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Making the Right Play: The Champs Put HR Tech to Work

As organizations look for ways to stay lean in ever-changing environments, many are finding that addressing their HR processes is a path to strategic success. In episode 83 of HR Break Room®, Robin Boudreau and Miranda Blaiklock, HR professionals from the parent company of the New England Patriots, The Kraft Group, discussed how they did exactly that. Here are three takeaways from their conversation.

A solution for everyone

Before choosing to adopt Paycom as their HR technology provider, it was clear to Patriots and The Kraft Group leadership that finding a way to drive a strong employee-usage strategy was the next step in their organizational evolution.

“We’re really an on-demand society,” said Blaiklock, the Patriots’ director of benefits, compensation and HRIS. “Having a platform that allows employees on-demand access to make changes is important for us so that we can stay relevant to their experience just like in society, let alone in the workplace.”

Part of what made Paycom the obvious solution was the modern, user-friendly interface. In a market saturated with consumer-driven digital experiences, if a platform was to be fully embraced, it would need to deliver an equivalent user experience across all demographics — from star quarterbacks to folks working on a production line.

“For us, being able to migrate to a self-service model, where employees would be able to handle the vast majority of data entry and transactions virtually, allowed us to shift and take on a more strategic business-partner role and empowered the employees to handle the data entry themselves,” said Boudreau, senior vice president of HR.

Selecting Paycom was the first step in achieving an approximated average employee usage rate of 100%!

“Our employee usage is really a tribute to how intuitive the platform is, with really great training and communication on the front side to a very diverse community of internal clients, our employees,” said Boudreau. “We’re really moving our model so that the transactional work can happen by having an agile platform and our HR managers can focus on the needs of the business.”

Man engages with Paycom app from mobile device

Improvements across the organization

As they discovered, a high level of employee usage in this system yielded a variety of benefits felt from the factory floor up to the C-suite.

One benefit was the increased level of trust the system inspired in the staff. As each employee used the convenient and user-friendly Paycom application to enter their information, they gained confidence the data used to administer their benefits and pay was accurate. After all, nobody knows an employee’s information as well as that employee.

The improved efficiency in HR functions Paycom offers also didn’t fail to deliver. As accountability for HR data entry shifted to the employee level, HR staff was liberated from the time-consuming tasks of entering data or fixing errors.

“We were really looking for a partner to have a streamlined, single source for all of our HR needs, making sure our reporting and analytics would be addressed and that the system would be continuously improved so we could continue to enhance our own processes within HR,” said Blaiklock. “The Paycom system has really allowed HR to focus in on what HR really wants to do, which is help ensure that employees have a strong employee experience.”

Woman engages with Paycom app from mobile device

A better view at the top

From a management standpoint, the single-database design of the Paycom platform provided some valuable upgrades from previous systems. With real-time information, most noticeably through the Direct Data Exchange® tool, management had clear and actionable insight into what was happening in their organization. This was key to fostering the action-oriented culture pursued by both the New England Patriots and The Kraft Group.

“We use [Direct Data Exchange] as a measurement of all of our KPIs in the HR department,” Boudreau said. “Direct Data Exchange allows us to focus on what’s really important: driving better results in the HR department. Our HR team is able to get real-time information and review the data so that they can really make changes to impact the business.”

For these and other insights about how employee usage of Paycom’s single software can help your organization sharpen its competitive edge, be sure to check out episode 83 of HR Break Room®.