45% in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among employees who have reported burnout, 35% is connected to the COVID-19 circumstances and this is an increase from 25% in April. 47% attributed the burnout to their workload while 39% said that it was due to trying to balance work and personal life.
The survey findings are contained in the 2020 Eagle Hill Consulting COVID-19 Employee Burnout SurveyOpens a new window which was conducted on April 8-10, 2020, and August 13-17, 2020. Each online survey included more than 1000 respondents from a random sample of employees.
Teams That Work Out More Can Have a Positive Impact on Their Productivity
A new FitRated surveyOpens a new window has shared the importance of encouraging employees to work out more since it has a positive impact on their productivity and performance at work. It lists down the top 10 common employer-sponsored fitness benefits and as per data, 73% of the respondents used at least one of these. The most common programs provided, included wellness challenges (24%), discounted gym memberships (22%), and access to healthy snacks around the office (21%).
Also, when data was split by gender, men were more likely to use diet-linked benefits while women were more inclined towards exercise-linked ones. The benefits have a link to performance. 1 in 3 people who were offered and were using their fitness benefits said they experienced increased career satisfaction and were also bonding better with their co-workers.
1,008 full-time employees were covered regarding workplace benefits of which 496 respondents were female, 510 respondents were male, and 2 respondents did not identify as male or female.
Wellthy Survey Reveals That Employers Increased Support for Employees Amid Pandemic
WellthyOpens a new window has announced the results of its nationwide Pandemic Employment Survey. As per the survey employers have significantly increased support for their caregiving employees during the pandemic. 81% of the full- or part-time workers felt supported by their employer during this pandemic phase as compared to 63% of the workers who felt their employer provided supportive resources, benefits, or programs for their family’s care even in the phase before the pandemic. This has also resulted in 80% of the respondents sharing that they are now less likely to consider a long-term care facility (assisted living, memory care, nursing care, etc.) for a loved one compared to before the pandemic.
Which States Are the Happiest To Get Back To Work Post-Lockdown?
Out of all the workers surveyedOpens a new window , the ones based in Rhode Island and Alabama are the happiest to return to work, with 56% of employees in Rhode Island saying they felt completely comfortable with returning to work and 43% Alabama employees sharing the same too. On the opposite end, the unhappiest workers were in Minnesota and Colorado, with 42% of those in Minnesota saying that they didn’t feel at all comfortable with returning to work and 41% in Colorado saying the same.
As per the survey, communication is a big factor in whether employees felt comfortable about returning to work. 19% of the workers in Colorado shared that they had received no communication about going back, compared to 0% in Rhode Island.
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