Automating the art of people management in 2023
As Fusion5’s GM People & Performance, 2023 is the year which will make me wonder why we did things the hard way for so long.
Like most fast-growing businesses, Fusion5 cut its teeth on largely hands-on people processes and has hung on to them longer than practical (which is a bit brave to admit as a business technology partner). But by the end of 2022, it was time to acknowledge our need to move on from the roadblocks and inefficiencies created by a reliance on emails, Word templates and forms, spreadsheets, and complex manual workflows.
It was clear that what worked for us when we had a team of a few hundred was no longer sustainable. We needed to be nimble, efficient, responsive, and employee-focused in a highly competitive market. With a 2023 headcount of 650+ employees across New Zealand and Australia, we were ready to transform.
This all leads to the technology that will impact my role most this year - a service management platform called 4me.
Even though it’s early in the year, 4me has already proven a real game-changer for me, my team, our people, and the business. And we’re not even fully utilising it yet – more developments are afoot.
It’s enabling us to streamline our people processes - from recruitment to onboarding, offboarding, and producing every variation of actual and what-if reporting in between. We’ve already eliminated old dependencies on any one person – so staff illness or leave no longer stops the wheels from turning. The self-service portal offers a wide range of services to our employees and management. And we can now generate detailed board-level reporting and analytics on manager requests for more headcount so our leadership team can evaluate the financial and operational impact on the business. Now, once a request to recruit has all the necessary approvals, it enters an automated workflow which triggers HR into action.
Thankfully, we no longer need to contend with the massive email overload generated by employee administration actions and HR activities. All HR requests now enter a single queue, so if I’m not around to action something, my team can keep things moving – from proceeding with a recruitment campaign to organising flowers for a staff member to issuing hardware.
Now, while always busy, I’m no longer indispensable, and that’s fine with me. I have more plans in place for 2023 and more time to make them happen.
Stephanie Moore
General Manager People & Performance