Read the Original Article here Financial Times – New roles for the HR department

Nic Scott is chief executive of Fairsail, an HR software and cloud recruitment firm

How has software changed the role of the human resources team?

HR is where senior management and employees all come together for the good of the business and so it was one of the first areas to benefit from software. Today’s self-service HR software means employees can volunteer information, measure themselves against their objectives and their colleagues, as well as be mentored. This frees up HR professionals to help the business rather than administer processes.

So how does HR help the business?

One way is to assess what the organisation’s “human capital” is worth in a particular geography. Measuring its value looks at total salary costs and the competition for talent. But beyond that there is a new metric of “fully loaded cost per available work days”. This is how many days of availability does someone bring for a particular investment in that individual. For instance, does a US employee bring more value than a French one? The answer is not straightforward and needs to be weighed up against the company’s need for local staff, the local competition it faces and, of course, prior career performance and loyalty to the business. Software can do this

What about making people redundant?

It is important to have a plan before a crisis hits. We recommend continuous talent profiling to identify the best contributors and their likely career value to the business.

If needed, this can be weighed against forward employer costs – which are ongoing salary and their potential redundancy costs.

How important are employee benefits in attracting recruits?

In the US, benefits are often the main deciding factor. Employers provide a complex range of benefits and employees use them to discriminate between employers. Packages for mid and upper level executives in Asia and Europe are catching up. In future, the key will be to attract a range of talent, from young superstars who expect iPhones and weekend working, to senior employees looking for generous pension contributions and healthcare – but also to manage the cost according to what the business can afford.

What is HR’s role in mergers and acquisitions?

HR software is central to M&A activity. Ideally, the acquiring company needs to be able to upload employee data instantly and review it against the needs of the business. Only then can it identify the key contributors and ensure they do not leave.

Sadly, the technology needed might be in the control of a disenfranchised IT department, which often hinders, rather than helps. HR professionals should see these moments as a chance to review HR processes and reduce the number of management systems they inherit during an acquisition.

“So, phone-hacking suspect Neville Thurlbeck is still on News of the World’s payroll three months after his arrest. Why is this? Well it could be simply because News International, the newspaper’s owner, wants to keep paying him. However it’s more likely that either nobody realised he was actually still on the payroll, or that the way payroll is managed means someone in the chain of management didn’t do what they were supposed to (and there is often a convoluted chain with payroll processes).

How do you keep paying an absent employee?

For example, the manager may decide who to employ and how much to pay them, but all the admin is passed on to HR who will make a record of it and pass it on to finance, who in turn will allocate it to payroll. There are three or possibly four steps involved, each of which keeps its own records. Not an easy system to manage and an even harder system to try and figure out what is actually going on within the company!”

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Fairsail, the leader in Total Talent Management, today announced online start-up  Get Me The Right Job (GMTRJ) has adopted its cloud offering as it sets out to revolutionise recruitment.

Specializing in online recruitment, GMTRJ’s vision is to revolutionise the recruitment process. Using a bespoke system, based on Fairsail Recruit, GMTRJ has automated the entire recruitment process from specifying vacancy requirements, through to advertising, inbound application handling, selection and placement.

GMTRJ customers specify job requirements in terms of both hard skills and soft behavioural competencies. The Fairsail-powered talent pool then finds candidates with not only the right experience but also the right behavioural competency, giving a far higher quality of search than normal key-word searches on résumés achieves. Job seekers browse the vacancies and apply online for the jobs using Fairsail’s built-in Job Board. Their applications are reviewed by US and Indian-based teams, who conduct initial competency-based interviews by telephone; Fairsail Recruit prompts for the skills and competencies to be assessed and records the results.

Recruiters see all applicants and assessments directly through Fairsail’s Workplace Portal and once employer interviews are set up, candidate feedback is recorded directly into Fairsail. Fairsail Recruit keeps candidates fully informed of progress through regular emails, saving all assessments to create a Talent Pool of qualified job seekers, which GMTRJ draws on when advertising new jobs.  With a brand new business process, designed from scratch to be implemented in the cloud, GMTRJ chose Fairsail to provide this interactive service, because of its valuable HR expertise.

Coley Perry, co-founder at GMTRJ, explained “The future of recruiting is not so much about sourcing quality candidates, which we think of as basic, more about marketing roles to applicants and creating a seamless recruitment process. Working with Fairsail, we have achieved a hire ratio of 50%, meaning one out of two candidates is hired. The key to our success with recruiters and candidates alike is the speed and transparency we can bring to hiring top talent. Our success relies on the best HR software and the best processes and together and with Fairsail we are totally changing the way talent is hired.”

Nic Scott, CEO at Fairsail “The move to Total Talent Management required unprecedented innovation and that is something GMTRJ has achieved. Its success is a testament to the ingenuity of its management team and the opportunity which Fairsail’s Total Talent Management approach gives for reinventing HR. We look forward to creating yet more disruption in the HR market with GMTRJ.”

A key appeal of the Fairsail solution was that it integrated seamlessly with Salesforce.com’s SaaS offerings, which Maxwell implemented about two and a half years ago to run its sales, marketing, customer service, support, development and financial activities.

Mike Zarzeka, the firm’s vice president of customer operations, explains:

“Everyone talks about having a ‘customer view’. That joined-up process is what we are striving for with the move to Force.com. We want to know how our customers are using our solutions and how they feel about us. Fairsail is the logical extension of this philosophy into our employees. We are excited to have in an HR system which brings simplicity to processes such as hiring, talent management and benefits allocation and we think other companies utilizing Salesforce’s CRM would also benefit in aligning their employees goals while driving customer satisfaction using the Fairsail solution.”

You can read the full article at Business9Cloud.com

Fairsail, the leader in Total Talent Management, today announced it has been selected as the HR solution for US-based construction industry pioneer Maxwell Systems. The deal comes as part of a move to replace the company’s core systems with Software as a Service solutions on the Force.com computing platform.

Founded 35 years ago, Maxwell Systems supplies a wide range of management solutions for estimating, job cost accounting and project management for construction companies involved in a range of activities from concrete and masonry to plumbing and property management. A product of several acquisitions, Maxwell employs over 200 employees spread nationwide across five offices. Until recently they were supported by five separate HR systems.

Following a decision to consolidate internal IT by integrating four CRM systems down to one and after rejecting Microsoft and SugarCRM proposals, Maxwell reviewed its HR provision and opted for Fairsail’s Total Talent Management approach, despite more upfront cost than its rivals. Maxwell will use Fairsail as the central hub for upcoming Focal Point reviews providing structured feedback and personal goal-setting for all its employees as well as to review the employee benefits, critical to its US-based workforce. The company also intends to implement the Chatter social media functionality integrated into Fairsail so its staff can share work-related ideas and knowledge, building a more unified corporate culture, despite the physical distance between offices.

Mike Zarzeka, Vice President of Customer Operations at Maxwell Systems, explained: “Everyone talks about having a ‘customer view’. That joined-up process is what we are striving for with the move to Force.com. We want to know how our customers are using our solutions and how they feel about us. Fairsail is the logical extension of this philosophy into our employees. We are excited to have in an HR system which brings simplicity to processes such as hiring, talent management and benefits allocation and we think other companies utilizing Salesforce’s CRM would also benefit in aligning their employees goals while driving customer satisfaction using the Fairsail solution. ”

Nic Scott, Fairsail CEO, said: “Maxwell is a thought-leading enterprise, with a desire to use the latest technology before the competition. The management at Maxwell saw an opportunity with Fairsail’s Total Talent Management to create better staff retention, leading to a better customer experience and ultimately better business performance. As a customer-focused organization, Fairsail intends to help Maxwell build and maintain its lead in the market.”

READING, UK 14th April 2011, Fairsail, the leader in Total Talent Management, today announced a solution to the problem of valuing Human Resources measurably, in business terms, across many territories. Using the Global Census functionality in Fairsail’s summer edition, companies can for the first time, get a full picture of their workforce’s current skill sets, future potential for growth and remuneration, comparing them with peers globally.

Based on the Force.com cloud-based platform, Fairsail users access, input and format Global Census data in local languages from remote offices keeping employee data accurate. Fairsail’s unmatched support for local regulations and local currencies provide an ‘apples with apples’ comparison solution for HR professionals looking to allocate resources most effectively for their business.

Fairsail Global Census ‘leap frogs’ previous generations of HR solutions, which required semi-manual data-gathering, often via spreadsheets to perform complex analysis. Its ability to serve up real-time reports across multiple countries, without the need to create or maintain a costly Data Warehouse, is especially valuable where HR professionals are consulting on a consolidation, or expansion, of a global workforce.

Nic Stott, Fairsail CEO, said: “Today’s HR function needs to rapidly and dynamically assess what their organization’s employees do today and are capable of contributing in the future. A critical component of this analysis is their rewards package relative to the local, and increasingly to the global, market. Fairsail’s Global Census functionality maintains an up-to-date view of employees helping organizations compete globally. Global Census is a clear example of how Fairsail has distilled decades of HR best-practice into an innovative easy-to-use solution for Total Talent Management.”

Key benefits of Fairsail Global Census are:

1.Zero infrastructure cloud-based system accessed via browser

2.Easy-to-use local language data input and retrieval

3.Support for local HR regulations

4.Payroll system feed can account for 2 week, 4 week and calendar month pay cycles

5.Standardised global reporting accounting for benefit variations and currencies

About Fairsail

Fairsail is the only solution to address the real needs of today’s HR departments. Based on a best-in-class cloud platform, Fairsail reduces the administrative burden facing both employers and employees. Fairsail’s technology is based on decades of knowledge making for the easy assembly and intelligent processing of HR data. Using Fairsail clearly demonstrates the ways in which HR benefits modern organizations, offering exciting ways for colleagues to interact socially for their own career benefit and that of their employers. Fairsail ushers in the era of Total Talent Management.

Former Micro Focus CEO signs up to Total Talent Management

READING, UK 18th March 2011. Fairsail, the leader in Total Talent Management, today announced the appointment of Stephen Kelly to the Board of Directors following a financing round designed to see it expand operations with a refresh of its technology direction.

Kelly has established an enviable reputation as an international business leader and a senior technology industry figure. During his time as CEO of Chordiant and MicroFocus, Kelly was one of the most successful CEOs from the European technology industry. His appointment further bolsters Fairsail’s management team, led by CEO and former Oracle Executive Nic Scott, as it rapidly expands US sales and takes its Total Talent Management vision to market.

Most recently, Kelly was CEO of Micro Focus, a UK FTSE-quoted software company whose fortunes he transformed through both organic growth and seven acquisitions resulting in a tripling of revenues, a tripling in profits and a total increase of $1bn in market value. He had previously led the highly successful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) company, Chordiant, where he grew revenue from zero to $75m in less than 5 years. Prior to this, Kelly spent a decade at Oracle Corporation in sales leadership roles including the European Telecoms, Financial Services and Retail sectors, where he averaged 100% revenue growth per annum.

Commenting on the appointment, Nic Scott, CEO of Fairsail said: “Stephen’s involvement with Fairsail is a key component of our future success. He brings a wealth of experience, knowledge, financial expertise and the high-level business contacts that only a serial entrepreneur can. We look forward to his guidance in making Total Talent Management the hottest category on the Cloud.”

Stephen Kelly added: ”Total Talent Management is an application ideal for cloud computing. This technology, one of the first on the Force.com platform, is the distillation of decades of HR process knowledge and is set to revolutionise the way employers select, inspire and develop their employees. Fairsail has great technology, world-class leadership and answers a burning need in most modern organizations, who need their HR capability to be a competitive weapon, but today do not have the Total Talent Management systems they deserve.’”

With six locations across Europe and the US, keeping track of talent can be demanding. The Fairsail HCM application will provide performance management tools, team tracking and evaluation, data management such as job descriptions, competency assessment and personnel development planning.

“We’re a software business where data, speed, flexibility and ease-of-use matter” says CEO Peter Grant. “Fairsail struck an immediate chord with us and provides the business-critical services to manage and motivate our people.”Fairsail HCM will provide Actant with a comprehensive, consistent and reliable view of all their human capital assets, reducing paper, increasing automation and making human capital management more systematic and cost efficient.

Nic Scott, CEO of Fairsail says, “We are delighted to be working with Actant, even more so as the business came through personal recommendation. Actant is an active user of Salesforce.com so there is a perfect fit on the same platform. We look forward to making a real difference to their business”.
Further information available from NicScott@fairsail.com or call +44(0) 118 315 0007

To download the full Press Release, click on the link below

Actant Press Release

“Fairsail has done well in its first two years but now needs a step change to take up the huge potential we see in this market. Nic brings great experience of software sales and service and has a clear vision for where Fairsail fits over the next few years” says founder Colin Cooper.Nic Scott joins from Development Partners RR3 where he was a director and closely involved in the implementation of the salesforce.com platform for client companies. Prior to that he was VP at Responsys, Sales Director at Ardent and Major Accounts Director at Oracle.

“Fairsail is right up my street. It’s cloud computing at its best, on the salesforce.com platform and very strongly focused on meeting critical business needs through full-service talent management. The product is proven with an international client base and we’re ready to go large ” says Nic Scott.

Further information from NicScott@fairsail.com or call +44(0)118 315 0007

Fairsail – a suite of breakthrough applications for best practice in Human Capital Management – won the award for outstanding partner innovation with the Force.com Platform at salesforce.com’s Dreamforce user and developer conference at London’s Barbican centre, 7-8 May.

Colin Cooper, CEO and founder of Fairsail, explains “Until now, many HR applications have been notoriously difficult to use. Managers are busy people with little time to grapple with tricky technology, and HR managers don’t want software that demands lots of admin time. They all need an application that is as easy to use as Facebook. Just as Facebook wires up social and family networks: Fairsail 2.0 wires up internal company networks. Fairsail 2.0 draws on HR expertise to support the formal manager-employee reporting relationships through performance management, talent management, development, and – through Fairsail Recruit – dovetails with really focused competency-based recruitment. But these tools also facilitate the broader and more informal networking that’s often hard to coordinate between teams and project groups.”

“Innovative content is important and exciting but, added to that, Fairsail works very smoothly and powerfully because it uses the brand new technology Visualforce, provided by salesforce.com through the Force.com Platform. What’s more, salesforce.com is the only major provider of Software-as-a-Service to receive ISO 27001 certification, the internationally recognised standard for information security governance, which certifies that a provider’s information security management system protects its information and that of its customers.”

Presenting the 1st Annual European Appy Awards at a special award ceremony held at the Dreamforce Europe user and developer conference at London’s Barbican Centre on 8 May, salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said, “The driving force behind salesforce.com’s success has been the success of our community of customers, partners, and developers. The European Appy Awards highlight the leaders in our community who have demonstrated excellence and innovation in using and developing new SaaS applications with the Force.com Platform.”

Marc Benioff showcased Fairsail 2.0 in his keynote presentation at Dreamforce Europe as an example of how new Visualforce technology from the Force.com Platform can be used to build web-based business applications that are as simple-to-use as the best consumer Internet applications.