Tech & Innovation Blog
Three tips for successfully managing a global virtual team
Leadership Tips, Virtual Teams
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to manage a global virtual team?
Well, even if you didn’t imagine it three months ago, thanks to Pandemic 2020, even onsite teams are now led remotely. Your team members might as well be in another country because the tech and techniques are the same. Welcome to virtual team leadership. I’ll share a few things that have worked for me.
I’m a Director of Product Development for ADP’s GlobalView solution, a Global Payroll Engine that supports 42 countries in a single environment. In this role, I lead a team of Country Solution Managers for the Americas region with team members located in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the U.S., so lots of time zones and cultural richness.
Today, the world is getting smaller as companies are getting more global. ADP isn’t an exception, but rather a pioneer in global business. Matrix organizations like ADP are considerably more advanced and efficient. They have structures for core functions like finance, technology, sales, etc., concentrated in places where they can provide efficiency and allow resources to scale down for global optimization. ADP actively recruits in over 26 countries, with the largest concentrations in maybe 10 of them.
So, how best to approach managing in a global virtual environment?
Be sensitive and fair. Managing a multicultural team can be challenging and require you to adapt your managerial style in a way to create an engaged and productive team. Some unexpected challenges you may not realize is that as a multi-country manager, you may need to navigate between multiple HRIS and time management systems, compensation policies, and sometimes various languages and cultural understanding. It’s important to be sensitive and fair when dealing with time zones. Finding the right time for a global team meeting is critical. When it’s 8:00 AM in New Jersey, it’s already 6:00 PM in Hyderabad, India, and 10:00 PM in Sydney, Australia. As a manager, I find pursuing balance essential so that no associates feel unfairly treated, and they stay incented to participate actively and contribute in meetings.
Make time and keep a pulse on the action. Our StandOut product is the best tool I’ve found to manage remote teams. I’m not a sales guy, and I’m not pitching anything, but I truly believe it. It helps me keep track of engagements and progress on projects while encouraging my direct reports to tell me what they “loved” this week versus what they “loathed.” The weekly frequency keeps the dialogue open so that I’m having 52 conversations a year with my people. It provides me as a leader with an easy-to-use platform and personalized tips and concepts for me to leverage with each associate based on their strengths. But, in my opinion, one of the most important tools I use when managing a remote team is the “One on One” session. Every week I make sure that I have at least one meeting with each of my team members. These sessions supplement what I see in StandOut. They’re not just to check on each individual’s progress but to have candid conversations to build trust and personal connection.
Be empathetic. Empathy and trying to understand what an associate is going through, especially when they have difficult moments, are key to a successful team. After all, engaged employees are essential to having happy clients.
Chris Acostendai is a Vice President of Product Development at ADP.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Why I think ADP is one of the best places for ML engineers and Data Scientists
Why ADP, ML and Data Science, Careers
When first asked to write an article for ADP’s tech blog, I had flashbacks to working on my dissertation, and it was, to put it delicately, one of my worst nightmares.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am proud of my work and forever thankful to my advisors for pushing me, but writing is not one of my natural abilities. Nevertheless, the request came at a rather interesting time for me, so I said yes. But let me take a step back.
“One day, the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.”
From one of my all-time favorite movies, that quote has been stuck in my head for more than half a decade. The first time I heard it, the quote resonated with the young geek in me and triggered my curiosity and desire to understand Artificial Intelligence (AI). That, in turn, pushed me to pursue a master’s degree and kickstart a career as an ML engineer. My years of research taught me that we are far from AI overlords, but the quote changed the lens with which I view the world.
So, I mentioned above that the request to write this article came at an interesting time for me. Why? I’m currently building a language model that can write meaningful phrases and sentences—as if written by a human being (where was this when I was writing my dissertation?!)
Natural Language Generation captured my interest at ADP when I discovered all the time and effort our client service associates put into crafting documents for our clients. I asked myself, “If we’re building machines to converse with us, why can’t we have them write for us, too?” Not only would that yield consistency in the quality and tone of our client responses, but for people like me, it may reduce an associate’s angst over a potentially time-consuming task and improve job satisfaction. That sounded like a win-win.
As I worked on the model, a friend joked that I was probably wasting my time on a project that my organization may never adopt. I disagreed. I’m blessed to work for wonderful, supportive leaders. Since I started at ADP, both my director and vice president have always encouraged me to challenge the status quo. Did I always succeed? Nope, but they created a safe space where I could take risks. Sometimes I fail, and that’s OK. It’s worth it to try.
I started working for ADP’s Retirement Services organization almost two years ago, thanks to a fantastic director who believed in me and gave me an opportunity despite my minimal experience. It was at a time when ADP ambitiously sought to build AI-centric products to make our client experience better. As a budding ML engineer, this was my happy place.
Although ADP has been around for over seven decades, a few years ago, we refocused on incorporating AI into our core strategy. This shift presented engineers with Machine Learning and Data Science backgrounds a unique opportunity. Sadly, for my peers at other companies, things they tell me they often face are a lack of opportunity, lack of problems to solve, and a limited scope due to the maturity of their company systems. You won’t find those things here.
We are still in an evolving space and actively innovating, which creates a ton of opportunity. I may be biased, but I think ADP is one of the best places for ML engineers and data scientists that love to innovate to grow their careers. Why? Besides a strong support system from senior leadership, we have a corporate focus to infuse AI into our products along with an unending stream of potential products and solutions to create.
Some parts of our company are still in the nascent stages of leveraging machine learning to improve our products. You may not find a lot of opportunities to build products from the ground up (although we are working on several!) inside a Fortune 500 company like ADP, but many also don’t have what we uniquely offer. ADP pays over 20% of the working population in the United States, giving ML engineers and data scientists a rare chance to work with some of the industry’s biggest datasets.
As an ADP ML engineer, I get the best of all worlds. I get to research and implement solutions for relevant problems and issues that impact the working world. For example, my team is currently tackling one of the biggest financial challenges in the country: retirement preparedness. We’re using comprehensive datasets from different organizations to enable us to teach people better financial planning habits and demonstrate the impact of those lessons on their financial future. I love to say we are, “Helping America Retire Better.” Every extra year of planned retirement that we deliver to people makes me happy. Impacting people’s lives through my work is what motivates me to come to work every day.
But it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. This article wouldn’t be complete and would be slightly disingenuous if I didn’t talk about the challenges. Let’s be realistic. Everyone faces challenges at work.
One problem I see is that people love the hyper buzzwords: AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science, oh my! But often, people don’t always see the value in the ideation phase. One of the great things about ADP is our culture of encouraging innovation that helps engineers move forward. Yes, maybe there were times people were wary of an idea, but no one ever discouraged me from working on a proof of concept.
Another challenge has to do with our scale, which is sometimes a blessing and a curse for ADP. Because of it, we need to work with teams across the organization and deal with conflicting opinions and priorities. Leaning into our core value of working as “One ADP,” many times, this helps us to resolve these issues, but it might take a few less-than-fun meetings or calls. These challenges can sometimes be annoying, and they take resilience to navigate through, but thanks to my amazing team and leadership support, I’ve never felt helpless or demotivated.
So, what do you say? Does this sound like a place for you? I’ll end by simply saying: give us a try. Apply and interview. I promise, once you meet us, you’ll understand why people stick around for a long time. I mean a really long time. Some of the smart and awesome engineers I work with had the pleasure of seeing the original Star Wars…in the movie theatre (no, I mean the first time!). Our multigenerational workforce is one of the things that makes this place culturally rich and diverse, but no less fun.
Ciao!
PS: The natural language model I’ve been working on wrote this article, so I hope you enjoyed it!
PPS: Just kidding. The model did generate some of the sentences I used in this piece, and hopefully, someday, it will be able to write an entire blog post for me!
Sanjay Varma Rudraraju is an Application Developer at ADP based in New Jersey.
From Art to Tech
Margot Dear’s advice to creative people interested in tech: Be curious and ask great design questions, but also always figure out how to explain your value.
When Margot Dear decided she wanted to learn French, she got on a bus in Vancouver and moved to Montreal. It took three days to get there, but that was part of the adventure.
C’est une aventure depuis.
It’s been an adventure ever since.
From Art to Tech
She loved Montreal and decided to go to university there, where she studied art history and studio art. After college, she also learned graphic design and opened up her own design firm for print, graphics and independent film design.
Around that time, Margot realized that art was going digital, so she focused her efforts on computer digital design. She also began working on web design. While she was learning, one of her favorite tricks was to hide her mouse so she would be forced to find another way to get the same result. She has been bridging the gap between the logic and structure of computers and the art and experiences of people ever since.
Understanding Design, Tech, and Relationships
When a friend invited her to come to London — “Because things are happening here!” her friend exclaimed — Margot left her web design position and moved to the U.K. She was able to get a work permit there because her grandfather was a British citizen, and she immediately started working as a freelance graphic and web designer.
She first worked to create online tools for a finance company, then she helped the British Post Office develop their online portal. The Royal Mail needed someone who understood both technology and design to create a central portal while managing relationships across distinct postal brands: Royal Mail, Post Office and Parcel Post. This was a pivotal position for Margot, as her role became less hands-on and more managerial, which meant that understanding people would be a key skill.
After the project was complete, LexisNexis recruited Margot to develop an online presence for their products and services outside the United States. This involved working with teams around the world from many disciplines, including academics, library science, taxonomy, tech, art and design. Margot says, with a laugh, “It was hard to recruit the creative team, because tax and legal compliance is not exactly sexy. But fortunately, complex problems attract great people.”
Coming to ADP
After about 10 years in London, Margot and her husband moved to the United States, where she joined Citrix to work on the Go to Meeting/Go to My PC interface. A friend there began working for ADP and told her about an opening at the ADP Innovation Center in Pasadena, California.
When she went for the interview, the Innovation Center was just starting, and the meeting was in empty office building. Despite the “Sopranos moment,” Margot found that they were so passionate about their work in design and UX that she decided to move to L.A. and take the job.
Now, Margot is the Senior Director of User Experience for Compliance Solutions at the Innovation Center, where she continues to focus on the connections between people, tech and work. In a recent talk at Enterprise UX, she explained: “Delivering products is not enough. We must also communicate the needs of our audiences, the value of our practices and the unique skills we bring to the enterprise table.”
She loves the Innovation Center and the opportunities to connect with others through the meetups and hackathons they hold there. Margot also appreciates the opportunities and challenges of constantly answering new questions and solving new issues. She especially enjoys going into the field and researching with customers to better understand how to design software interfaces in support of their work.
“Our work is getting into the hands of customers and we get to see what happens,” Margot says. “It’s exciting to see a large company invest in UX as an important part of their technology.”
Creating Value
Along the way, Margot has learned a lot about working with people and managing teams. “Give people enough time, space and trust to do great work,” she says. She has found that this is especially important when working with creative people.
“Roadmaps are linear. Creativity is nonlinear,” Margot says.
As a leader, Margot also had to figure out how to explain the value of the creative work she and her team were doing so they would have the resources they needed. This also helped senior leadership understand what they were getting for their investment in UX. Margot and her team are currently exploring how to measure and quantify the value that UX brings to both ADP and its customers by regularly measuring and reporting these metrics to stakeholders across the organization.
Margot has the following advice for creative people interested in tech: be curious. Ask great design questions, but also always figure out how to explain your value.
Parce que vous le valez bien.
Because you’re worth it.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Tips for a New Way to Work in the World of COVID-19
Remote Work Tips, Leadership
“See you in 10 days!” I gleefully exclaimed on my way out of our Waterview office in New Jersey.
I was heading on a much-needed vacation to visit my mother in Florida for her upcoming birthday. Little did I know that once I got home that our lives, our work, and our world would completely change.
I returned home early due to COVID-19 picking up steam in the United States. Fully decked out in a facemask and gloves, I stepped onto a plane ready for anything with plenty of hand sanitizer and Lysol wipes. The young Girl Scout in me would be proud. “Be Prepared!” would echo through the room during our Troop meetings.
As a young woman, I couldn’t imagine preparing for much beyond my next test or clarinet recital. Today, it feels as if we must be prepared to handle much more than we ever expected. Maybe you’re managing pressing deadlines while collaborating on a team that’s spread across living rooms. Perhaps you’re learning to teach your children using online tools. You may even be tackling the inevitable emotional burden that comes with required extended isolation.
No matter what you are going through, I know we can all make it through this time, even if it is difficult. I hope to share a few tips to carry through your days to make your working life smoother, more productive, and less stressful and to help you feel a little more prepared.
Connections are Key. No, not just your VPN connection! Your connection to other people: your coworkers, your comrades. We spend so much time working alongside one another that it can be hard to have it all ripped away so suddenly. Some suggestions? A simple morning check-in with a fellow associate can go a long way to brighten your day. A call to chat about something other than work might be the break you need, so go ahead and pick up the phone, and indulge in that much-needed laugh.
Communicate More than Usual. Today, everyone works on a distributed team, but thanks to COVID-19, you can’t just turn around and let your teammates know what’s happening like when you all shared a workspace. A couple of things I found that can help:
Communicate openly and often! Putting more detail into your team messages than usual and messaging more often can create smoother communication. Keeping everyone on the same page throughout the week is essential to reducing frustration and preventing a loss in productivity. On the flip side, too little communication can have people stepping on one another’s toes and creating unnecessary issues.
Don’t be shy, ask! If you’re stuck or have a question, don’t be afraid to ask your leader for direction or clarification. We’re all working in an unprecedented way right now, so it’s more important than ever to reach out when you need something. Trust me, your leader will appreciate your engagement, and the critical thinking you apply toward the work you’re doing. Doing this builds both trust and credibility, and organically strengthens your personal brand.
Leverage and Accommodate Time Differences. Even though companies have leveraged distributed team models for years, adjusting to the needs of our global team members has been a new facet now more than ever since COVID-19. For Lifion, where we’re responsible for the development and delivery of our next-gen platform, we span several US and India locations across various time zones and multiple engineering and product teams. It can create a particular challenge but one worth tackling.
My advice? Be flexible and accommodate your fellow associates. Schedule meetings earlier or later in the day to sync with other team members. Leverage communication tools to maintain a connection with one another to share information. Remember to practice compassion and understanding; they’re both free and go a long way to creating a positive work environment. It’s a balancing act, and may not be perfect at first. There may be miscommunications or misunderstandings, but stay the course, and you can find common ground.
Maintain a Schedule. Planning your day will help maintain normalcy at a time where not much feels normal. My goal has been to head to bed at a reasonable hour, wake up a little earlier to jumpstart my day, and have time to enjoy my coffee and breakfast alongside my dogs and fiancé. My workday comes and goes with meetings and projects, and I do my best to enforce a time where I shut down my laptop and sign off for the day. I maintain a timeframe for my working life separate from my personal life even though they currently share the same physical space. Doing this is crucial. Try not to let the lines blur. Prioritize time for yourself to unwind and reset.
If you’re lucky enough to be able to (safely) go outside, close your laptop and get some fresh air! Otherwise, try a brief yoga flow in your living space, play with your kids, or get a head start on dinner. Whatever helps you disconnect and decompress, go for it. Do what helps you stay positive, productive, and healthy. You deserve it!
Sam Ortiz is a Senior Platform Engineer on ADP’s Lifion team responsible for ADP’s next-generation HCM platform.
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Tech & Innovation Blog
Are you in the right job? Finding your passion and advancing your career.
Career Advancement, Intern to full-time, Women in STEM
Do you have the right job?
Have you ever wondered if you have the right job? Or what makes it right for you? Is it the technologies, the money, the people around you, or is it the work-life balance? Do you sleep peacefully at night, thinking you had a good day at work?
I feel like I’m one of the luckiest ones to have it all. I am originally from India and came to the US to get my master’s degree in Computer Science. Straight out of college, a good company in Wisconsin hired me. During the two years of my life that I spent there, I always felt something missing. I was far away from friends or family, and I had no idea what work satisfaction meant or how to achieve it.
About ten years ago, I came across an entry-level position to create web pages for an HCM system in Alpharetta, a suburb north of Atlanta, GA. In that job, I worked on JSF and Dojo Toolkit. Yes, JSF and Dojo There was a pretty good market for people working on web applications using those technologies. Time flew by. I loved every second of it, but all good things come to an end.
We quickly changed to jQuery/Javascript with a heavy reliance on CSS. We switched from Web services to APIs and took on a new project to work. As one of four developers, I sat in a war room, trying to define an Agile process that worked for us and coming up with innovative ideas for the project.
Using blank pages, we drew how we wanted to display information to the user, how much information we need to show the user to avoid confusion, and how many steps it took to finish a task. We went to different departments at ADP, introduced ourselves to random people, and asked them to vote on our ideas. Doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun?!
All we needed were post-its, pencils, pens, white paper, and of course our shiny new MacBooks! Oh wait, did I say MacBooks, at work, nine years ago? YES! My husband was jealous. He had to carry a 100-pound IBM laptop! Did I mention that I got married that first year at ADP and bought a house? That I went from a carefree single life to a more responsible person?
Shortly after, I took on two new projects and went from an entry-level developer to a Senior, and then to a Lead. Having fun all along and a good work-life balance, I had my baby and took a long maternity leave. Then came the hard and challenging part for every new mom in the world, leaving my baby to go back to work. My colleagues, who had become my friends and family over the years, were very supportive and very kindly eased me back into work. We started a new project with five members on the team and grew into 80+ associates working on smaller and more focused areas within a year. Our main objective is to create the best experience for our users. We leveraged the latest and greatest technologies available. We started with AngularJS, Less, Bower, Webpack, and Node and currently on Angular 8 with SASS and Angular CLI. I am super proud to say that I work for ADP and MyADP, a team dedicated to creating the best HCM experience for millions of people!
I literally grew up in ADP between these five different projects over ten years. I got experience from five different jobs, learning every step of the way, growing my career from a junior developer to a Principal Architect, and becoming the best version of myself every single day. I am proud of every year, every day, and every minute I spent here and consider myself beyond blessed. I’m very grateful to my manager, who hired me ten years ago, and who remains an amazing leader for my team. I’m thankful for all the colleagues, leaders, and experiences that I have had over the years. Happy 10th Anniversary to me!
So, let me ask you this question again, do you have the right job? Or what makes it right for you? Is it the technologies, the money, the people around you, or is it the work-life balance? ADP is the place where you can have it all and don’t have to choose one over the other. Find your ideal job at tech.adp.com/careers.
Sree Malladi is a Principal Application Architect on ADP’s NAS team based in Alpharetta, Georgia.
I’ve Been Promoted 6 Times at the Same Company — Here’s My Secret for Advancing
Yasminay Molina has been promoted not once, not twice, but a whopping six times throughout her time with ADP.
Having first joined the management services company in 2008, Molina says the company “lives up to its values, has an amazing culture and is continuously willing to invest in my growth and development.”
Now, she’s the Director of Implementation for the southern region, having climbed the proverbial ladder thanks to her relentless curiosity, her participation in the company’s emerging leader program, and her use of performance and strategy conversations to expand her expertise.
“At ADP, there are countless opportunities available,” Molina said. “I also have leaders that support and believe in me. In addition, and probably most important, is the ability to reinvent myself. Every company is looking to grow in a world that is fast-changing. We have to be willing and able to change with it and bring new, fresh ideas to the table.”
We recently spoke to Molina about how she’s advanced at the same company without job hopping, as well as the most exciting part of her role. Here’s what she had to say.
How long have you been with your company? What about it made you first want to join?
I have been with ADP for a little over 11 years. I joined shortly out of college, just looking for a 9-5 job. I stayed because I found a career with a company that lives up to its values, has an amazing culture, and is continuously willing to invest in my growth and development.
Tell me about the roles that you’ve held at your company, as well as your current one. What about this role most excites you?
I started at ADP as a Client Services Representative assisting small businesses with payroll and tax questions. After three years in this role, I wanted to learn more about the lifecycle of our clients, so I became an Implementation Specialist. In this role, I helped onboard our new small business clients. I trained them on their products and services, making sure they were set up for future success. During this time and due to my performance, I was selected to participate in our emerging leader program. This gave me exposure to different aspects of the business and helped prepare me for my next role as an Implementation Team Lead.
As a Team Lead, I worked directly with my leaders learning how to motivate my associates in a positive way to drive results. I was able to participate in many conversations involving performance and strategy. In less than a year, I was promoted to Implementation Manager for the same team and then Implementation Manager II two years later. During my tenure in these roles, I was responsible for leading a team of implementation specialists, managing a relationship with our sales partners for six out of the 11 regions, as well as taking a leader under my wing.
I am now the Director of Implementation for the southern region. In this role, as well as in my previous roles, I am responsible for the development of my leaders and for our overall results. The most exciting part in my current role is that I get to directly impact and develop my leaders and, through them, our associates.
What’s something you’re especially good at, at work?
Connecting with people and building relationships.
What’s the first (and/or last) thing you do at work every day?
The first thing I do when I get to the office is say “good morning” to all of my associates and colleagues. As a leader, I recognized early on that it is the people that make me successful and I’m lucky enough to work with the best.
I do my best to remain present for my people during business hours, so the last thing I do is take care of any pending items before I leave to make a fresh start the next day!
A lot of people believe that developing your career means changing companies, and not infrequently. What has enabled you to develop/advance your career without job hopping?
The company I work for plays a major role in this. At ADP, there are countless opportunities available. I also have leaders that support and believe in me. In addition, and probably most important, is the ability to reinvent myself. Every company is looking to grow in a world that is fast-changing. We have to be willing and able to change with it, and bring new and fresh ideas to the table.
What’s something you think most people don’t know about your company that you think they should?
ADP truly does care about and invest in their people. My voice and the voice of the people matter.
What was the best quality of the best boss you’ve ever had?
Trustworthiness.
What’s the most memorable piece of career advice you’ve received?
I can’t choose just one, but I’ll leave you with two that have stuck out and resonated with me the most:
“People first. The rest will come.”
“Never be the smartest person in the room.”
