Alakananda Bhattacharjee, AtkinsRéalis’s head of HR for engineering services, took a deep dive to understand the root cause. “Our BIM designers felt a lack of recognition and growth opportunities compared to their engineering counterparts,” she explains. It wasn’t simply about compensation; it was about feeling valued and having a clear path forward.

AtkinsRéalis knew they had to address these concerns head-on. Enter ‘Aspire to Excel (ATE), their in-house development programme designed specifically for BIM professionals. Launched nearly two years ago, ATE provides a comprehensive solution. It offers tailored career pathways, mentorship opportunities, and access to cutting-edge tools and technologies. This investment in their BIM talent pool has paid off handsomely.

“Investing in talent development is a win-win for everyone. We get a broader range of perspectives and experiences, and the participants gain valuable skills and a rewarding career path.”

Alakananda Bhattacharjee,  head-HR, engineering services, AtkinsRéalis’s

The programme has empowered over 1,000 BIM designers, equipping them with the skills and recognition they craved.

Bhattacharjee beams, “We’ve seen a significant drop in designers leaving for external opportunities. They’re finding fulfilment within AtkinsRéalis and are excited to contribute to our projects.”

But AtkinsRéalis wasn’t content to stop there. Recognising the importance of strong leadership across all levels of the organisation, they revamped their ‘Line-management Development Programme’. This three-tiered programme equips managers with the skills they need to excel, from handling timesheets and HR systems to delivering effective performance reviews and fostering open communication within their teams. Additionally, the ‘LEAD’ programme is being piloted to address the challenges of managing a younger workforce with different expectations and communication styles.

AtkinsRéalis understood that money wasn’t the only motivator. Employees craved a clear career path, a sense of belonging, and the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the organisation’s success. To address this, they created ‘Talent Tides’ in 2024. This innovative tool uses regular surveys with tailored questions aligned with the organisation’s culture and expected behaviours. Managers receive automated prompts to check in with their team members, fostering open communication and identifying any potential issues early on. The success was undeniable. “With Talent Tides, we saw less than 5 per cent attrition among participants,” reveals Bhattacharjee. “This programme’s impact was so impressive, we’re now rolling it out across the entire organisation.”

Nurturing young talent is another pillar of AtkinsRéalis’s retention strategy. The “Emerging Professionals Network” fast-tracks high-potential individuals, providing them with mentorship, challenging assignments, and opportunities to network with senior leaders. Additionally, upskilling sessions, pep talks, and participation in technical competitions keep early-career employees engaged and motivated. They’ve also addressed early-career attrition by ensuring a clear picture of the job role during the hiring process. Diverse interview panels ensure cultural fit and realistic expectations are set from the very beginning, preventing misunderstandings and frustrations down the line.

Finally, AtkinsRéalis is committed to tapping into new talent pools and fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce. Programs such as ‘Building Bridges’ and ‘Apprenticeship Programme’ provide training and job opportunities to individuals from less-privileged backgrounds. “These initiatives not only fill talent gaps but also foster immense loyalty,” concludes Bhattacharjee. “Investing in talent development is a win-win for everyone. We get a broader range of perspectives and experiences, and the participants gain valuable skills and a rewarding career path.”

AtkinsRéalis’s story is a testament to the power of a holistic approach to talent retention. By focusing on development, communication, leadership, and fostering a culture of inclusion, they’ve weathered the storm and emerged stronger. They’ve created a thriving ecosystem where employees feel valued, empowered, and excited to contribute to the company’s continued success. Their story serves as a valuable roadmap for other organisations navigating the ever-changing talent landscape.

The post How AtkinsRéalis survived ‘The Great Resignation’ appeared first on HR Katha.

EverythingBenefits is a platform that connects employers to all information pertaining to the insurance, retirement and other benefits of their employees. This is UKG’s first big acquisition after Ultimate Software and Kronos merged with the Group a year ago.

With this acquisition, UKG will be able to incorporate EverythingBenefits’ end-to-end tech solutions into its suite of payroll, HR service delivery, and workforce management products. Users will now be able to “streamline data connectivity between businesses and insurance / retirement plan providers”. This means, through a single platform users will be able to manage their data and experience seamless transactions, including enrolment of new hires into the benefits programme.

Post this acquisition, the solutions offered by UKG Ready and EverythingBenefits will be further unified and harmonised. With the addition of the EverythingBenefits existing partner channel to the already existing UKG Ready Partner Network, UKG will be able to expand its customer base and reach out to small and mid-size businesses as well.

This acquisition will help EverythingBenefits to scale up their offering, and speed up the delivery of their product roadmap, ensuring the best levels of service. The New Jersey-based EverythingBenefits is already supporting over 10,000 employers and millions of users. For UKG, there has been a rise in revenues in the second quarter, to $798 million. Subscription revenue has grown 12 per cent year over year, due to the new contracts and increasing demands from existing customers.

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For the next 12 months, OckyPocky will be creating and deploying targeted upskilling programmes for Quess’ workforce and their families, as part of the latter’s Employee Benefits Programme. These digital programmes will allow professionals to strengthen their skillsets and expand their capabilities to achieve greater success. It will also allow their family members to gain new skills and commence or grow their careers during this challenging period.

Commenting on the partnership, Amit Agrawal, founder, OckyPocky says, “Having successfully created interactive learning modules for kids, we are now expanding our ambit by catering to working blue- collared professionals in partnership with a domain leading company, such as Quess. We are looking forward to creating top-notch upskilling programmes for Quess and contributing to enhancing the country’s vast talent pool.”

Upskilling in today’s time has become so vital for the survival of the business and business growth.

Ajay Kumar Singh, head -people services, Quess, adds, “We are extremely delighted to partner with OckyPocky for the Quess Employee Benefits Platform. With this partnership, our overarching goal is to provide a quality education and skill enhancement experience for Quess’ workforce and their families. OckyPocky brings the right mix of classes delivered in a digital format, at an affordable price, which will perfectly suit our diverse workforce.”

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The talent management solutions provider, SumTotal, recently unveiled a range of new features and additions to the SumTotal Talent Expansion® Suite—the first in the industry to bring talent, learning, recruitment, and workforce management on one platform.

This release includes expanded access to learning content, enhancements to the visually engaging user interface, improved browsing and search capabilities, and deployment flexibility to meet the complex technical requirements of modern organisations, both in the cloud and on premise. The Suite simplifies and streamlines talent management for organisations and engages employees with innovative solutions to know, mobilise, develop, promote, reward, and incentivise global organisations of all sizes.

“Since the acquisition of SumTotal we have invested significantly in bringing a platform, that delivers rich functionality on a beautiful consumer-led experience, to the market. Last year, we brought learning and talent together in our Talent Expansion Suite and with this release, we have a unique proposition —delivering talent, learning, recruitment and  workforce management on a single, unified data SaaS platform,” said Bill Donoghue, chairman and CEO, Skillsoft.

“By bringing all the HCM components into one suite, we are addressing our clients and the market challenges of attracting, retaining, developing, and engaging this multigenerational workforce—delivering a state-of-the-market digital technology experience, with cutting edge functionality,” he added.

This release of the SumTotal Talent Expansion Suite features a number of new capabilities specifically created to allow organisations of all sizes to measure, understand, and maximise the performance of their global workforce, including

Career planning and job matching
Career planning: Advanced algorithms to support internal mobility, which recommends internal open jobs to employees that best fit their profile and career goals.
Job and competency matching: New competency metrics provide an at-a-glance dashboard, highlighting areas for development in both current jobs and jobs targeted as part of their career plans.

SumTotal Mobile
Smartphone-optimised access: Provides complete employee profile and resume information, including metrics and details of performance, goals, compensation, learning and development.
Seamless user experience for mobile learning: Users can now seamlessly download courses on the app and launch them offline, regardless of location.
Continuous performance feedback enhancements: With the new SumTotal Mobile App, managers and employees can provide and view feedback, anywhere, at any time.
Windows 10 and Windows Surface integration: Employees can now access content using Windows 10 on their laptop and Windows Surface devices—online and offline.

Next generation of performance management
New single dashboard: Now allows employees to easily review, search, and filter all feedback.
Connect feedback to development plans: Managers can provide feedback to select individuals, and can link users back to specific goals and competencies.

Learning process optimisation
Streamlined, form-based approvals: Allows organisations to optimise their learning management processes by supporting new forms-based approval workflows that comply with the SF182 and EHRI federal government standards.
Powerful content management tools: Administrative users can now easily publish, manage, and replace content without having to create a new version from scratch.

Workforce management
New appearance: Unified look and feel with single sign-on capabilities.
Workforce management enhancements: Simple streamlining of daily schedule and shift changes.
New single timeline for managing and completing tasks: New enterprise-search allows a single point for users to search.

The post SumTotal offers talent, learning, recruitment, and workforce management in single suite appeared first on HR Katha.

The HR technology market is undergoing one of the most disruptive years it has seen this decade. A recent report titled, ‘HR Technology Disruptions for 2017: Nine Trends Reinventing the HR Software Market’, released by Bersin by Deloitte revealed how the rapidly advancing paradigm of HR technology is changing the way organisations work.

Sharing one of the biggest disruptions of the year, Josh Bersin, principal, Bersin by Deloitte, said that the entire marketplace is shifting from tools that automate traditional HR practices to platforms and apps that improve life at work. It is this shift in the approach to HR technology that shapes the major trends for the coming times. Here are the nine trends that organisations, HR professionals and HR technology providers need to watch out for:

1. The accelerating revolution of performance management

The present day organisations are highly networked. Employees work in teams, while projects and goals change quite frequently. Therefore, leading companies are now reinventing the way they manage and measure performance. From a traditional approach of developing aligned goals from the top down, conducting annual performance reviews on those goals and ranking and rating people based on that performance, organisations are now creating a more agile approach. The new model is built around periodic check-ins; shared goals developed from the bottom up, and transparent to the entire team; regular developmental conversations; and feedback that goes from employee to employee, employee to manager, and manager to employee.

Owing to the shift in performance management requirements of the organisations and employees, the old forms-based performance and goal-management tools now seem archaic and unproductive. Some of the new tools look like games; some resemble personality assessments; and others look like online check-in systems.

2. An explosion in real-time engagement evaluation
The second big shift in talent and people management is the explosive growth in always-on, pulse-based survey and feedback systems. While we don’t see this going away overnight, more and more companies now realise that this type of annual survey is of limited use; the real action takes place on a real-time, local level. Some companies now survey employees quarterly, others monthly or weekly. These new systems are useful for much more than just ‘people issues’. They also create opportunities for business-process improvement.

Designed differently from the start, these new feedback products are unlike traditional surveys. Not only can they support mobile pulse surveys, but as ‘smart’ systems, they can also algorithmically decide who to survey and when.

3. The explosion of growth in people analytics
Over the last few years, companies have moved from back-office HR data warehouses to advanced analytics and reporting dashboards to predictive models and more. The idea of creating predictive models is becoming more widespread within HR. In fact, the percentage of companies doing predictive modelling has almost doubled over the past three years. It has now become commonplace for companies to build predictive models for retention (specifically, using data to try to understand precisely why some high-performing people leave).

As analytics models become more prevalent, companies are slowly moving away from building their own solutions to buying them from vendors. Bersin says, “For companies shopping for core HR software (ERPs or talent management platforms), I think it’s important to look at the vendor’s level of investment in and experience with analytics tools and models.”

4. The continuing explosion and evolution of the learning market
The corporate learning marketplace is ready for a revolution. Millennials say that their ability to learn on the job is their top driver when looking for a new position. There has been a huge shift in learning content. Since 2009, only seven years ago, companies have shifted from 77 per cent instructor-led training (ILT) to only 32 per cent. The use of collaborative learning, virtual learning, apprenticeship, and on-the-job learning has exploded. People at work simply don’t have the time, budget, or patience to sit in classes the way they did a few years ago. Keeping that in mind, corporate training buyers are now allocating budgets for tools to integrate, consolidate, measure, and curate various types of content for employees.

If companies want to build a truly compelling, self-directed learning experience at work, they should think way beyond the realm of the corporate LMS. They have to imagine a set of tools, information, support systems, and self-authored content (often in video) that anybody can find as needed.

5. A new landscape for talent acquisition
Today’s recruitment and talent acquisition market is enormous and it is also highly strategic for many companies. Fast-growing technology companies, for example, can make or break their business plans based on how quickly they can find the right engineers, marketing and sales people. In addition, today, a company’s employment brand is available for all to see. Today, a new breed of platforms have simply started from scratch, building end-to-end recruitment management systems that handle everything from sourcing, ad management, analytics, online interviewing, interview management, candidate scoring, ongoing candidate relationship management, and onboarding.

These new tools are designed to directly connect to LinkedIn and other job boards, and they can store candidates’ information to be revisited year after year. These systems no longer simply manage applicants; they manage candidates and even alumni. Further, these new offerings focus on building tools that are easy for hiring managers and candidates to use, not just recruiters and HR. The continued evolution of job boards is another factor disrupting this complex market.

6. Growth in contingent workforce management
The area of contingent workforce management is also growing rapidly this year. This market, which includes software for vendor management (VMSs), as well as time tracking and scheduling systems, is highly fragmented with only a few large market leaders. As the percentage of employees who work part-time or on a contingent basis goes up, the growth in this market is expected to continue. The second market is the growth of gig work networks: that is, vendors who try to match workers to ‘gigs’ or projects.

7. The growth of team management tools and their merger with HR tools
There is a wide variety of software tools designed to help people collaborate, share and set goals, and work together as teams. While they may not necessarily come under HR technology tools, most are starting to enter the HR technology market. The biggest trend in the HR software market is the steady shift away from devices that facilitate HR to take up tools that help employees and managers do their jobs.

This trend is accelerating, enabling almost every HR-centric tool to be integrated with or used in conjunction with other tools employees already use to get things done. As the work world shifts away from hierarchical organisations toward using networks of teams, this trend is only likely to speed up.

8. The explosion of wellness and fitness apps
The next major area of disruption expected in 2017 is the accelerated growth of tools, systems and platform features to manage wellness, work-life balance, employee activity, and ultimately, personal performance. As the work environment becomes more complex and overwhelming, companies are realising that they should provide services to help employees manage their workloads. These typically include programmes, such as mindfulness, yoga, time management, work-life balance counselling, dietary support and exercise.

All these services have moved from the original goal of safeguarding employees’ health to providing benefits and programmes that can increase human performance; improve employee engagement; and ultimately bring people together to create a stronger culture, build leadership, and improve the performance of the entire organisation.

9. Digital HR: Self-service, artificial intelligence, and robotic process automation
The final disruptive trend is the fast-growing area of artificial intelligence, natural language processing and robotic process automation. This huge area of technology — which covers products that can listen to our voices, products that augment and automate call centre work and software that brings transactions together from many systems and makes it easy to implement the new workflow on a screen or device —is now coming to HR. The result of these technologies, including the obvious software development tools for mobile devices, is that most HR transactions and processes can now be automated. The tools of AI, robotic process automation, and self-service transaction integration can enable a total redesign of the employee experience, dramatically reducing costs and improving the value of HR itself.

Almost every existing HR technology market will face disruption in 2017. Growth in mobile computing, video sensors, and artificial intelligence is taking place simultaneously with a new intense focus on employee engagement, culture, wellness and productivity. These colliding forces are enabling a new breed of vendors that will totally rethink what HR technology does, creating exciting opportunities and disruption in the existing markets.

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