Canadian Payroll Reporter

AUGUST 2013 Self-service functionality moving to consumer devices Continued from page 1 such a mobile workforce." It's a really exciting time for human resources and payroll professionals, along with managers and employees, who can take advantage of mobile options to perform many tasks, according to Shelley Ng, vice-president of product management at Ceridian Canada in Markham, Ont. "Things like HR transactions, reports, processing payroll or, for employees, viewing pay statements and even getting access to health and wellness and employee assistance program resources… this is just going to continue to expand." As society collectively moves forward, self-service type functionality is moving to consumer devices, according to James Arsenault, manager of strategy consulting at Ceridian HCM in Toronto. "We're not looking to reinvent how you schedule or how you do your dayto-day payroll administration because you're going to be wanting to use a business system at work for that anyway," he says. "But all of the consumer-type interactions — very transactional stuff like requesting time off or checking information or changing HR information, submitting forms — all that kind of thing, that's going to progressively push out to consumer devices." But mobile applications have their limits, according to David McIninch, vice-president of marketing at ADP in Toronto. "If you ever try to recreate your traditional web experience on a mobile phone, you'd find very dissatisfied clients and users. Obviously mobile phones or smartphones, by virtue of their size and how we use them, will drive very specific use cases for mobile HR and payroll," he says. "It's the core critical tasks you can 2 get to in a certain number of movements that are going to be your key development priorities for mobile. So you probably won't see a lot of people running full-blown performance management processes on a mobile phone." Who is using it? When it comes to mobile payroll applications, there's probably more functionality for hourly employees, such as those in retail, manufacturing or hospitality, according to Arsenault. "They deal with more data transactions insofar as they're providing time and attendance and leave data daily, as opposed to a salaried employee who has very little interaction with the HR system, except for when there's a change to their core work and life information." "The vast majority of Canadians are pretty adept smartphone users." General contract labour out in the field or high-end IT contractors who prefer to work on contract with specific companies and flexible schedules are also good examples, says Guthrie. "They're really used to using technology and they're often on-site with clients, so they love the ability to quickly enter the time with the client right after the meeting. It makes everything so much more efficient… right away it can basically be pushed to the manager, the manager can approve that time and then it speeds up the entire process. And they can get paid earlier as well if there's that automation." Mobile apps are also popular with smaller employers or business owner and operators, who are often on the Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2013 road and need the flexibility, says Ng. "If they're off-site, they can either do their full payroll processing or if they have someone back in the office doing entry of time or whatever, then they can at least approve it while they're on the road, without being tied to a desk." This technology is not just for younger employees, says McIninch. "People talk about some of the generational gaps but, really, the vast majority of Canadians are pretty adept smartphone users, regardless of what age category they're in or what cohort they belong to, and there's an expectation now in the marketplace that information is readily available 'at my fingertips, on my phone.'" What's available? On the payroll side, ADP Mobile Solutions allow employees to access pay statements along with entering timesheets, punching in and out and sending late arrival notifications. Employees can also access an online portal to view information from their HR department. It's about payroll managers and practitioners continually ascribing things they normally ascribe self-service functionality to, such as T4s or pay statements, in real time, which reduces the workload for payroll and HR, says McIninch. Geo-location capability also allows employers to ensure employees are truly punching in or out at work. "It provides the employer with a certain amount of confidence that it's very difficult to do buddy punching or anything else as a consequence," he says. Randstad is working on a system where it can send text messages to prescreened candidates about large projects that require quick staffing, says Guthrie. Ideally, these kinds of options would link back to areas such as paycontinued on page 5

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