Tech & Innovation Blog
Race Against Time: How ADP’s Product Team Helped Thousands of Businesses Secure Critical Paycheck Protections Loans
Pandemic, Innovation, Voice of Our People
Bill and Terri look back on a whirlwind weekend in April, when the Small Business Administration (SBA) had launched an unprecedented new loan program established by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). Here’s their story.
In the wake of COVID-19, ADP’s product teams have worked tirelessly to ensure our clients weather the storm. We wanted to catch up with two of the people who’ve made this possible. Bill Leonard, Director of Product Management, was once the payroll director for ADP. He advises early-in-career colleagues to say yes to new opportunities—it’s brought him to where he is today. Terri Thomas, Senior Director of Product Management, says that she owes her 35-year career at ADP to outstanding mentors and the advice she received from day one: Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know.
Below, Bill and Terri look back on a whirlwind weekend in April, when the Small Business Administration (SBA) had launched an unprecedented new loan program established by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). Tens of thousands of companies applied in the first hour alone. Thanks in part to our team’s hard work, many loans went to ADP clients in the first funding round.
Take us back a few months when you first got involved in this project. How did it start?
Terri: I remember I got a phone call the day the CARES Act passed, the last Friday in March. The SBA would start accepting loan applications under the new Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) the following Friday. We wanted to be there for the thousands of ADP’s clients we expected to apply for the loans and give them the tools they would need to help their employees. That meant they needed information from us as soon as possible. I was asked to take the lead on the product side.
We had already been working on the provisions of the FFCRA, or Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which had passed the week before and potentially affected all 600,000 companies who use ADP. But the impact of CARES was massive, too, and we had far less time to take action. So, there was no debate, no red tape. We just got on a call and started working.
Bill: Absolutely. There was limited funding, especially in that first round, so our clients all wanted to be ready the minute the application period opened. We wanted to have their payroll cost reports and other supporting documents ready by Monday.
There were a couple of factors that made that difficult. For example, loan amounts were based on each employee’s annual payroll cost but capped at $100,000 per person per year. We couldn’t just pull data and run a report. The number of moving pieces was pretty astounding due to the rapid shifts in the regulatory environment with unnaturally compressed timelines. We had to respond just as quickly to ensure our clients could keep up and continue to thrive. We had a clear objective; we knew what we needed to do. I think ADP is at its best when we have a dragon to slay.
What were those first couple of days like before the project went live?
Bill: First, we needed to interpret the regulations. We received excellent internal guidance from ADP’s Legal and Compliance teams. They were fantastic in helping us navigate the regulatory language to figure out exactly what it all meant. We couldn’t make any assumptions—for example, defining full-time equivalent hours for employees. In the Affordable Care Act, that meant 30 hours per week, but in this legislation, it was 40.
Since ADP serves so much of the market, we had support at the federal level to ask questions and get answers quickly—and in some cases, we even made recommendations that helped shape the SBA’s guidance.
Terri: Agreed; our Legal and Compliance teams were amazing. The government would release something at 1 a.m. that we’d have to translate the logic of it, to see whether it changed what we were doing, and Legal was right there with us. FTE and lookback periods were big ones, and we also had to figure out what costs qualified, in terms of retirement and health care, and wages. Plus, there was a whole other set of guidance to interpret when it came to loan forgiveness.
ADP has such a large, diverse group of clients—everything from multinational corporations to pizza shops—we offer many different products to our client base. We had to find a way to produce reports that accommodated all those differences but were still consistent enough that a lender’s API could pull out the information they needed. So there were many conversations regarding which fields to “lockdown” and which to let clients edit. For example, if an employee doesn’t come back to work because their job is eliminated, the portion of a PPP loan based on their payroll cost usually isn’t forgivable. However, if an employee has the option to come back to work and refuses, it is. So, we had to build options for clients based on their unique situation.
What happened once the reports were posted—and what’s happened since?
Terri: In the first couple of days after we launched, clients relied on us to help them navigate the calculations. We explained why the numbers on our reports were different from the gross wages they saw on their regular payroll reports—and why they were supposed to be.
One thing that helped, though, was that we’d been able to quickly create not just the reports but some FAQs and other collateral. We shared that with our clients and our Service teams. I think those resources were a big key to our success. We got so much positive feedback from people saying how relieved they were to log on Monday morning and see that we were already on this. They didn’t have to go searching for answers.
Bill: Yes, I think from the client’s point of view, the most valuable thing we gave them, especially in that first week, was assurance. Many business owners were really scared—imagine your company’s entire existence is in question, and here’s this possible lifeline, but you don’t know how or whether you can actually use it. We were able to say, “We’ve got it; we’ll help you through this..”
Terri: Also, while we’d had to make some executive decisions internally to get through the initial launch, we immediately shifted into getting external input. We were pulling everyone into working sessions—clients, CPAs, banks—to find out what they thought about every aspect of the project and how we could do things even better. We kept iterating based on that feedback coupled with the government guidance that continued coming in. We’re still tweaking things even today.
What did you learn from this project that will help you going forward?
Bill: I think this project was an excellent example of keeping things simple. As Terri mentioned, ADP has lots of different products and tools, and for a good reason—we have many different clients. When we simplify, the easier it is to deploy new features and enable innovation. When things like this happen, it needs to be easy, innovative, and quick to market. Most of all, it needs to be right for our clients.
I also learned a lot about—and from—our team. There were many times when Terri and I and the rest of the people leading this project would talk something through, and then a developer would come back to us with a question that was complete gold and entirely changed the way we’d been thinking.
Terri: I couldn’t agree more. It doesn’t matter what your role is; if you have an idea or a suggestion, we want your voice to be heard. Innovation happens here at all levels, and the feedback is immensely powerful in moving the company forward. I’ve already seen numerous examples, and I’ve only been in this role for a few months. My goal as a leader is to encourage that as much as I can.
In true ADP style, the collaboration we saw between teams was amazing. Nothing was about titles or who was attached to what product. The difference this time was that people who don’t ordinarily work together teamed up to make this happen, and having all of those unique perspectives at the table was incredible. Our shared purpose is something I really love about ADP. We’re all working toward the same goal of making an impact for our clients.
In closing, Terri and Bill, you’ve been here 35 and 27 years, respectively. Would you share how you’ve seen ADP change and what advice you would give new people starting with ADP?
Terri: I had some fantastic mentors, and they pushed and made me think about the different opportunities. The advice given to me from day one was don’t be afraid of things you don’t know. That stuck with me for 35 years, and I leaped into things that I never thought I’d even consider. You control your own destiny. Nothing is just handed to you. I got myself in the door and continued to drive my career into different areas. It took a lot of hard work, but I was dedicated to doing it and have had many supporters. So, to me, the sky is the limit at ADP. You don’t have to be stuck in one area. You can go anywhere. It’s like taking a new job when you transition to your next role.
Bill: There is a lot of runway for people on the technology side these days. If you wanted to go into management, there has always been plenty of room there. Today, there’s been much more opportunity to stay on the technology side without having to move into people management to grow your career. As an example, this year, we named our first Distinguished Engineer.
#TradeTalks: How Companies Can Scale Their Workforce With Contingent and Gig Workers
ADP WorkMarket GM Jens Audenaert joins Jill Malandrino on Nasdaq #TradeTalks to discuss how companies can scale their workforce with contingent and gig workers as they rebuild through #COVID19.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Podcast: Fireside chat with Martha Bird, Business Anthropologist, on her career, insights on our current state, and emerging realities as a result of the pandemic
Fireside Chat, Career Journey, Impacts of COVID-19
Martha chats with Tory, from Generations, our Business Resource Group which focuses on creating connections between emerging and established professionals. She shares her career journey, insight on our current state, adjusting to unfamiliar routines, and emerging realities as a result of COVID
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[SPEAKER] Martha is Chief Business Anthropologist at ADP, where she helps design and create meaningful services, experiences, and products. Her approach both questions and contextualizes the social and cultural dynamics of technology. Martha understands technology as a cultural phenomenon and sees it as deeply embedded in the broader context of geography, social norms, language, physical space, and infrastructural capabilities. Martha shares insights about the people and the places where they make meaning with technology. Her expertise contributes to ADP’s ability to keep people at the center of innovation and design a better world at work.
[TORI DICKEY] Thank you, Martha Bird, for joining our Generation’s BRG podcast. We’re real excited to have you here today. My name is Tori Dickey. I am the Generation’s membership director on the National Board. And we look forward to having a terrific conversation today. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your career transition from academia to corporate ADP.
[MARTHA BIRD] Hi, Tori. Thanks so much for inviting me. I’ve been looking forward to this. Yeah, I’ve had a very interesting, I would say, a multiple set of careers. So I actually grew up in central New Hampshire, where for about 15 years, I ran a seventh-generation family farm. So I’m very aware of generations working together– both the benefits and the challenges. So I think that’s an interesting intersection with our interests.
But part of working as a farmer meant that I had winters kind of to myself. And it seemed to me that I should be doing something perhaps a little bit more productive given that there was nothing to do in the fields. And I was fortunate enough to receive a fellowship to Boston University where I was working then on my PhD in anthropology, not what the intention actually of teaching, although I think the track that was set up for me was probably more in that direction. But I was just really interested, as I still am today, in really understanding how people make meaning with the tools that they have, with the people that are around them, with the cultural spaces in which they exist. So that was sort of the start there.
And then once I received my PhD, I understood that there were other anthropologists like myself who had opted not to go into academics, and instead decided to pursue careers in industry. And at that time, which is about 20 years ago, the industry that was most attractive to us as a group was in technology. So long and short is I ended up moving to San Francisco. I worked in Silicon Valley for a number of years. And then I’ve moved my center of operation to London, where I worked for a good many years, basically there working in emerging markets, spending a lot of time in Russia, actually.
And then as way leads on the way in my life, I ended up moving back to the US and talking to Roberto Masiero who is my current manager. And he brought me in basically with the remit to bring some human wisdom to the digital tools that we built.
[TORI DICKEY] Very nice. Well, we are certainly lucky to have you. We’ve seen you out in a few different ADP corporate settings and definitely know that you bring quite a bit of value to our products and the direction which our technology will be going in the future.
[MARTHA BIRD] Yeah. I feel very privileged for the platform and the opportunity to actually kind of find some of these intersections between the human and the technical. And I think it’s– I feel very blessed to be able to do that.
[TORI DICKEY] Certainly. Let’s chat about COVID-19 and the impact across our different generations. What have you observed or recognized from our different generations?
[MARTHA BIRD] Well, on the outside, and not specifically about ADP, I’ve personally been really impressed by the shared social responsibility that I’ve observed across a number of generations. So on any given trip to the store, I see young and old and all those in between wearing some kind of mask I’ve also been deeply touched by the perseverance and grit of those elders who seem to be just getting on with it despite their physical challenges.
I wonder though how they’re keeping at home. Are they alone? Did they get enough human connection, which makes me think of a dear friend and mentor of mine who was 98? And he got to a point where he said he thought it made sense for him to hire a helper to come in to visit him a few times a week just to give him a good back scratch.
So human connection is critical. And those less fortunate enough to have access to technologies that enable us to connect, even if somewhat flat compared to the real thing, I think are very fortunate. And of course, some people, especially older folks, are taking to video conferencing out of necessity. So they are learning new ways of connecting while others, I’m afraid, are having a probably a deepening experience of isolation.
Of course, as people have been sheltering at home, there is the necessity for parents and children and perhaps grandparents to shelter together. And for those I’ve spoken to, it’s kind of a mixed bag of emotion. On the one hand, it’s a gift to spend time with family when you might otherwise be on the road commuting to work. You get to sit down with meals. You get to do family projects and just generally share time together.
However, there is also that feeling of, wow, this is a lot of additional effort to manage kids and work responsibilities and what other things may come up. And somewhere in the mix of emotion has been planted the seeds of work-life change where people have been forced to be a bit more transparent about their domestic life and responsibilities inherent in that life. So many of us have kept our professional personas really separate from our personal personas.
But for those of us fortunate enough to work from home, we’ve had to embrace a new kind of blending of the two. And I think the implications of this for the future of work are still really playing out. But I suspect we will see more opportunities for flexible work arrangements to emerge, like, where and how and when work gets done. And I’d love to see the idea of quality over quantity becoming really the true measure of professional success, as opposed to how many meetings one attends and how many hours one works.
[TORI DICKEY] Yes. And that’s a great point. I’m right there with you with regards to how we view productivity or how we view success as a shift. So what do you think about the new normal we keep hearing about? I mean, we’re all facing the unfamiliar routines, keeping more personal distance. What are your thoughts as it pertains to ADP and our culture?
[MARTHA BIRD] Yes. It’s interesting, Tori. I have been giving a lot of thought to this term, new normal. And personally, I feel like the term, emerging realities, is better because I believe it captures the multiple ways people are learning to adapt and evolve. It’s a dynamic term that implies change in movement, whereas I think a new normal feels, to me, a bit static, which is really the way culture works.
For, example, what might be new to one person is the same old thing for another. And similarly, what I might find normal might well seem out of the ordinary for another person. So it’s not really about a one size fits all. If we have learned anything I think over the past several months, it is that people experience life differently depending on many and varied factors like age, ethnicity, income, education, and access. So for me, I like emerging realities.
[TORI DICKEY] Very good. So is the handshake a thing of the past days and now considered taboo?
[MARTHA BIRD] I’m not sure I’d call it a taboo, but then again I’m an anthropologist. So my mind goes to the original meaning of the word which was related to like sort of supernatural forces that had the potential of doing evil. So to avoid taboos, we’re set up to get away from these dangers. So supernatural malevolent forces aside, if nothing else, those who follow I think the CDC and the WHO guidelines won’t be shaking hands anytime too soon.
Of course, two, many cultures don’t shake hands when greeting others. So for instance in Thailand, people put their hands at chest level and bow. And so in other places for religious reasons, some people don’t shake hands. Particularly, men don’t shake hands with women.
And then there’s also the thing about order, the order of shaking. And the pressure of the handshake can vary depending on the age of those gathering with deference to elders. But I think it seems safe to say, however, that for the near-term, handshakes will be avoided by many people. Whether these will become a thing of the past seems unlikely, given the hope that we’ll soon see a vaccine for COVID-19, and also the fact that the process of cultural behavior changes in very lengthy process.
[TORI DICKEY] So do you have any messaging or words of wisdom on how we can support our different generations in ADP through this change?
[MARTHA BIRD] Yeah. I think the main one that comes to my mind is to be kind to yourself. That’s first and foremost. And then understand that most people are experiencing a sense of anchorlessness and uncertainty. So it’s OK to feel vulnerable, and it’s even better to be honest about it.
And listen with intention and respect your teammates. So I think listening is a sign of attention-paying. It’s a form of reciprocity, an affirmation between a listener in a speaker and vice versa. I think it signals a partnership, a collaboration rather than a one-way conversation. So active listening, I think, builds more trusting relationships.
Think back on a time when you felt like you were truly heard. And then think back on a time when you felt ignored. How did you feel about that person? So is that person someone you’d respect as a leader?
There are few feelings more apt to generate withdrawal and apathy than the feeling that your opinions don’t matter. It really doesn’t mean that everyone needs to agree with your opinions, but it does mean that feeling dismissed will never engender respect.
[TORI DICKEY] Great message. And I appreciate your words of wisdom here for us today with the Generations BRG.
[MARTHA BIRD] Mm-hmm. Thank you.
[TORI DICKEY] Yeah. How about the shift to a remote work environment? Are there different ways that you see our leaders might approach performance, coaching, or mentoring, and the employee engagement we have here at ADP?
[MARTHA BIRD] Yeah. There’s a couple of practices that come immediately to my mind. So interestingly today, my team is welcoming a new intern. And then the team leader has organized a Webex welcome to the team call so that we have a chance to say, we’re glad you’re here. Now, that’s an entirely new experience, and I’ll be happy to report back how that goes.
But it’s a step in the right direction. Yes, is it as good as having a get-together around our shared table where we have lunch? Maybe not. But is it a signal that we really care that this person is actually showed up? I think it is. So that’s I think that’ll be interesting to see.
And on the lines of human touch, I think leaders should adopt an attitude of open and honest communication to encourage more human-centered, I think, working relationships. This goes to what I was just saying really about attentive listening. And I think it starts by carefully curating inclusive remote meetings where everyone has a voice. So set aside time at the beginning of meetings to share fears and concerns and invite open discussion.
Set aside time for regular and predictable one-on-ones, perhaps inviting the associate to walk and talk during the conversation. I actually find that really a nice practice because so often we’re just crouched over our laptops, and it just doesn’t feel particularly humane. And I always really feel like there’s a lot more flow of conversation when I’m able to sort of just have a natural walking about. So I think that’s one thing.
And then ask the teammate how they prefer to be mentored. And something that I know has been successful in other companies– and I’ve seen it with friends that I know– is to pair teammates across generations. So creating mentorship opportunities in both directions– I just think it’s hugely valuable.
And then I share this with your listenership because I think this was something that I found really exceptionally engaging– was, I had asked teammates to share a photo of themselves as very young children, and then to write a single sentence. What would you say to them now?
Not only did this open up an opportunity for shared fun; it also gave the team an opportunity to learn more about childhood in different cultures, and underscored the reality that, regardless of current age, we were all kids once. So it proved to be a really successful exercise in terms of team sharing, cross-cultural learning, and multi-generational understanding. And I really recommend it to your listeners.
[TORI DICKEY] I like that. I think we’ll go ahead and launch that. Maybe our virtual chapter can help facilitate some fun around doing just that I certainly have had a similar experience in bringing about 10 pictures to a workplace environment and found that it really helps us to shift into that human dimension, find a common bond, and identify areas of discussion to build on that relationship and/or mentorship. So great suggestion, Martha. I appreciate that.
[MARTHA BIRD] My pleasure.
[TORI DICKEY] So one last question for you as we wrap this up. How do you view history and tradition in ADP? For example, our locations will have potlucks or other activities such as chili cook-offs. Do you think that we’ll see these again anytime soon in our in our workplace?
[MARTHA BIRD] Yeah. I don’t think we’ve seen the end of in-person gatherings. Humans are dependent on connection, and we form communities around these interpersonal opportunities. So ADP has a strong history of putting people first and, I think, with a very solid focus on family, whether it’s for the associates or for clients. And as a company, ADP has a consistent track record, I think, of supporting the communities in which we live and prosper.
This makes sense really is to give back to those who allow us to prosper. So how we give back may change, but the act of doing so is ingrained in the values of the company, and I don’t see that changing. I see changing eventually a return to more of these sort of in in-person get-togethers.
[TORI DICKEY] Good. Well, we certainly look forward to that time coming sooner than later.
[MARTHA BIRD] Yeah. And in the meantime, share photos of yourself as young children.
[TORI DICKEY] Yeah. There you go. [LAUGHS] It’s a great second-best while we bridge the gap. All right, well, thank you so much, Martha, for your time today and participating with the Generations BRG, the GenCast. We do hope that you’ll be able to join in future events or activities that Generations hosts as well.
[MARTHA BIRD] Well, I’d really look forward to that, Tori. And thank you so much for inviting me. It was my great pleasure.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[LOGO] ADP, Always Designing for People.
[TEXT] ADP and the ADP logo are registered trademarks of ADP, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Copyright © 2020 ADP, Inc.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Time clocks in the age of COVID-19: How ADP developed a (mostly) touchless solution in just a few weeks
Pandemic, Innovation, Voice of Our People
In early March 2020, as the COVID-19 outbreak started to expand throughout the U.S. and Canada, the team working on ADP’s new Time Kiosk system started getting the same question from many of our clients: “Is there a way to use this without touching it?”
By Jonathon Gumbiner, Senior Product Manager
In early March 2020, as the COVID-19 outbreak started to expand throughout the U.S. and Canada, the team working on ADP’s new Time Kiosk system started getting the same question from many of our clients: “Is there a way to use this without touching it?” At the time, we were several months into a pilot program for the tablet-based timecard management app with more than 1,000 clients.” But most of them hadn’t adopted the app’s facial recognition feature, instead opting to tap in their badge number. And even for those who did use facial recognition, Time Kiosk still required each worker to tap the screen—a suddenly dangerous proposition during a global pandemic.
For companies that had essential workers on-site, we suggested an immediate but imperfect solution: low-cost touch pencils each employee could use to navigate the app. But we knew we’d ultimately need an integrated, turnkey option—and we’d need it as soon as possible.
After a quick brainstorm, we narrowed in on the fix that seemed most promising: First, we’d reconfigure the app to perform facial recognition by default, whenever someone was in front of the camera. Then, we’d use the tablet’s built-in virtual assistant, which powered features like Siri and Google Assistant, to respond to voice commands within Time Kiosk. If we were successful, employees would be able to start a workday, take lunch and other breaks, and clock out, all without touching the screen.
Within a couple of days, our developers were able to build a rough proof-of-concept. It was clunky and far from intuitive—to clock in, for example, you had to say “tap clock in” instead of simply “clock in.” But it was enough to help our senior leaders understand our vision for a more-refined solution—one that would meet the high standards we’d set for the original Time Kiosk experience. We got their buy-in and started to build.
Voice recognition was the first challenge. For one thing, as anyone who’s used a virtual assistant knows all too well, there are phrases it just won’t recognize. Also, in order to release the touchless features as part of Time Kiosk’s formal launch in both the U.S. and Canada, which was just a few weeks away, we needed to develop voice recognition for not only English but Spanish and French, as well—languages no one on the team speaks. Thankfully, as a global company, our partners from other ADP teams came to our rescue, helping us quickly create a repository of words to which the tablets would reliably respond.
Of course, we couldn’t make every action completely touchless. Switching between an employer’s custom job or department codes, for example, would require an employee to scroll through options that voice recognition likely wouldn’t cover. But what we could do was keep people informed. With the help of our UI team, we developed a treatment to add an icon for every touchless function, so employees could see at a glance whether they’d need to touch the screen. If so, they could wash their hands or take other precautions before they acted.
Once we’d finished the first phase, though, we came to a larger challenge: quality assurance. We spent twice as much time testing the new touchless features as we’d spent building them, going through every single action a user could take to make sure we’d identified everything properly. Because voice recognition touched the entire product, we had to review it all—and quickly, requiring a true team effort from QA. What’s more, we happened to be in the middle of transitioning to a new UI, so we needed to test both the current and the incoming interfaces, making the process twice as long.
Yet perhaps the biggest challenge of all was the pandemic’s impact on how it got done. To make sure the new features worked well in all three languages, we needed service reps and tech partners to help us with testing. But most of ADP’s 58,000-person team was working from home. I couldn’t simply walk upstairs, hand someone my tablet loaded with the latest version of our work and ask them to play around with it for a while and bring it back at the end of the day. Instead, we had to find a way to get it on their tablets remotely—no easy task given the tablet’s security restrictions. Luckily, our team was able to build a package and set of instructions that I could share, allowing partners to offer live feedback via an embedded diagnostic tool. They were invaluable in helping us fine-tune, especially our translations.
In the end, thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Time Kiosk team and many of our colleagues, we were able to meet our goal, transforming the app into an intuitive, mostly touchless experience in a few short weeks. Like any quick-turn project, it wasn’t without a few bugs. But the team’s rapid response to client questions and weekly Q&A calls have helped us not only serve their needs and build stronger relationships with them. Time Kiosk has now officially launched, and our sales teams tell us the touchless technology has been a conversation driver with both clients and prospects.
Even after the COVID-19 outbreak has passed, we see great potential in what we’ve learned about voice and facial recognition, whether it’s better accessibility for employees with disabilities or voice biometrics for authenticating service calls. In the meantime, we’re proud to say that when our clients had an urgent need, we were able to quickly deliver a solution that works—and that’s helping keep thousands of their people safe.
Jonathon Gumbiner is a Senior Product Manager at ADP in New Jersey.
Tech & Innovation Blog
How ADP leveraged new technology to help users affected by COVID-19
Pandemic, CARES Act, Helping Clients
When the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, became law on March 27, 2020, teams across ADP had already been hard at work for weeks preparing for the flood of new policies tied to this legislation. Here’s an example of how Cary Feuer and his team jumped to our clients aid.
By Cary Feuer, Director of Product Management, ADP Small Business Services
When the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, became law on March 27, 2020, teams across ADP had already been hard at work for weeks preparing for the flood of new policies tied to this legislation. In Retirement Services, we’d started with the simplest—and highest-impact—changes, such as initiating loans and withdrawals for users affected by COVID-19. By mid-March, we had successfully worked through those immediate projects and then turned our attention to a provision we knew would be much trickier: payment suspensions for 401(k) loans.
Since long before the pandemic, the IRS had allowed 401(k) owners to borrow money from their accounts for what it deems “immediate and heavy financial need,” such as a medical expense or a looming foreclosure. Now, under the CARES Act, borrowers affected by COVID-19 could choose to pause payments on those 401(k) loans until 2021. We knew up to 175,000 ADP users might qualify, and their average monthly payment was $800—a significant amount of money for many families. And we also knew that if even 10% of that group decided to suspend their payments and had to call us to do so, it would likely put a significant strain on our team. More importantly, it would be a headache for users during an already-difficult time. We wanted to give them an easy, self-service option, instead of making them wait on hold.
It was clear we needed a technical solution. But speed was critical—and because suspending payments is a multistep process (including self-certification of COVID-19-related hardship)—it wouldn’t be as simple as checking a box. On the backend, we needed to update money-movement databases and multiple payroll products, reamortize the loans, and create an audit trail, all of which we knew we could do relatively quickly. On the frontend, though, we would normally take our time on development and testing, ironing out every wrinkle to ensure the best user experience. A UI build of this scale might take several sprints to ship across mobile, web, and legacy web platforms. In this case, we didn’t have that long.
Instead, we turned to a new piece of third-party technology, which ADP had recently integrated to allow for faster deployment of simple features like pop-up guides and mini-surveys. Designed for product managers and others to use without the help of an engineer, this technology offers templatized, customizable design patterns—and it had already been vetted by ADP’s Technical, Security, and Legal teams. It was our best, and perhaps only, option to get the frontend of payment suspensions up and running on an accelerated timeline. However, because of all the backend changes each payment suspension would trigger, we’d need to learn how to work with the product in an entirely new way, pulling information out of its API and into our own infrastructure.
Our lead developer joined with our lead development team for a quick feasibility study, and within a couple of days they’d determined our plan could work. So, with added help from one of ADP’s resident experts on the 3rd party software, we all got to work building. Our colleagues in Service Ops helped us develop the content, a UX teammate gave the frontend flow their blessing, and in less than two weeks we were almost ready to ship.
But then we ran into a snag. In order for the third-party product to know which users should see a payment suspension option, it needed to refer to a list of qualified users’ anonymized IDs—and with so many people facing financial hardship and taking out new 401(k) loans, that list was changing every day. Because of the time crunch, we’d decided to upload up-to-date CSVs of user IDs to the product each morning by hand. But this seemingly simple fix was a use case that the product—a relatively new technology still in its startup phase—wasn’t built for. Each day’s upload was taking hours to complete.
Rather than delay the release, we decided to ship our new feature and keep handling the CSVs manually. Contemporaneously, we started work on a mini-app that could automatically break up and upload the CSVs. After a few days of testing, we finally had a feature that was not only fully self-serve for our users, but fully automated for us. Thousands of people have now paused their loans without needing to call in, saving them time and potential frustration—and saving ADP the equivalent of adding two full-time employees. Over the course of the program, our uploading solution will save hundreds of additional hours.
Meet Cary’s four-legged office mate
Even better, our team is more familiar with a brand-new technology that we can now leverage in other creative ways. The next time we’re responding to a fast-developing situation, such as a hurricane, we’ll have this 3rd party technology in our toolbox. We’re currently validating it for other use cases, where time to market is less of a concern. With just a few weeks of work, we were able to expand our team’s development toolset, better serve our users when they needed it most, and make an investment in the future of ADP.
This is just one way that our tech teams have added new tools into our tech stack. This feature is now available for all ADP Retirement Services clients that offer CARES Act provisions to their employees.
Cary Feuer is a Director, Product Management for Small Business Services at ADP and is based in New Jersey.
Podcast: Nasdaq’s #TradeTalks: Linda Mougalian talks about ADP’s Innovative Solutions for a #WFH Environment
#TradeTalks: ADP’s Innovative Solutions For Employees and Clients As We Adapt to a #WFH Environment
ADP Sr. Division VP Go To Market Strategy Linda Mougalian joins Jill Malandrino on Nasdaq #TradeTalks to discuss ADP’s innovative solutions for employees and clients as we adapt to a #WFH environment.
ADP’s Linda Mougalian on Data, Reopening, Gigs and Compliance
Q&A: ADP’s Linda Mougalian on Data, Reopening, Gigs and Compliance
We spoke with Linda Mougalian, division vice president of product marketing and strategy for ADP, about data’s role in helping employers navigate the pandemic, the widening role of the gig economy, and the pressure on business when compliance becomes a moving target.
I wonder whether the return to work effort is going to be one of those things that moves in fits and starts, because of the unpredictability of the virus. What are your thoughts about how businesses are going to be able to deal with that?
What I’ve been observing, both from an ADP standpoint and from a broader industry standpoint is, is that the way we’re going to get through this is with data. I think that we’re getting to a leveling out.
To a certain extent, a lot of the initial waves of answers were around “OK, here’s how we’re all going to shut down,” and “OK, here’s how we’re all going to return to work.” What we’re finding is that there’s a lot more nuance. So within states, you’ve got multi-phase plans coming out. Then you’ve got each of the counties and specific locations where they’re actually looking at the data to determine what’s their specific scenario, what makes the most sense for them to move forward.
I think the way you described it, as moving forward in fits and starts, is a good way to think of it. But I do believe that from an employer standpoint, knowledge is power. If you understand the data, that’s going to be how you’re able to have some level of competence as you’re moving forward.
Q&A with @ADP’s Linda Mougalian. We talk data, gigs, compliance and #COVID-19: “From an employer standpoint, knowledge is power.” #HR #HRTechCLICK TO TWEETOne of the things that we have is a data mashup, where we’re taking data from Johns Hopkins and mashing it up with HR data, so we can see where the cases are and where our employees are. That’s one type of data. And then the other piece of it isn’t just about how people are feeling and what are the stats. It’s about what’s their sentiment about coming back to the office? Do they feel comfortable?
I just had a conversation with one of my co-workers and asked, “How comfortable are you coming back?” This was just a personal conversation, and he said, “Well, I’m not very comfortable at all. I will be perfectly happy to be one of the last people to come back.” As an employer, it’s important to know that, and to get a read on the emotional readiness of employees to come back to the office, as well as all of the logistics—whether they’ve got the sanitizers, PPEs, a way to distance and all of those other data elements. I think this is another aspect of data that will help employers move forward.
ADP’s been doing a lot with AI and with machine learning, and much of it’s geared toward making data more accessible to the business person or business owner. Is that kind of accessibility becoming more important? Are you hearing more demand for that kind of flexibility?
Yes and yes. We went about it with something we call Executive and Manager Insights. Basically, we’re looking at all of our data and distilling it down into tiny nuggets of insights at the team leader level, and pushing it out to them. So, if I’m a manager I can go into particular office and see that my turnover is high. These insights can be prompted and pushed to their mobile device, so they get proactively notified that there’s something going on. Then we give them the ability to drill down and understand more about why it’s happening.
From a data standpoint, it’s about understanding what’s going on, having the ability to dig in and understand what to do with the data so you can move forward. We’re not necessarily just saying, here’s the trend and you can dig into it and figure things out on your own. One of the things that we have is this idea of story boarding and presenting things in very clear English, with recommendations. So we’ve moved from predictive insights to being prescriptive.
I think as we get further into the return to work, it’s going to be even more important to get more of this data around the sentiments that people have. As they’re coming back to the office, what are they looking for?
I do want to point out that we take the privacy really, really seriously. We’ve gotten a lot of questions about privacy as we’re developing all of these data insights. We’re making sure that we’re working with Legal and, where it makes sense, to have things aggregated. In other instances, where it’s more appropriate, we’ll disclose some specific things. So, for example, health attestations are not stored against an individual. Those are stored in aggregate. Things like that.
I’d like to shift gears a little bit and look at the gig economy and contingent workforce. Here again, I’m wondering what you’re seeing. How is the use of technology evolving, especially in light of COVID and the changes that the workforce is undergoing?
The story that I love to tell about this one is the idea of the volunteer surge. I’m going back a couple of months, when there was a lot of uncertainty around the capacity to actually address all of the cases that were going to be coming in. There was this big push, and ADP’s WorkMarket was a big part of actually trying to help generate more people who were qualified to help us through this.
We basically decided we were going to create a talent pool where people could say they’d like to participate in this. We help track the training, so they’re actually getting the training they need. And then they were paired with [organizations] in whatever their locality was, once they had sufficient training. They were specifically placed to help manage the caseloads.
To me, the idea of a gig ecosystem that allows that is huge. And I think that’s going to continue to be the case, as we think about people adapting to the new world of work. In some cases, it means that people are lucky enough to do their jobs from home, as I do. In others, they may be either displaced or find there’s a different need. Over the long term, people are starting to say their traditional experience in working doesn’t have to be a 9-to-5 job. They’re finding ways to make connections and do the things that they love to do through this gig environment. I think that’s going to continue.
From an employer standpoint, I know that there’s a lot of interest in leveraging gig workers because it’s a way to manage through some of this uncertainty. So I think that both from an employer and a worker standpoint, this idea of opening up opportunities where we can pair people with skills with employers with needs—in a very flexible, agile way—will continue to grow.
Do you think it’s going to be permanent, in that more employers will rely more on gig workers as opposed to full-time workers?
It’s so hard to say right now, just because of the environment we’re in. I’ll go back to the idea of evolving in fits and starts. Employers are still trying to find their way. So whether it’s going to be permanent is a tough question to answer right now.
But I do think that on the employer side, whether it’s going to be permanent is one question. On the worker side, people see that they have more flexible options. If you were to ask what’s my gut on this one, I’d say you’re going to see more people who would like to continue to have that gig experience, where maybe they’ve got a full-time job and a gig on the side, or maybe they’ve got a part-time job and a gig on the side.
When we did our engagement study, the folks who were most engaged were the ones who had a part-time job and a gig on the side. It gave them a nice balance of having the stability of a more traditional job for at least part of the time, and access to benefits and things, while they were able to have a creative outlet, or something they had passion about, in the context of their gig work. So I think that from a worker standpoint, once people find their way to a situation that works for them, I believe there’ll be more people who find gig working is a part of that.
A little bit of this is left to be seen, but I think that the first time we try something, it’s a little bit scary. A lot of people and a lot of businesses have been put in a position where they’re trying things for the first time. Some of them are going to find they like this. Or maybe they were a little bit apprehensive about trying it before, but are a whole lot more comfortable now that they’ve had to do it.
Let’s talk about compliance. It seems to me compliance can be a heavy lift right now, with new laws, location-by-location restrictions on opening and what have you. What are you seeing among different types of employers, in terms of how they’re coping and keeping up with all of this?
I can tell you a little bit about our experience here at ADP and some of the things that we’ve been doing to help from a compliance standpoint. From the first moment that there was a legislation around this—this goes back to when the PPP [Paycheck Protection Program] became effective—we’ve been pushing out content, and we’re working with the government and others to make sure that we’re as on top of this as we can possibly be. So we have compliance specialists around the world, because this isn’t necessarily just the U.S., this is also international.
From an employer standpoint, we saw the appetite for people to see this information. One of the interesting things that I heard very early on was that as employers were trying to navigate through what they needed to do from a compliance standpoint—and in addressing all of the COVID-related processes—HR and payroll providers were among the top resources they were looking to.
So we put out content. We had an employer preparedness kit, we had an employee communications tool kit. We had webinars, we put out a PPP website. We put all of this content out there, and we found that people were thirsty for this.
With our PPP site, one of the things we saw was not only were people visiting it, but they were staying there longer than any normal traffic. They were looking at the assets we made available for the tool kit, the preparedness kit. We were finding that on this PPP site, they were actually staying five times longer than a normal visit.
Compliance has always been a double-edged sword in that everybody knows it’s important, but a lot of employers don’t really pay enough attention to it. Has that changed because of the virus?
I relate this a bit to the ACA [Affordable Care Act] a few years back. That was a situation where people also didn’t necessarily have the robust information they needed, and they needed to jump on board.
I’d say with this, we’re in a situation where businesses needed to understand exactly how much people made. This is about pay information for the most part—how much Paycheck Protection Program were businesses going to be eligible for. You’re talking about the employee-retention credits, how much of what they were paying was going out against pay as opposed to other expenses and things like that.
I think that people absolutely have a heightened awareness of the need to keep and track data. When it comes to pay information, companies are, generally speaking, more rigorous about keeping that information. But when you tie that to the compliance aspect, and really look at how much of this retention credit am I going to be eligible for, I think that people probably are a whole lot more intimate with their data now than perhaps they were before.
With the ACA, there was data they weren’t tracking and they had to scramble a bit to get the right data into their systems. Although there’s some of that here, I think the bigger thing is this idea of getting super close to your data, understanding where you are and making sure that you’re headed in the right direction from a compliance standpoint, and from an eligibility standpoint, when you think about the employee retention credits.
Disclosure: ADP Next Gen is a sponsor of the HCM Technology Report
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Tech & Innovation Blog
ADP Help Clients Navigate the Way Forward to a Return to Work
Analyst Day, New Technology, Pandemic, Return to Work
During ADP’s annual Industry Analyst Day, members of the ADP executive team had the opportunity to host a virtual meeting with industry analysts to unveil the latest product developments to help our clients navigate the way forward as their employees return to work.
During ADP’s annual Industry Analyst Day, members of the ADP executive team had the opportunity to host a virtual meeting with industry analysts to unveil the latest product developments to help our clients navigate the way forward as their employees return to work.
Industry Analyst Day is an opportunity for analysts to learn what’s new at ADP so they can share it with their clients and in their published research. The highlight of our June meeting was showcasing our upcoming “Return to Work” solutions, including employee readiness surveys, daily health attestations, a return to the workplace dashboard, and touchless time kiosks with facial recognition.
The event had full exec leadership participation. Our CEO, Carlos Rodriguez, kicked off the call, followed by Matt Levin, our Chief Strategy Officer, who shared information from ADP Research Institute. Don Weinstein shared a demo of all the new technology and products we have in store. Maria Black focused on what ADP has done to assist and educate our clients throughout the pandemic. Finally, Debbie Dyson hosted interviews with several clients who shared how they partnered with ADP to navigate the global pandemic.
ADP traditionally hosts industry analyst day in the Fall. However, we felt a June meeting would be more timely and appropriate to highlight ADP’s rapid reaction to helping our clients during COVID-19. Based on what we’ve seen, the analysts were impressed. Some of the highlights on how ADP reacted swiftly to help our clients by delivering meaningful in-product solutions and leveraging our unmatched product portfolio and data capabilities:
- Enabled tax credits as part of the CARES Act within three days. By mid-June, 38,000 clients have used $600M in tax credits across 473K employees to aid those affected by the pandemic
- Provided a mechanism for 400K+ clients ran over 2 million PPP reports for SBA loan applications valued at $115 billion, plus over 200K loan forgiveness reports
- Stood up a COVID-19 site where over 700K visitors engaged with our PPP content, staying 5x longer than a typical visit to ADP.com
- VolunteerSurge supported by our WorkMarket product helped onboard 1K+ volunteers within two weeks from 45 states, Canada, and Mexico to fight COVID-19
- Launched workplace analytics to help measure COVID impact on businesses
- Offered extended free trials of our StandOut product to measure employee engagement
We serve clients all over the globe. Outside the US, our teams deployed solutions in many geographies and have partnered with government agencies to support our clients. To date, we have had multiple country teams address 1.4K feature changes resulting from almost 2,000 global and local legislation changes, a number that continues to rise.
Ultimately, our goal has been to support our clients in the best possible way through this crisis. We’re proud that we have received significant positive feedback for our efforts, and analysts weren’t shy about tweeting during the session! Some things they loved:
- Insights from the ADP Research Institute that no other vendor could share
- Incredible response from the ADP team to help clients navigate the early weeks of the pandemic
- Impressed with the return to the workplace tool kit that’s under development
- Check out a full blog from Nelson-Hall here: https://research.nelson-hall.com/blogs-webcasts/nelsonhall-blog/
But it doesn’t stop there. We’re giving our clients a place to access resources quickly. Check it out here at www.adp.com/forward.
Stay safe!
Tech & Innovation Blog
Life Lessons from a Butterfly in Troubling Times
Thoughtful advice, Pandemic
It is springtime in New Jersey, says the calendar. A cool, 55-degrees Fahrenheit, says the Weather app. But somehow our world feels to me like it’s frozen in time. Instantly, the world as we knew it came to a grinding halt from a microscopic virus.
It is springtime in New Jersey, says the calendar. A cool, 55-degrees Fahrenheit, says the Weather app. But somehow our world feels to me like it’s frozen in time. Instantly, the world as we knew it came to a grinding halt from a microscopic virus, thrusting us into a sci-fi movie set where the concepts of time—hours, days, weeks, months—begin to blur, and we, the people, have scrambled to find ways to ride out the storm.
With each passing day bringing hope, we accept grace and guidance to truly connect to what matters and be generously more kind, helpful, supportive to understand one another. The virus has not disappeared and faded to a distant memory (how we wish!) Yet, we found the strength to know that this too shall pass.
With the sunshine, a new day begins with bright blue skies, beautiful spring blossoms, and then come the butterflies, a precious gift from nature.
I am sure the butterflies and flowers have been there all along, yet, we have found the time to watch them dance and glide from flower to flower with delicate grace.
While we pause to watch the butterflies, we cannot stop thinking about the prolonged impacts triggered by the pandemic. We are suddenly thrust into an unfortunate economic situation layered with layoffs and furloughs across the globe, friends, family, and people we know at work, or in our connections, impacted.
Especially in the current situation, layoffs, and furloughs are often not personal and are not reflections on individual performance. Please know that as hard as it is for anyone impacted, it can be harder for their employer and their managers who suddenly have to part ways with their people. For both employer and employee, regardless of the duration of association, it is essential to fill that moment of separation with grace and gratitude for shared opportunities and accomplishments.
Yes, emotions run high, and there is pain we cannot wish away. Still, please refrain from burning the bridge or kicking the ladder that helped you climb in your career. It is a small world, after all.
Now more than ever, if you know someone who has lost their job, please extend your grace to connect with them and wish them well on their journey onward.
It only takes a few minutes to reach out. Hearing your voice and knowing you care matters more than you know. Genuine reflections of your kindness will bring them the hope they need to help them in their career journey.
Share opportunities to expand their network connections and maybe even guide them on some easy learning, volunteering, and mentoring opportunities for them to lend a hand to support our bigger community.
We are entering a new world, and in time and together, we, the people, will learn to be agile to adapt and adjust both at work and in our life. For now, stay positive and think of this disruptive time as a break to rest and re-invest in yourself, an opportunity to open to new possibilities. Soon enough, a new day will come with promising sunshine just for you!
Yes, a career is a journey that brings amazing people together to build relationships that last a lifetime through the rest stops, detours, and adventures. Like the butterflies, we have an opportunity to expand our circle of influence and our network. Enjoy the journey and be happy always.
Are you the butterfly caught in a strong wind? If so, exit with grace and gratitude. When the winds calm down, and you start your next flight, Always Believe in Yourself. Know there will be other gardens and wildflower patches that await your arrival when the time is right. In that place, you will once again dance with friends and make your music in your own way.
So, the break is time to Rest, Recover, Recharge, Re-Ignite, and be Ready. Best of Luck!
Stay Connected,
Jyotsna
Jyotsna Manikantan is a Lead Product Manager in Roseland, NJ.
Post originally appeared on LinkedIn. Edited and reprinted with permission.
