Tech & Innovation Blog
Life @ ADP S2EP4: Let’s Talk #ADPTech
Life @ ADP, Voice of Our People, What We Do
A podcast episode for applicants interested in the scale ADP operates at, including the leadership teams’ strategies and their focus on data security.
Life @ ADP S2EP4: Let’s Talk #ADPTech
Our hosts, Ingrid and Kate, invited Lohit Sarma, a Senior Vice President of Product Development, to the show to chat about what’s happening in #ADPTech.
Lohit’s ADP journey began in 2014 when he helped build our Next Gen team, Lifion, in New York City and scaled up the organization to about 700 associates.
“I can’t believe it’s been eight and a half years,” Lohit said. “It’s been an incredibly humbling learning experience, and I’m super excited for what’s ahead.”
Lohit Sarma
The episode is great for associates and applicants interested in the scale ADP operates at, including the leadership teams’ strategies and their focus on data security. Lohit spoke about various areas in #ADPTech, from User Experience (UX), Security Engineering, to Site Reliability Engineering.
“Our clients trust us with some of the most sensitive information in the world,” Lohit said. “Security engineering is a huge focus for our products. Reliability DevOps is just across the board.”
You wouldn’t want to miss out on the episode, especially if you are interested in learning more about ADP’s Next Gen products and ADP’s role in the US financial system. From launching the iHCM, a cloud-based platform that simplifies Payroll and HR management in one scalable, compliant solution, to our next-generation time and payroll products, ADP has transformed into a technology company.
“We attract talents based on our adaptation of modern software engineering, product management, and UX practices,” Lohit said. “We’re able to not only hire but also retain and contribute back to the industry.”
From sponsoring the Grace Hopper Celebration to hiring female engineers and managers, ADP’s leadership team is building a culture that welcomes and nurtures tech talent. Further reading: Seramount Names ADP One of the Best Companies for Multicultural Women.
In addition, ADP is continually enhancing and evolving the way we do things. “We’ve been heavily investing across the board in pure engineering and management practices,” Lohit said. “That’s reflecting the quality of our products.”
Life @ ADP is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google, iHeartRadio, and Amazon Music. Listen to the full episode here or on your preferred podcast player!
Learn more about what it’s like working for ADP here and our current openings.
HCM Technologies, Women in STEM, User Experience, Product Management, DataCloud
Tech & Innovation Blog
My Career Journey: Learn and Grow Together at ADP
Voice of Our People, Career Insights, What We Do
“At ADP, the doors to learning are always open. We work and win as one. All it takes is one’s curiosity to learn.”
My Career Journey: Learn and Grow Together at ADP
Viplove S. is a Senior Architect responsible for Architecture, Standards, Governance, and Talent Management, supporting products for National Accounts Services clients in Hyderabad, India. To him, happiness means spending time with family, giving his best at work, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Outside of technology, Viplove enjoys exercising, singing, dancing, reading, and writing stories. He once walked the entire Manhattan Island length, around 18 miles!
Viplove enjoys running marathons during his free time.
Coming to ADP
Since I stepped into the Information Technology (IT) industry, ADP has been one organization I was always curious about. What appealed to me the most was ADP’s strong focus on people. After fifteen years of working with multiple service organizations, I decided to knock on the door I had walked by all these years. An opportunity to learn about a new industry and its leading products was too exciting for me to pass.
I joined ADP a little over two and a half years ago. As I look back at my enriching journey, two contributory factors stand out: People and Learning. Without People, there would not have been much learning. I have worked with many amazing people in my career, but here at ADP, every day gives me reasons to thank a fellow associate. Whether developers, testers, Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) members, managers, architects, or senior leaders, I am grateful for learning with them every day.
My Career Journey
I initially started as part of the Global Enterprise Technologies & Solutions (GETS) department, which supports IT operations for ADP. The teams I work with are responsible for developing and maintaining 50+ applications used by ADP associates and 100+ integrations among internal ADP systems and external vendors. It is easily one of the most complex systems I have ever worked with, and my job was to transform it digitally. I was fortunate to have people around me who were not only knowledgeable but also extremely helpful.
Two years ago, my team and I moved to the Global Product & Technology (GPT) business unit as part of the Product Development organization that supports large national accounts. For me, this move opened a world of opportunities. My manager helped me seize one of those opportunities. He challenged me to reach beyond my scope of work and help another team. Sometimes, saying “yes” is all it takes.
And it did. That “yes” triggered a domino effect for me. That door opened another, and I worked with multiple product teams across ADP. Because of that, I am proud that my journey has led me to become a Chief Architect for our GPT National Account Services team in India. In this role, I’m responsible for the architecture and quality of ADP’s top products in HR, Payroll, Time, and Talent for our largest clients.
Viplove and his family
Architect Mentorship Program
Another part of my new responsibilities is helping other associates grow. We recently kicked off an Architect Mentorship program for my business unit, the National Account Services Architect Academy (NASAA). As a part of this program, we shortlisted 11 talented associates who have demonstrated excellence in their projects and aspire to be architects. Each of the mentees is assigned a mentor who is currently in an architect role within the organization. The mentorship is multi-fold:
1) The mentees go through a hand-picked Udemy curriculum that covers the fundamentals of being an architect, the various technologies that support our products, and the soft skills essential for the architect role.
2) Mentee and mentor connect weekly. The mentor guides the mentee on their learning, shares real-world experiences, helps solve problems, provides feedback, and more.
3) The Academy meets monthly where a senior Architect Leader (from outside the business unit) shares their career journey with the mentees and how they solved large-scale business problems.
4) The program culminates with the mentees picking a real-world business problem, working on architectural artifacts to solve it, and presenting their work to senior leaders.
Mentees graduate from the Academy in a grand ceremony. After graduation, they are assigned architectural responsibilities within their projects as on-the-job training. The idea is to produce well-equipped architects through this program within one year. Having benefited hugely from my mentors and colleagues, I am excited and committed to the mentorship program’s success.
Designing for People
ADP has taken giant leaps in its transformation into a Technology company. One of the things that makes it possible is our commitment to people. Domains and technologies are out there for anyone to learn. But the 59,000+ ADPers helping 920K+ clients in more than 140 countries give our company the foundation to stand tall among its competitors. Our network is strong and built on core values, including “Each Person Counts” and “Integrity is Everything.”
Viplove (first on the right) and his team at ADP Hyderabad
Supporting & Learning Culture
At ADP, the doors to learning are always open. If you are curious, nothing can stop you. What makes ADP stand out from the other organizations I have worked with is our culture of “learning and growing together.” Despite being a multi-national company, we don’t have boundaries separating us.
Our excitement and cooperation are the same whether speaking to an associate in India, the U.S., or Europe. We work and win as one. If I need information or to learn something, I can reach out to anyone, whether I’ve worked with them before or not. All it takes is a quick ping on our collaboration platform. We are all connected! All it takes is one’s curiosity to learn.
I’m endlessly excited and curious about our vast HCM industry and all the exciting technologies we use as part of our products. Between that and my ever-helpful colleagues, I keep learning.
Learn more about working at Hyderabad and visit Who We Hire.
ADP Tech, Hyderabad, Integration Architecture, Mentorship, Career Growth
Tech & Innovation Blog
Why One Should Consider Virtual Mentorship
Innovation, Voice of Our People, Career Insights
Whether the virtual mentorship occurs in video conference rooms or through emails, the experience can be an invaluable tool for career growth and personal development.
Why One Should Consider Virtual Mentorship
By Steve R., Lead Major Incident Manager
It can be challenging to find time to invest in professional development in today’s ever-changing, fast-paced world. Whether you’re just starting in your career or currently working in a leadership position, we can all benefit from having guidance and support in professional life. That’s when virtual mentorship becomes helpful.
What is Virtual Mentorship?
The term “virtual mentorship” may sound like a new concept, but it simply refers to mentorship that takes place online. It allows people to connect with mentors they might not otherwise have access to, and it provides a flexible way to receive mentorship when in-person meetings are not possible. This type of mentorship can benefit both parties as the setting naturally allows for more flexibility and accessibility. Whether the mentorship occurs in video conference rooms or through emails, the experience can be an invaluable tool for career growth and personal development.
Why Consider Mentorship?
Great leaders have two extraordinary traits: an open mind and empathy towards difficult situations in teamwork. Like all ADP associates, I am encouraged to expand my skillset and strive toward self-improvement, using all the available resources and tools. This mindset has led me to participate in the mentorship program at ADP, where I met role models who demonstrated best practices at work.
Depending on the goal, mentorship may consist of a one-time consultation or multiple re-occurring sessions. An associate may also have more than one mentor over time as needs and career paths change.
I recently completed a few months’ worth of mentoring sessions with a VP from the senior leadership team at ADP. We had worked together briefly on past projects but hadn’t spent significant one-on-one time together. I learned we would be a good match for the mentor/mentee program based on the strengths that I wished to explore and her area of proven expertise. I soon initiated an informal mentoring process, and we began working towards my professional goals from there.
For those who don’t have a particular choice of mentor in mind, I recommend associates sign up for ADP’s formal mentor-matching process using MentorCliq software, a resource page consisting of a series of questions regarding mentee expectations and needs, and areas of interest.
Steve and his wife Karen
Three Best Practices in Virtual Mentorship
Since my mentor and I were in two separate locations, we used Webex Meetings throughout the process. Through face-to-face conversations are typically preferable, the virtual setting offered a level of comfort for me.
I came prepared with discussion topics and specific questions each time we met. The virtual option vastly expands the range of choices for mentoring connections. Associates are no longer limited to mentorship choices within the same office, and there are endless opportunities for a good mentor/mentee match. The virtual option is especially beneficial for full-time associates who work from home and across different time zones.
#1 Set Timeline and Goals
The number one thing to consider is to plan for the call. My mentor and I met bi-weekly, getting familiar and discussing each other’s career paths; past, present, and future. For those who read my previous blog on my career journey, I focus on a leadership-focused career path and set my goal to be joining a part of ADP’s senior leadership team in the future. I learned from my mentor that the ADP ecosystem offers a multitude of communication-based career paths, which provide leadership opportunities. As communication is not only a strength for me but also something I enjoy, my excitement has grown, and I look forward to what lies ahead.
#2 Transparent Communication
My mentor was kind, patient, and willing to help me grow. During our virtual time together, I never felt that I had less of her attention and personal investment in the conversations. We made a professional connection, and she genuinely cared about my success, making our time together more than worthwhile. I wouldn’t say the virtual setting presented many challenges for us. If anything, it made communications more accessible and working together flexible, meaning talking about expectations and going over company resources.
#3 Listen and Be Ready to Learn
Conflict in the professional world is inevitable. During my mentorship experience, I had an instance where I had different opinions from a fellow associate. While I had consulted with my leader on the best way forward, I sought advice from my mentor. She was insightful and shared examples of similar experiences in her past.
Her understanding, empathy, and professional leadership gave me support. The input I received allowed me to consider factors that I had not before to refine the solution I’d been working on and make team communication more effective. Not only did both my team leader and mentor’s verbal feedback help me resolve the conflict, but it also led me to form a stronger bond with the other associate.
Embrace the Feedback 
One piece of advice for future associates is to take full advantage of the mentorship program or any organic mentorship opportunities. The availability to build upon the foundation of experience led by tenured ADP associates is priceless. Simply reaching out to a leader and expressing your interest in learning and working together would be a great start.
My virtual mentorship experience has allowed me to gain insight and perspectives from my mentor leading different teams. Having the opportunity to seek out non-biased input from others is always refreshing. I look forward to leveraging my own experiences and knowledge to guide other associates, whether with career development, conflict resolution, or personal growth. When given the opportunity, I will be participating in the ADP mentorship program in the future, and next time, as a mentor!
Discover your potential and join us.
Click here to search for your next move and visit Who We Hire.
Tech & Innovation Blog
What Makes You Stay at Your Job?
Life @ ADP, Career Advice, What We Do
Keep an open mind in your career journeys, explore international opportunities, and work outside your comfort zones.
What Makes You Stay at Your Job?
According to Harvard Business Review, two reasons why employees stay at their companies are job satisfaction and the company environment.
Why does it matter that we understand both? At ADP, we strive to give our associates a culture where they want to stay. It’s great to love what you do, but even better if you do it in a place that you love.
Meet Lindsey B., Sales Channel Manager for ADP Marketplace in Northern Europe. She shares her incredible transcontinental career journey, the power of networking, and how ADP supported her career progression on our Life@ADP Season Two podcast.
We are excited to kick off our season with an international episode! You can expect to hear stories from associates across the globe. Lindsey’s story started when her aunt referred her to work at ADP. She began her career in San Francisco, moved to the UK, and is now in the Netherlands.
“As a Sales Channel Manager for ADP Marketplace, I work with our partners and internal sales teams across multiple countries,” Lindsey said. “I used my strengths and networking opportunities and learned from different teams with ADP’s support.”
Lindsey travels across Europe, working with product development and sales teams across the UK, Netherlands, and Ireland. When we asked her our “why come, why stay?” question, she said she came to ADP for the training and stayed for the people. “The more I move to different countries in different roles, the smaller and more intimate ADP becomes. I work with a group of wonderful people who develop innovative products and business solutions,” Lindsey said. “Every time I turn a corner, I feel like there’s a new job opportunity in a new part of ADP coming, bringing together different people.”
Lindsey describes ADP as an incredibly diverse company with teams of people from all backgrounds and cultures. As a leader, she highlights the importance of letting every associate come to work as themselves, which makes the workplace fun and creative.
Lindsey is on the committee for her local International Women’s Network (iWIN) in the UK and Ireland, one of ADP’s Business Resource Groups (BRG), which organized some events for International Women’s Day, including coffee connections networking opportunities. “We hosted various career progression events and talked to the HR business partners, identifying biases at work while inspiring attendees to grow their career at ADP,” Lindsey said.
Lindsey encourages everyone to keep an open mind in their career journeys, especially in exploring international opportunities and working outside their comfort zones. “If you can identify your strengths and what you enjoy doing, there is absolutely a job for you at ADP. I encourage everyone to listen to the podcast to check out what we do and whom we hire,” Lindsey said. “I’m happy to connect if you’d like to learn more about my journey and the culture! Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.”
Tune in for the full episode here.
Life @ ADP is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google, iHeartRadio, and Amazon Music.
Support us by subscribing to both the podcast and the tech blog.
Let’s work together.
Learn more about what it’s like working for ADP here and our current openings.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Driving Innovation with an Ethnography of AI
Women in STEM, Anthropology, Innovation
How might ethnography help advance our understanding of human and machine relationships?
Driving Innovation with an Ethnography of AI
By Martha Bird, Chief Business Anthropologist at ADP
Humans are typically curious by nature, but there’s a deep resource around human behavior that can be tremendously valuable as we design our strategies in business and life in general.
Cultural anthropologists combine curiosity and empirical science to deliver sustained value. We’re trained to interpret and translate why people do the things they do and how unconscious and overlapping motivations influence their actions, their attitudes, their approaches to the myriad people, products, politics, and places of everyday life. We do this by spending time in the places where people make meaning, a method of inquiry known as ethnography. It’s what gets us excited, and it’s where we impact academia and industry.
Part of our work focuses on challenging the things we take for granted and, in so doing, encouraging new ways of looking at ideas, interactions, and people we may have overlooked in the forgetfulness of the routine. Curiosity is our “rocket fuel.
My colleague, Jay Hasbrouck, captures the spirit of the anthropological mindset when he writes, “When used as more than a research tool to expose consumer needs, ethnographic thinking helps companies and organizations build on the cultural meanings and contexts of their offerings, develop the flexibility to embrace cultural change, focus their strategies at critical cultural phenomena, and test and develop business model changes.”1
Where Ethnography Comes In
For those of us in the tech sector, in particular, our focus is quite aggressively on questions around data biases, including how algorithms are constructed and, ultimately, who they advantage and who they don’t. It’s a much bigger issue than simply feeding the machine and imagining that the outputs are somehow free of judgment. They’re not.
But who should be responsible for exploring the roots of these biases that pre-exist machine learning — biases that are already deeply embedded in culture. We hear a lot of blaming in the popular press about this or that platform creating unfair advantages. Nevertheless, should we leave it to data analysts and computer scientists to untangle these social inequalities? It seems a more appropriate area of investigation for those of us who study culture and the power flows that animate it.
So, we begin to ask questions. What’s fair in a data-mediated world? What role does empathy play in communicating evidence and big data? What constitutes evidence in a global context, among others?
Placing blame on flawed algorithms and the companies on which data-driven services depend is really missing the critical point. We need to look outside tech and start to get serious about the very non-technical realities that contribute to an unequal present and, consequently, an inevitably unequal future.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the admittedly broad subject of AI viewed from an anthropological perspective. My main goal in doing so is to further challenge the cultural category of AI (big and small), while also exploring how ethnographic methodology (direct observation/active listening) might help advance our understanding of the human and machine relationships forming here and now and tomorrow.
Specifically, I’m thinking about two main question areas. First, a definitional focus: How might we begin to articulate an ethnography of AI, what role might AI technologies play in the service of ethnographic practice, and how might (and does) ethnographic inquiry inform AI technologies? Second, a philosophical focus: Who is responsible for bias in data, algorithms, and outcomes to include discussion around how work related to AI is currently organized within tech companies today?
As companies become increasingly reliant on data-driven insights to build their offerings, market their products, and guide the scope for future projects, we need to get serious about the reality that data isn’t raw or clean — but rather deeply reflective of the social and political circumstances from which they are pulled and to which they contribute. It’s an exciting time to be an anthropologist working in technology where the human is deeply enmeshed with the machine.
Get more insights from Martha Bird by reading Storytelling in Business: Capturing Organizational Wisdom.
Interested in a tech career at ADP?
The ADP Research Institute is the global thought leader for Labor Market and People and Performance research. Don’t miss the latest data-driven insights from the ADP Research Institute; sign up to get alerts in your inbox.
1 Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset (Anthropology & Business) 1st Edition, Routledge, 2018
Link to the original article.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Team APIs: What They Are and Why They Matter to Teamwork
Voice of Our People, Innovation, Future of Work
Team APIs could vary depending on team context and needs. One universal value is to listen to your people and act on what they vocalize.
Team APIs: What They Are and Why They Matter to Teamwork
Charles L., Senior Director of Application Development, shares team topologies and how you can use the concept of APIs to better manage teams. In this blog, Charles explores various team management methodologies, including four different team types and three interacting models.
We live in a world where people are always looking for the next best thing. When it comes to leadership, we know that if you’re not engaged with your team, they won’t be engaged either, which translates into a lack of passion and excitement in the products they are creating! One way to create more cohesiveness and get everyone on board is to use Team APIs. These team communication interfaces have become the backbone of modern tech companies.
What is a Team API?
In the case of software development, an API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of instructions that tells a computer how to interact with another piece of software. We can use the same idea to create instructions for interacting with our team.
I first read about the Team APIs in Team Topologies, a book by Matthew Skeleton and Manual Pais that talks about creating effective teamwork and helps businesses choose the right pattern of interactions for their organizations. The authors also teach you how to keep software healthy while optimizing value streams.
Let’s Begin: Build an API
A critical first step to creating a communications API for your team is to establish a contact point. This can be a team lead, business analyst, or product owner. All communication will flow through that person from outside the team. This keeps the work visible and consolidates the Works in Progress (WIP) under one contact.
Charles and his son
Tool Recommendations
If you are looking for a tool to assist in this process, consider products such as Asana, Basecamp, or Jira to streamline communication within your company. The tools can help you manage projects, tasks, and meetings efficiently while also providing an environment where everyone can work together harmoniously.
My prioritization and goal-setting approach have changed over time, influenced by Allen Hollub and Domenic DeGrandis. When running a software team, the two hardest things are working together and ensuring each person’s work is meaningful and making sure each team player produces quality results without feeling overwhelmed or undervalued by their organizations. This is when these tools come into play and help us stay organized, while creating an easy developer experience.
Easy Developer Experience
While prioritization comes down to leveraging and optimizing the flow, it’s also important to create an easy developer experience. This translates into spending time improving our team’s development process every quarter to make code more efficient and ready for production. It’s essential to optimize and align goals between business and development processes.
Developer experience is so important because developers should focus on building software that solves business problems. Developers should not be burdened with non-business value add work like dealing with infrastructure, deployments, firewalls, domains, provisioning, procurement, or networking etc. A good developer experience makes it so easy for a developer to do their work, so they can focus on building and experimenting with features that enable our clients to do more.
Introducing Team Topologies
According to Team Topologies, the authors introduced different team types and interaction modes.
Four Types of Teams
- Stream-Aligned: A team that is uniquely positioned to drive business change and opportunity, with an alignment of core values, skills mix tailored towards delivering value on their own.
- Platform: A team that helps to reduce cognitive load by providing everything in one place.
- Enabling: A team dedicated to helping other teams with the adoption and modification of software, as part of their transition period.
- Complicated Sub-system: A team with the mission to help other teams transition as they jump from old software and processes into something more modern.
Three Interaction Modes
- Collaboration: Two teams work together to solve a shared goal, particularly when it comes down to finding new technology or approaches.
- X-As-A-Service: One team consumes APIs, tools, or full software products from another team.
- Facilitating: An enabling team facilitates the other team learning or adopting new approaches.
The bread-and-butter of team types is Stream-Aligned. This team type has everything it needs to deploy software to production independently. The most common interaction model is a collaboration where two teams work closely together, for example, X-AS-A-Service, meaning one team uses another team API.
Why APIs Matter in DevOps
APIs are a crucial component of software development. They provide greater insight into how applications work and allow for faster integration, easier consumption across the lifecycle – all things that DevOps teams want in their task lists!
More companies have started to build core platforms, accelerating and scaling development. The state of DevOps conducted based on DORA metrics by Google points to an increase in large enterprises adopting cloud and high-performing software companies in 2021. Good documentation is key to implementing development capabilities and positive team culture to mitigate burnout risks. There is another DevOps report by Puppet Labs that focuses on team topologies. These are all evidence where Team APIs makes a positive impact on DevOps.
Team Success: Prioritize the Developer Experience
An effective team values the Developer Experience (DX), meaning the overall experience developers experience in working on your product. DX is essential for a company’s core product and development. Large enterprises learn to react quicker to market changes when they remove friction in the development process, which leads to revised change management practices and more frequent deployments. Shortly, I see this happening. Companies will modernize their change management processes to accelerate their software delivery. When teams prioritize the DX, their success is inevitable.
Charles and his family
Teamwork: Care for Your People
Another consideration in team building is the lag, meaning time spent waiting on someone or something to happen. Grouping people by functions like Dev, QA, or Ops, or Product creates a lag in your team’s flow. What happens when people must wait? They get bored and work on something else. Once a developer works on two things at once, the chance of introducing a defect rises.
Grouping people into functional tribes also creates unwanted behaviors. One of the most important things to understand in DevOps is the people; they are your teammates. Since everyone is on the same scrum teams, instead of calling each other by roles such as OPS or QA, use ‘my teammate’ and recognize ‘my teammate needs help on this item.’ Your mindset changes when you apply the rule in day-to-day life. You’d want to help and contribute more to the team.
What You Should Know: As a Leader in DevOps
How do you know that you are doing a fantastic job as a leader? The answer can be found in the feedback loop. Making the workplace a more comfortable and enjoyable place can help associates flourish. A positive feedback loop achieves that by listening to the voices and using the comments to improve organizational structures.
I recommend The DevOps Handbook for any technology leader looking to improve their organization’s culture and innovation levels. The book includes three DevOps principles: Flow, Feedback, Continuous Experimentation & Learning. To improve any system, you need feedback loops, and the faster the feedback, the better. It is important to improve any system, especially in delivering software to production. Not having suitable feedback loops can lead to poor outcomes.
For example, my team uses ADP’s Standout app, a high-performing tool that helps identify each individual team member’s strengths through a series of surveys that are designed for different types of companies with various needs, including software developers. You’ll find out exactly where tasks need improvement on both individual levels and group discussions, ensuring everyone has an opportunity to share their opinions about what works best within these parameters.
Our community: ADP’s Transformation
I’ve seen such a great technological leap forward over the last decade. I love the direction ADP is going. We didn’t have all these avenues for connection when I founded the ADP Developer Community back in 2013. Coordinating inner sourced projects was more difficult. Since then, the openness and sharing within GPT have been incredible. I feel encouraged hearing our leader, Don Weinstein, celebrate innovations such as CI/CD. What we do at ADP is incredible, especially the annual GPT Connect developer’s conference that shows sharing technology across teams is a high priority.
Team APIs could vary depending on team context and needs. One universal value is to listen to your people and act on what they vocalize. Prove to the team you hear them and do something about their proposed ideas. I believe a high-performing team will be open and honest with each other. It’s a group effort for the team members to use feedback to improve while receiving support and help from their leader.
Interested in DevOPs or Application Development positions at ADP? We’re hiring!
Click here to search for your next move and visit Who We Hire.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Life @ ADP EP6: Why did you come to ADP, and Why do you stay?
Life @ ADP, Career Advice, What We Do
In this episode, our hosts invited Sreeni Kutam, Chief Human Resources Officer, and relative newcomer, Chief Economist, Nela Richardson, to share why they joined ADP and why they stay.
Life @ ADP EP6: Why did you come to ADP, and Why do you stay?
Here comes the final Season One episode of Life@ADP.
Many of us feel great pride working for ADP, but sometimes it’s hard to put into words the cultural elements that resonate with us that make our company more than just a place to work.
In this episode, our hosts Kate and Ingrid invited Sreeni Kutam, Chief Human Resources Officer, and relative newcomer, Chief Economist, Nela Richardson, to share why they joined ADP and why they stay.
Nela Richardson, Chief Economist (left) and Sreeni Kutam, Chief Human Resources Officer (right)
“I looked for the opportunity to bring technology and people together, and that’s why I came to ADP. Innovation is the word that sums it up,” Sreeni said. “There are three things one looks for in their career. First is meaningful work. Second is a group of great people they work with. Third is the opportunity for growth. I’m lucky to check all three boxes at ADP,” Sreeni said.
“The reason why I came is, I felt that ADP was uniquely positioned to answer some of the biggest economic questions coming out of the pandemic. As important as why I came is why I hope to stay. I came to a company that valued people and as an added bonus, they are people who, crazy enough, seem to enjoy the data as much as I do,” Nela said.
We recommend this episode to better understand our culture and why ADP is a wonderful place to work. Sreeni and Nela will also share why it’s a great time to join the organization.
According to LinkedIn’s 2021 Workforce Learning Report, employees who move into new jobs internally are 3.5x more likely to be engaged employees than those who stay in their current positions.
Sreeni shared some great examples of our executive committee members who grew from humble beginnings within ADP to lead our company. “There are many great leaders and opportunities to grow at ADP. For example, Debbie Dyson started as a customer service representative, and she is now the President of our National Accounts business unit,” Sreeni said. “Another great example is John Ayala, who went from working in customer service to leading the function as the Chief Operating Officer.”
Sreeni said there will always be learning opportunities for associates, no matter their start date or department, while Nela shared, “I enjoy the global perspective here at ADP. You can always leverage the experience from one role to another here, knowing your teams will support innovative ideas.”
Tune in for the full episode here. Support us by subscribing to both the podcast and the tech blog. You wouldn’t want to miss more interviews on Season Two, coming up this Spring!
Life @ ADP is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google, iHeartRadio, and Amazon Music.
What are you waiting for?
Learn more about what it’s like working for ADP here and our current openings.
Tech & Innovation Blog
How AI/ML are Driving Innovation and Opportunities at ADP
Innovation, Voice of Our People, Future of Work
The future of learning will involve more personalization and customization based on learning styles, competencies, and preferences.
How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are Driving Innovation and Opportunities at ADP
Julio Hartmann joined ADP as a software development manager in 2004. Seventeen years later, he is now the Vice President/General Manager, head of ADP’s global software product development center and innovation lab in Porto Alegre, Brazil. His team works across the global product and technology portfolio, always looking for new opportunities. Julio leads product innovation and research, exploring growing technologies and evolving trends. He and his team aim to create the next generation of human capital management applications that drive learning and training in the workforce.
How it Started: Human Capital Management (HCM) Software
Steve Jobs said, “Things happen fairly slowly. These waves of technology, you can see them way before they happen, and you just have to choose wisely which ones you’re going to surf. It takes years.”
People tend to assume technology evolves linearly—growing at the same rate over time—but it develops exponentially instead. Some examples of exponential technologies include 5G networks, 3D printing, robotics, and blockchain. As the speed of technological innovation increases, it creates frustration in product development. People perceive a gap between expectations and performance, then quickly learn the products are not the problem. We inflate our expectations beyond what technology delivers. Despite uncertainties in the environment, the emerging tech follows an exponential growth and improves until it reaches a pivotal moment of breakthroughs.
For many, the pivot point may be challenging to foresee, and companies are caught unprepared. With market research observation, we know breakthroughs happen for a number of reasons. The moment is often tied to technology becoming cheap enough to reach mass consumption. In other words, a breakthrough occurs when a component becomes more viable with a combination of factors, creating the perfect environment to throw the innovation into disrupter status.
The phenomenon played out clearly in smartphone market. When the iPhone arrived, that changed everything. We live in a time when anything and everything is possible. Modern technologies drive the future and bring endless learning opportunities to the next generations. To prepare ADP for the next move in the industry, my team continues to develop, recognizing the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The Future of Learning: HCM Systems
Julio at the Beach
The future of learning will involve more personalization and customization based on learning styles, competencies, and preferences. In other words, artificial intelligence (AI) and adaptive learning are the future. These powerful technologies will affect both humans and machines in the coming years. Our goal at ADP is to develop a combination of tools that harness the power of AI and facilitate learning, ensuring companies and employees grow at a fast, steady pace.
The job market is shifting due to the broad impact of AI, automation, and robotics. There is a reduced demand for specific jobs, such as factory roles that can be automated. On the other hand, there is an increasing demand for particular jobs that belong in the future. According to the report by the Institute for the Future, 85% of the jobs in 2030 do not exist yet. It’s time for leaders to identify skills gaps based on current trends to prepare organizations and professionals.
In fact, we might be heading towards a disruptive breakthrough in artificial intelligence and data usage in human capital management (HCM). We are not far from a pivotal point, meaning we can expect many advancements with the power of AI and data information in HCM for the upcoming years.
As an industry leader, ADP looks forward to the future. My team supports innovation through our mantra — always designing for people. HCM solutions provide opportunities for companies and workers to grapple with the demands of a futuristic workplace. AI helps companies manage their workforce while anticipating changes and preparing their employees for upcoming challenges. Specifically, my team is working on technology that allows companies and employees to navigate a variety of scenarios. It combines traditional training and cutting-edge tools that connect people with mentors and experts in various communities.
We can’t talk about the future without understanding users’ needs. The good news is human capital management systems and training tools have become more predictive with ground-breaking developments in event-based systems, meaning they carry on as usual until they require inputs. For instance, a system can recognize users changing their addresses and further instigating necessary documents and paperwork. Another example is for the system to alert managers of a potential alarming pattern that shows an employee has not filled out a timecard.
AI’s Applications in Real Life
AI’s applications in real life are everywhere. Companies like Walmart hire a significant number of workers every month, experimenting with augmented reality (AR) and other technologies in new hire trainings. Wouldn’t it be more efficient for new employees to see the procedures before joining the company? The new hires at Walmart could see the supermarket’s organization in a virtual environment through a peer-to-peer reality before their first day at work.
Human resources (HR) managers may also benefit from using AI. From recruitment to employee experience and talent management, AI can automate routine HR tasks, deliver personalized experiences, and gain actionable insights from HR data. For example, AI may serve as a helpful tool to help track the workforce and notify managers that they need to hire more data scientists.
Another scenario is using AI as a user interface (UI) through natural language processing for seamless interactions between humans and technology, for example, using chatbots as the user interface. AI can be a powerful ally to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity among employees if leveraged carefully.
These are all opportunities and concepts that will change the future of jobs.
Challenges in AI Technology
Julio and his family
“With greater power comes with greater responsibilities.” There are risks with using the tools. At ADP, we have an ethical committee that looks at privacy issues and built-in biases. The technologies are developing quickly, which makes predicting outcomes challenging. Nevertheless, we always try our best to watch for violations and learn as we go. The teams at ADP are investing in a well-detailed approach to monitor how the machine learns and develops, ensuring all technologies evolve in the direction we expect.
Looking Forward: ADP’s Future
Technology development plays a huge role in ADP’s transformation into a technology company. There is more capital available than ever before, and the cost of building innovative products has become lower. In other words, we have more funding to experiment which leads to more breakthroughs. We are on the cusp of seeing more efficiencies on a massive scale through AL and ML.
The possibilities of using AR and VR during the company’s onboarding training are exciting! I can imagine applying AR and VR in digital workplaces for associates who work from home. The technologies bring efficiencies, save costs, and improve learning. Workers will have the ability to see the office and understand procedures even before joining the team in person. The implications are astronomical for national and global companies.
As we research more possibilities in tech, humans will benefit from using technologies in the workforce. The foundational trends include faster computing power, increasing data volume, low-cost communications for everyone and everywhere. These opportunities are life-changing, and we’ll see this come to fruition soon. I look forward to how the industry creates unique jobs in the workforce and breakthroughs. In the future, technologies at ADP will continue to help companies and workers adjust to changes, improving their job performances and making tasks easier.
Interested in a tech career at ADP?
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Tech & Innovation Blog
Inside DataCloud: How ADP Shapes the Future of Work
Innovation, What We Do, Future of Work
ADP continues to play a crucial role in shaping the future of work, impacting people’s lives.
Inside DataCloud: How ADP Shapes the Future of Work
By Amin Venjara, General Manager, Data Solutions, ADP DataCloud
Over the past two decades, fields like marketing and finance have seen an explosion in data-driven decision-making. Data informs everything from measuring performance to the microtargeted ads we see in our social media feeds. Data and analytics have even reshaped the world of professional sports as a “Moneyball” approach to building and deploying teams are now deeply integrated into most management teams and coaching staff.
In a similar vein, a data-driven approach to HR and talent decisions, known as people analytics, has grown rapidly over the past decade. As one of the largest providers of human capital management offerings, ADP has the data assets to lead in the people analytics space. Last year, we processed 69M W2s and moved over $2.3T—that’s over 10% of US GDP. With over 920K clients, we pay more than 38M workers worldwide, and just in the US alone, we reach nearly 20% of the private US workforce.
This rich data foundation explains why our monthly National Employment Report is considered a key indicator for the state of the US economy. It is also why economists from the Federal Reserve and leading universities are using ADP data to create more real-time measures on the state of the workforce. In a 2019 speech, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell described the Fed’s partnership with ADP: “We began to collaborate with ADP to construct a measure of payroll employment from their data set, which covers about 20 percent of the nation’s private workforce…. We believe that the new measure may help us better understand job market conditions in real-time.”
Our Data Solutions business unit and the DataCloud product team aim to amplify ADP’s data value, creating a more meaningful work experience for all employees. As one example, organizations are always looking to find and keep their best talent. Similarly, workers are looking for opportunities that best leverage their strengths and create opportunities to grow and thrive.
Skills Graph extracts, aligns, and normalizes key information such as skills, job titles and levels, education, and qualifications from non-structured data and infers missing skills and qualifications from context. Skills Graph powers ADP’s Candidate Profile Relevancy tool to help score, assess, and predict candidates who are the best fit for a job opening. While the model is not an algorithm that tells someone which candidate to pick, it helps identify those who are not the right fit, speeding up the application review process. This way, recruiters and hiring managers can focus more time on the human side of recruiting, having deeper, better conversations with candidates.
We have also used our data and analytics capabilities to help organizations address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) questions. From the earliest days of our analytics journey, we have included metrics that help organizations quantify and baseline their DEI. We have previously won the HR industry’s top technology award with our Pay Equity Explorer, which helps organizations understand pay equity gaps based on gender and race. Over the past year, we have continued to grow our DEI toolset, adding a question-based DEI Dashboard that helps organizations create and maintain turn-key answers to question like “How diverse is your workforce?”, “Which areas of my organization are not diverse?” and “How diverse is my organization’s leadership distribution?” from their HCM systems.
And what’s more – our focus on DEI with our clients has driven real outcomes. We’ve seen over 50% of our DEI solution’s active users act and realize a positive impact on their DEI measures. Active clients have seen pay equity gaps decrease by an average of 25% or more than $700K per client, making this a real investment for our clients based on our insights to enable equal pay for equal work.
The power of our data also extends beyond the world of HR. It is a powerful, real-time signal on the state of consumer demand, demographics, and the broader economy. Using our anonymized and aggregated data, we can construct views of migration patterns at the county level. For example, we found that before the pandemic, less than 3% of San Francisco and New York high earners making $100K or more moved out of the cities during the 12 months that ended in January 2020. After the pandemic, that number leaped to 14%. Those high-wage employees moved to the surrounding suburbs with a manageable commute to job centers. Large retailers and state governments use this data to shape their demand forecasting and to optimize their organizational agility in this rapidly changing world.
By putting our clients first and applying one of the richest data sets in the world to some of the most pressing societal and business issues of our day, our teams make a real impact every day at work. The client-obsessed and data-savvy product managers, engineers, UX designers, and data scientists that fuel our teams are constantly pushing the boundaries of technology to solve problems for our clients. At ADP, we are always designing for people, and in DataCloud and the broader Data Solutions team, data is the beating heart of everything we do.
Interested in a tech career at ADP?
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Tech & Innovation Blog
Innovating Retirement: How ADP Uses Machine Learning to Plan for the Future
How We Work, Culture, Team Collaboration
At ADP, people don’t have to be a leader by title. If there is an idea, and you can think big and innovate, that’s all you need.
Innovating Retirement: How ADP Uses Machine Learning to Plan for the Future
As one of the country’s leading HR technology companies, ADP uses its unmatched data in exciting and new ways. We had an opportunity to catch up with two people critical in recognizing the opportunity to innovate and create a machine learning product for Retirement Services.
Hemlata R., Director of Product Development, oversees the entire product development process. In addition to managing scrum masters, architects, developers, and tech leads, she also heads web development, mobile development, and the machine learning strategy for the entire Retirement Services team.
Sanjay V.R. is the Lead Application Developer and oversees the machine learning practice within Retirement Services.
We asked them how their small team creates cutting-edge technology to build data-driven solutions for their customers, and here’s what they said:
First, let’s hear a bit of what brought you to ADP.
Sanjay V.R.
Sanjay: I started at ADP as an intern while I was attending school in upstate New York. Once I completed my internship, I actually had multiple offers to join other companies. I chose to stay at ADP because getting good opportunities is one of the most challenging obstacles in today’s job market, and at ADP, if you put in the work, getting rewarded is the easiest thing.
Hemlata has been my director for 80% of my career, and I’ve been able to turn to her if I have an idea or if I want to pick up a new role or responsibility. She’s always encouraged me. My senior leaders make sure to recognize me for my hard work. I’ve been promoted three times in my three years at Retirement Services, and that speaks volumes.
Hemlata: I also had several offers when I was looking for a change after my last job. I was attracted to ADP because I’d heard that it was moving toward being more of a technology company that valued innovation—and that its leaders prioritized diversity and inclusion. I’ve seen first-hand that you don’t have to have an impressive title to be a leader here. You can be a leader at any level. You can innovate at any level, and ADP supports and invests on that front. I’m so happy and thrilled that everything I had heard about ADP turned out to be more than true.
Speaking of innovation, tell us about the Retirement Services product you built.
Sanjay: People Like You is a new feature based on machine learning algorithms; it helps participants better prepare for their retirement by offering benchmarks on how people similar to them are planning their retirements. For example, we can show you what percentage of your coworkers are contributing to their 401(k)s and how much of their income they’re contributing. Maybe you contribute 5%, and when you see that your peers contribute 8%, you have the confidence to invest more.
In the retirement industry, advisors usually group people by age or salary and then start giving advice. We wanted to answer the question better and offer advice based on what others in similar socioeconomic situations are actually doing.
Hemlata: ADP pays one out of six Americans; the amount of data we possess is unparalleled. When I joined the company, we discovered that many of our clients’ employees do not contribute to 401(k)s. Since we work for Retirement Services, we saw this as a problem. People often look at their peers and follow them, so we asked ourselves how our data could help create a solution.
How did you go about building People Like You?
Hemlata: We tried to combine the mind and the machine by leveraging our experts’ expertise at ADP and machine learning.
Sanjay: We have folks at ADP who have over 20 and 30 years of experience in Human Resources and Retirement Services. As much as data is our strength, our people and their expertise are equally valuable. So first, we talked extensively with our internal stakeholders since they already know the ins and outs of the industry intimately. Then we conducted market research to understand people’s motivations and concerns better about retirement investing.
After that, we went back to our data sets—everything we have from our payroll and retirement resources—and we started looking at this socioeconomic information to see any relevance between multiple parameters. For example, does age or compensation influence your retirement decisions? What if you’re married, single, or have kids? Based on our internal and external research, we were able to identify somewhere around 30 factors that make an impact; we then narrowed those factors based on the extent of their influence on an individual’s decision. Once we started analyzing that data and built models to create the personas, we realized that we had something worth integrating with our existing retirement products.
When we began this project, it started on a small scale. It was just one other data scientist and me. The two of us created the machine learning part of it, but as we built specific pieces of code for the APIs, we pulled in engineers as we needed them.
Were there any complications you had to work through?
Hemlata R.
Hemlata: The tricky part for me was to make sure that we were compliant with all the security olicies. People trust ADP. It’s our brand. That’s why they come to us for payroll, compliance, workforce management, legal, and security solutions. ADP knows what to do and takes excellent care of its customers, and we take this to heart and always obtain the consent of our clients and employees before we include their data. We’re extremely careful to keep all the data anonymous and not look into any specific client or individual employee data.
Sanjay: Yes, ADP is very sensitive toward privacy laws, so we were very specific about reading only as much data as people were comfortable with. One of the biggest advantages we had was that we partnered with ADP’s DataCloud team. They acted like a data custodian in the project and were responsible for making the data anonymous. They also made it possible to identify an employee—only with their consent—if I needed to access that data to connect specific pieces of information.
I’m a millennial, and I’m one of those people who always clicks on “Do Not Sell My Info” on websites. So, I’m particular about my data, and I think I always had that in the back of my mind. DataCloud made my job easy in that regard.
How do you think machine learning will affect your future work?
Hemlata: We are looking at leveraging this concept of combining the mind and the machine on other aspects of our business, such as compliance processes. As of now, we have used descriptive and prescriptive analytics. Next, we are planning to use predictive analytics to help our clients predict the upcoming required actions. ADP and our clients can solve any predicted problems upfront. We’re always trying to see how we can take our ideas and solutions to the next level.
Sanjay: This is the beginning of an entirely new way of thinking about improving our clients’ experience. We want to look beyond traditional solutions to ensure our clients and their employees feel empowered by our products. ADP also has a general excitement to identify pain points to be resolved and processes we can enhance using machine learning.
Speaking of your customers, do you see any results from People Like You? Are more people signing up to contribute to their 401(k)s?
Hemlata: The results are way better than what we expected. Employee contributions and new enrollments have definitely increased. We also saw this product gain so much attention internally within ADP that several other teams contacted us to see how they could leverage similar solutions within their departments. It’s been fascinating to see the outcomes and the interest from all the other teams.
Sanjay: It’s funny because a bunch of my peers was like, “Oh, I don’t really need a 401(k). I’m too young for that.” Then, two or three months after we released People Like You, someone remarked during lunch, “Hey, did you know that I just signed up for my 401(k)?” Then others joined in—four people also signed up. It’s just a wonderful experience when you hear people say your solution impacts their lives.
After we launched, Don Weinstein pinged me on Webex Teams and said what a great job I’d done and that he was looking forward to what I’d build next. It was a total fanboy moment for me.
Hemlata: This goes to show you what I was saying earlier. At ADP, people don’t have to be a leader by title. If there is an idea, and you can think big and innovate, that’s all you need. Once you have that, you can take it to any level, and people will be so open to talk to you, encourage you, and help support any of these thoughts. It’s really amazing to see that!
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