Empowering Admins to Streamline Payroll Cycles
Removing the Pain and Complexity to Pay Employees Through Automation
Client
HRDownloads
Industry
Human Resources
Role
Design Lead
Duration
6 months, 2018
THE CLIENT
HRdownloads provides thousands of Canadian businesses with cost-effective and time-saving HR tools.
SOLUTIONS
MVP Web Application
Competitor User Research
Service Blueprint Map
Generative Customer Research
BUSINESS GOALS
Design an automated and customizable MVP web solution that helps HR coordinators save time.
Incorporate payroll features into their existing suite of HR tools to increase product sales and retain customers:
Increase product sales
Increase consistent usage year-round
Feature-set expansion strategy to grow with a small set of customers
Decrease time spent performing payroll activities
THE PROBLEM
Payroll software is outdated, error-prone, clunky, and involves multiple tools and documents to complete.
Many HR administrators manually cross-reference a variety of documents, calendars, employee databases, spreadsheets, and timesheets up to payroll days.
48%
of organizations only have 1 HR professional for all employees*
22%
of organizations use spreadsheets with other tools for payroll*
*Based on a survey we conducted of 101 small to medium sized businesses
THE VISION
Make payroll less painful by leveraging technology to seamlessly run payroll cycles.
Collaborative ideation workshopping
WE DISCOVERED:
Too much manual work when gathering, remembering, and calculating data
Most HR officers are still using manually built Excel documents or antiquated software to complete complex payroll calculations. These calculations are also prone to errors for special cases (eg. Union dues for part-time staff on vacation pay). In addition, they have to reference federal/provincial regulations, important dates, and tax information outside of their payroll software.
Most errors occur during the “Calculate Payroll” phase – we focused our efforts there to alleviate the amount of pains.
Service blueprint map that details the payroll journey e2e.
RESULTS
Using color, hierarchy, and iconography, we allow users to scan the most important data that need attention. Payroll officers consistently consolidate numerous online/offline data sources to manually calculate and input payroll adjustments. We included automated calculations to flag differences in payroll cycles.
1/ Automation means easier spot-checking, reduces errors
2/ No more sticky reminders or jumping through government tabs
To streamline the process and alleviate pains, payroll officers will always have access to:
important provincial dates and tax information that affect payroll
reminders counted down in days for payroll phased dates
3/ Smarter notifications and all-in-one information streamlines approvals
Included smart insights such as differences in pay to alert users to approve or edit. Allowing HR admins to add special notes per override or change is now baked into the software – everything is in one place.
OUTCOMES
Successful client workshops and full alignment across stakeholders to secure next phases of work.
“Mandy is experienced and stays current with processes, trends, ideologies...She’s confident in implementing them and owns projects to ensure she’s making the best decisions as Lead Designer.”
“Mandy is very committed to doing her best work. I was impressed with her research synthesis and how she took lead on different aspects of the project.”