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Tech & Innovation Blog
Brazil Lab’s Carlos Nascimento Wins First Round NASA International Space Apps Challenge
Voice of Our People, Recognition, Innovation
Creating something out of this world almost came naturally to Carlos Nascimento, literally while he slept. Read about his innovation here.
Carlos recently won the first stage of the NASA International Space Apps Challenge. Yes, that NASA – the National Aeronautics and Space Administration…
Carlos developed a solution responsible for dynamically organizing the entire circadian cycle of astronauts, using Convolutional Neural Networks, being able to interpret brain frequencies, predict and stimulate the next stages of sleep.
“I could not have done this without the experience and knowledge I earned by working at ADP Brazil Labs,” said Carlos. “At the innovation center, we are working on a project that uses machine learning, which gave me the necessary knowledge and inspiration that I used for the NASA competition.”
NASA’s hackathon was the largest globally to develop an innovative app for its astronauts. With only 48 hours of active development, Carlos decided to focus on machine learning and brain signals. He gathered a team of his friends to select the challenge. They thought: “You know what? Everybody has some kind of sleep problem! Let’s help with that!”
Carlos will represent Brazil on the global stage, where they will choose the six best solutions.
At ADP, Carlos and his team work on a product that leverages machine learning. According to Carlos, “The best thing about working with Machine Learning is that the field is always evolving with new ideas and updates.”
Before Carlos travels to spaces and places, we caught up with him to learn just a little bit more:
What advice do you have for someone looking to participate in a global challenge?
These events are about innovation and teamwork, so choose your team wisely with professionals from different fields like designers, developers, and data scientists and read a lot about the subject you plan to solve.
What is your must-have app personally?
Brave Private Browser. We should always be very careful with our data. Like we are at ADP.
What is your favorite movie?
Interstellar.
If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Chocolate. I probably wouldn’t live much, but it would be a happy life.
What is the best advice you ever received?
Treat everyone the way you would like to be treated.
What’s the best place you’ve ever traveled to on vacation, and why?
That would be Arraial do Cabo. It’s close to my hometown, Rio de Janeiro. It has the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen.
Carlos will receive an award from the U.S. Embassy in Brazil for his work in the NASA Challenge. Results for 40 finalist teams, and six winning global teams, will be revealed in January 2021!
Congratulations, Carlos! Good luck to you and your team in the next round!
Learn more about working at Brazil Labs.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Meet (some of) the Women of ADP DevOps
Women in STEM, Voice of Our People, DevOps
One group of women within our DevOps team share their story of camaraderie and making a difference at ADP. Every day, they work in close support of one another to tackle exciting technical challenges and to drive data-centric development across the company.
ADP is a 2020 Grace Hopper Award recipient for our commitment to diverse teams and the overall development of women, no matter where they are in their careers. One group of women within our DevOps team share their story of camaraderie and making a difference at ADP. Every day, they work in close support of one another to tackle exciting technical challenges and to drive data-centric development across the company. We recently caught up with Monica Bansal (Application Developer), Natalia Ermolayeva (Senior Application Developer), Tao Hu (Principal Application Developer), and Stella Jia (Senior Director, Application Development). It was clear from our chat and how they complement each other’s work why they’ve become such a tight-knit group. Below, they share what makes their collaboration work so well, their recent wins, and what they’re excited to learn—and build—in the months and years to come.
What do each of you do at ADP, and why did you join the team?
Monica: My job is a blend of application development and data analytics—I assist ADP’s data scientists with experiments and then build out the APIs. I’ve been with the company full-time for about a year now; I started as a summer intern while getting my master’s in data science and computer science. I knew I wanted to continue my career in this field, and I liked getting to work with real data and implement it in the real world. I did another part-time internship last spring while finishing my degree, and then I joined Stella’s team.
Tao: I’m a principal application developer, which means I build many of the libraries and components that allow our work to scale—they become the blueprint other teams implemented. I’ve been with ADP since 2013. Before that, I worked in finance as a Java developer. A friend of mine recommended ADP after my company moved farther from my home. I have two young boys, and I wanted to make sure I had time to take care of them. I knew ADP had a reputation for being a family-friendly employer.
When I started at ADP, my work focused on producing reports. But once Stella joined, our team shifted to more machine learning. I love problem-solving and simplifying processes, so it’s been really fun for me.
Natalia: I’m a senior application developer, and I see my role as keeping data safe and available—I handle testing and operations. I’m very new to ADP; I joined about four months ago. One big attraction was the level of collaboration between departments. I was very impressed with the people who interviewed me. Everyone was very professional, and they mentioned many modern tools that I was excited to use. I knew ADP would be a good place to broaden my skills across a lot of different areas.
Stella: I’m a senior director for application development. My job is to lead the Application Development team and make sure we’re delivering insights that will help ADP build better products. As Tao mentioned, that involves a lot of machine learning work and other statistical analysis, as well as data mining and visualization techniques. An intrinsic strength of this team is connecting the data to the real people we serve. When we look for patterns and anomalies, we’re trying to figure out how we can make people’s jobs easier as we ADP innovate and grow.
I joined ADP about four years ago; a mentor and friend I’d previously worked for recommended I apply. He had great things to say about the leadership and the vision for transformation from a service company to a technology company. The people were great, too, and I liked that I’d get to learn about a lot of domains I hadn’t worked in before. I think it’s an excellent environment for anyone who wants to grow by adding value and helping others.
How do you support each other’s work?
Tao: We’re helping each other every day, sharing results and ideas for new approaches. For example, we’ve been using a new data analysis tool to build some reports, and now we’re looking at other projects that might benefit from those same functionalities. Because of our roles, Monica and I work especially closely, but I feel like I can pick up the phone or message anyone on the team when I have something to figure out, and I’ll get help right away.
Natalia: Yes—I like that my teammates are always just a call or text away. Knowing each other as people, chatting and joking around makes it so much easier to communicate and work together. We’re comfortable sharing ideas freely and collaborating, even when we’re not in the same room.
Stella: Definitely. We’d love to hang out in person more, but even with everyone virtual, it’s turned out really well. And that collaboration is so important. I think of the team as a set of pillars—if any of them aren’t there, none of it works. Monica is doing the analytics and research, slicing and dicing the data. Once we’ve found something we want to build upon, Tao steps in to create that foundation. And then Natalia is there to make sure we’re not only maintaining privacy but keeping things sustainable from an operations perspective. We all need each other, and we’re all working toward the same goal and figuring out how to measure success, which could be a product’s stickiness, preventing errors, or saving people time.
Monica: I think everyone on the team is naturally very passionate about working toward what we all want to achieve. You can always go to someone with a question, and everyone pitches in when someone needs help to make sure we’re hitting our targets. Stella is great about making sure we’re all happy and doing the kind of work we want to be doing.
Tell us about some of the ways you’ve made an impact at ADP.
Tao: We recently started using a new workflow manager tool, which has been a big win. Before, if we had a lot of ETL (extract, transform, load) jobs, we’d get files from other teams and load them into the database. With all the pieces and feeds, it wasn’t easy to see the status of any particular piece. That was frustrating. Stella recommended a workflow tool, which I hadn’t heard of at the time. After I got up to speed, we started building things out, adapting the data monitor and using the workflow manager to grab all the outputs, sending them to the monitor, and building the dashboards there. Now we have an accessible overview to see what’s working and what isn’t. It’s been so helpful.
Natalia: Due to the nature of my work, success isn’t always obvious. If things run smoothly, no one notices what happens in the background, which means I’ve done my job. As I get more familiar with how things work at ADP, I’ll have some opportunities to automate more daily, repetitive tasks. That’s a big priority.
Monica: We did an error-detection project recently where we built a model to help us flag problems on the back-end when a client runs their payroll and how users respond when they get those warnings. If we have a proper pipeline of data to run the model regularly, clients can see predictions for the entire week, and we can see whether they’re using or ignoring the information, which tells us whether we need to make some corrections.
More broadly, our team helps others understand the importance and potential of data, especially here at ADP, where we have such rich data. We want to drive data-centric development, which starts with data collection. Before we can do the analytics, our data needs to be clean. So we work with a lot of other teams, helping them understand how to use the tools and making sure they’re comfortable and up-to-date on everything they need.
Stella: We are part of a data-informed culture. Technology evolves quickly. At ADP, we want to stay ahead and be proactive rather than reactive. Data is a huge asset in that effort. It gives us much faster feedback loops and insights into our clients. We can quickly see when and whether a client’s hitting a milestone.
But to leverage that asset, as Monica mentioned, we need a certain level of data literacy throughout the business. If developers understand how data can help them build a better product, it will be much easier to scale. Part of our team’s job is to encourage data literacy. We also help establish standards, offer training, and get development teams running on an autonomous path to adopt a canonical format every team can follow. We find that it is contagious. Once a few teams embrace the data, other teams understand the benefits more quickly and have more colleagues to help them learn.
What are you excited to learn next?
Natalia: There are a lot of tools I’m excited to learn more about, including the ones my colleagues have mentioned. I’m looking forward to using new technologies in general, particularly machine learning tools. I think I’ll have many opportunities to code for our team’s internal purposes, for affirmation and monitoring, too. Because I’m new to the team, I’m also learning the big picture and how everything’s connected. ADP is great with documentation, so I can find almost everything I need on my own. But I can always ask my colleagues or get up to speed through a learning session with one of our senior team members.
Tao: I’m excited to keep learning new technologies, too. I’ll often jump over to educational resources to get a quick sense of something, then I come back and try to use it. The machine learning side of things is especially exciting. Besides learning new languages, I love new concepts for how to approach our work.
Monica: I feel like I’ve grown so much already! From the start of my first internship to now, I’ve been able to work on many different services and projects, from machine learning models to APIs to analytics. Whenever Stella says, “I have an idea,” we get excited. The technologies are always changing, and that helps us grow.
Stella: One thing I’m thinking about is how to give developers more visibility into what we do. As Natalia mentioned, most of our foundational work tends to happen behind the scenes. We look forward to building stronger connections with our frontend partners, which will provide even more opportunities to enjoy the results and get recognition for our work.
At ADP, our talent pipeline is so important. It’s about getting the right people and building a strong culture. We want the goal, in everything my team does, to be a better developer experience. We strive to make people happy, make their jobs easier, make their days more efficient. If we provide them with a platform that allows them to test and measure their ideas more quickly, they’ll have more time to explore new ideas and innovate.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Stronger Together
Video, Culture, Pandemic
Accessible Video Controls
Video: Stronger Together
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[DESCRIPTION] Cars lined up next to a sign, COVID-19 Drive-up testing.
Rows of empty seats in an auditorium; sign on a window: Sorry, we’re closed.
[TEXT] In 2020, our world changed.
[DESCRIPTION] Sign on a street: Coronavirus Crisis, Lockdown Rules Tighten.
An empty diner. Sign on a window: We are all in this together.
A woman stands at a laptop holding a child with another child reaching out to her.
[TEXT] Our lives were immediately affected.
[DESCRIPTION] People look at each other at a bus stop, standing distanced.
[TEXT] We were pulled farther apart.
[DESCRIPTION] A woman stands with her hand against a window, the hand of an older woman in a mask on the other side.
Montage of people with masks.
[TEXT] We lost many of the things we took for granted.
[DESCRIPTION] Montage of various gatherings, a Thanksgiving dinner, four clasped hands, a picnic, a wedding,
[TEXT] and, sadly, we lost loved ones.
[DESCRIPTION] A man in scrubs sits on a hospital floor, candles on a stone floor.
From above, a crowd marches down a street.
From above, a crowd of people and traffic on a street.
[TEXT] The world also saw what many already knew…
that a different reality exists for Black people in America.
[DESCRIPTION] A Black woman with a mask kneels on a street painting of a Black woman.
Demonstrators with masks walk on a street holding signs that read “No Justice No Peace, and Black Lives Matter.”
[TEXT] 2020 has been a challenging year. But during challenging times, our integrity is tested the most.
[DESCRIPTION] A Montage of several people with bright smiles.
Sign on a floor: One Way, This way please, Social Distancing, Please stay 6 feet apart, A sticker on a table, Please Sit Here.
[TEXT] ADP associates never wavered
[DESCRIPTION] People at computers in their homes.
[TEXT] in our commitment to our clients,
[DESCRIPTION] People with masks in an office, a man in an ADP mask, two men in ADP masks at a table.
[TEXT] to our communities.
[DESCRIPTION] Two women hold boxes with ADP labels behind an open back of a van.
A group of people wearing bicycle gear stand and smile, one with a bicycle. Two people hold a box of supplies.
[TEXT] to each other.
[DESCRIPTION] A man and woman hug, the man holds a Black Lives Matter sign. A man sits at a desk with two monitors, a boy sits in front of the keyboard and wears a headset.
People in workspaces in their homes.
[TEXT] Despite all the hardships of the past year, the new day-to-day challenges, the pain of racial injustice.
[DESCRIPTION] A person stands outside with a Black Lives Matter sign, four people outside with signs in front of a crowd.
[TEXT] and the uncertainties that may lie ahead,
[DESCRIPTION] A woman and two children in a household ADP signs. A person takes a man’s temperature.
[TEXT] duty, humanity, and love can keep us together.
[DESCRIPTION] A woman holds a challenge sign. A woman holds a juice box.
[TEXT] So let’s take some time to thank our teams who never stopped delivering service.
[DESCRIPTION] A man at a computer outside a house, people work from home.
[TEXT] to thank our associates who never stopped spreading hope.
[DESCRIPTION] A montage of people at work in their homes.
People in squares on a video call.
[TEXT] When we show who we are, when we stay true to our values
ADP is stronger together!
[LOGO] ADP, Always Designing for People
[MUSIC PLAYING]
2020 has been a challenging year, and during challenging times, we are tested the most. At ADP, our associates never wavered in their commitment to our clients, our communities, and one another. We want to share what it means to be #ADPStrong and never to stop spreading hope. Watch our story.
ADP’s Margaret Tuohy shares her STEM Journey
ADP Women in STEM Profile: Margaret Tuohy
Take inspiration from this Vice President of Product Management of National Accounts who says she wasn’t one of those people who knew what she wanted to be at the age of 5. She’s learned to just figure out that one next step.
Margaret Tuohy grew up the oldest of three in Brooklyn, NY. Her parents, both immigrants, still live there. “My parents are the classic immigrant story. They independently came to the US from Ireland when they were 17. They both sent money home. I learned early on to admire their work ethic and even as a child, I respected the sacrifices that they made for my brother, sister, and me.”
She went to college at SUNY Albany in upstate New York. Thinking she wanted to be a lawyer, she majored in English and Political Science. After some summer jobs working for law firms, Margaret changed her mind.
Finding the Path to Product Management
She still loved the analytic and methodical thinking of law. So, she explored other graduate programs and continued at SUNY Albany for an MBA with a concentration in Management Information Systems. “It was a pragmatic decision. I enjoyed technology and they had a great program. I was awarded an assistantship that would cover tuition and I knew there were job opportunities when I graduated.”
Margaret found the classes fascinating, especially information systems. “There was quite a bit of statistics and math, operational problems, and field projects. I enjoyed the work.”
Margaret Tuohy
She was recruited by GE and entered their Information Management Leadership Program. Margaret was attracted to the opportunity to rotate throughout different GE businesses utilizing different technologies. An added benefit was the ability to move to a different geographic location every six months. “I had a lot of exposure to different business concepts, ways of doing things, and technologies. About midway through the program, I rotated to the San Francisco Bay Area by myself for what was supposed to be six months. I loved the area so much, I ended up living there for several years. In addition to work opportunities, the Bay Area is where I met my husband and bought my first house. It was an exciting time.”
During the last part of Margaret’s GE tenure, she spent her time working as a developer on a data warehousing project where she managed a team focused on data conversions and integrations. One technology Margaret developed expertise in was Informatica. A friend knew someone at the company and Margaret learned they were recruiting.
Margaret joined Informatica as a sales engineer where she was doing demos, traveling to client sites, and implementing proof of concepts in short engagements. “The pressure was pretty intense. As a sales engineer, you need to be able to install, run, and develop programs in an unfamiliar environment, all with the client looking over your shoulder.” She loved working with clients and understanding tech from their perspective, as well as working with the product managers in the company. Margaret stayed in the business intelligence space for a few more years, managing larger development teams. After eight years in California, Margaret’s husband, an environmental scientist and professor, had a job opportunity in Atlanta and they decided to move back East.
Margaret with her husband, Derek Shendell, hiking on vacation in Sonoma, California.
Margaret moved to Atlanta and quickly found a position with CNN, supporting a data warehousing effort. About 7 months into that role, another opportunity opened with CNN in the New York bureau. The role was responsible for product managing digital media for CNN’s business coverage. Margaret applied and was in NY within a couple of weeks. “That time was a bit of whirlwind. In the space of 16 months, I had lived in the Bay Area, Atlanta, and then then New York. Fortunately, my husband quickly found a position with Rutgers University, so the move was good for both of us.”
Margaret was in the newsroom, working with editorial and developers to build more effective ways to report business news and financial data across digital, social, video, and mobile. “I loved the job and being in the newsroom. It was fun to be part of something new in an environment where we could get things done quickly. I had great executive support and resources in a unit that was very nimble. And I had a lot of autonomy to roll things out on the site.”
Best advice: When you’ve made the decision, be at peace with that decision. Trust yourself enough to not second-guess.
– Margaret Tuohy, VP of Product Management, ADP National Accounts
Although she had managed teams before, CNN was the first place she could build a team from scratch. “I knew what I was looking for in the first person, but it was not the same as what I needed in my fifth hire. As the team grew, the work and people were evolving. So, we needed new personality traits and skills sets that weren’t part of the picture at the beginning.”
After eight years with CNN, an opportunity arose with a start-up, Business Insider (BI). Margaret joined as the SVP of Product Development, running product management, launching international versions of the website, and using analytics to build an audience.
Coming to ADP
She had hoped BI would be more like CNN, but it was a different organization in a different stage of development. “I remember being on vacation and while I was hiking, I came to terms with feeling like the job was not a fit. So, I gave myself permission to leave. I went home and started putting out feelers. This time I cast a wider net beyond media. I was looking at companies that sold software products and solutions. I was still open to media, but I was also willing to explore something new.”
At the time, ADP had several open roles that looked interesting. Margaret checked her LinkedIn connections and found someone happy to pass on her resume to the right person.
Then she got a call and interviewed with Don Weinstein, who hired her. She started out in a product portfolio and strategy role, which was perfect for learning about HR technology and ADP. Eager to get back into Product Management, Margaret moved into her current role, VP, Product Management of National Accounts. “It was the natural next step and there was a lot to learn. In National Accounts, we work with large clients with complex needs and high expectations. I was also learning the market while at the same time, structuring my team.”
“In the last couple of years, I really feel like I’ve gotten to practice Product Management at scale. National Accounts has many products within the portfolio, we have a good number of Digital Transformation projects in flight that will deliver strong business outcomes, and the Product Management team has really evolved. It has been exciting to see product managers that are relatively new to the organization develop confidence to not only manage product backlogs, but also become the experts on client webinars. Likewise, there have been opportunities to tweak or develop roles so more tenured associates can continue to grow.”
Margaret with her family after a dinner out in Brooklyn, New York.
Find and Be a Mentor
Margaret strongly advocates finding a mentor and then being a mentor to others. “I was lucky to have a sponsor at CNN who understood me. He had my back and helped handle the politics so I could focus on the work. It was really valuable. Even now, I text him once in a while and ask for advice.”
“Find someone who knows you in a professional context and can give advice. At CNN, I was a Sr. Director and needed someone who supported and challenged me at the same time. Earlier in my career, I had a mentor who was more of a teacher who could provide expertise and encouragement. They were the right mentors for different stages in my career.”
Best Advice
The best advice Margaret received along the way was from a trusted teacher in high school when she was trying to figure out where to go to college. She was weighing options, making tentative decisions, and then second guessing. The teacher advised, “You’ve made the decision, now be at peace with that decision. Trust yourself enough to not second-guess.”
Her advice to others is related. “I’ve always been a little envious of people who knew exactly what they wanted to do since they were 5 years old. I’m just not that person, and I’ve learned to be ok with that. I often tell others, you don’t have to decide your life plan; just decide what you’re going to try next. Figure out that one next step. Just ask yourself whether the opportunity you are going after will take you in the right direction, and then trust your decision.”
Ready for more?
Explore the stories of these and other ADP Women in STEM, and learn about careers at ADP.
Read why ADP was named the “2020 Top Companies Winner for Women Technologists” by AnitaB.org.
Related Video: How ADP Walks the D&I Talk
One way ADP encourages diversity and inclusion (D&I) among its associates is through business resource groups (BRGs). ADP’s iWIN BRG is the company’s largest with 5000+ members (male and female) from 19 countries across the business. Learn how iWIN engages, equips and empowers its members to achieve personal and professional success through networking, professional development, and other educational opportunities. iWIN is an internal organization open only to ADP associates.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Meet The Team Who improved our Year-End Testing for 401K Clients
Voice of Our People, Why ADP
Meet one of our teams who helped build a better customer experience through cross-functional collaboration
Why did you choose ADP?
Karen H. (Tech Lead; 21 years at ADP): I joined ADP because of its reputation in the industry and as an employer. I saw the opportunity to grow my career with a company that is among the best.
Gina G. (Product Owner; 7 years): After earning my master’s, I heard about an awesome graduate internship program at ADP. ADP’s mission, vision, and values aligned closely with my personal interests—and that’s still true today. We have a constant focus on ensuring the client experience is best-in-class, and we offer endless career opportunities to our team; we want everyone to grow and remain passionate about what we do.
David Z. (Director, Application Development; 17.5 years): Back in the early 2000s, a few former co-workers told me that ADP’s retirement services business was growing quickly and that the company was positioned to grow market share. And that’s certainly been true—our client base has tripled since I joined. The role was also a chance to bring my experience designing, creating, and testing similar processing for healthcare plans for our retirement products.
Bhargav A. (Scrum Master; 5.5 years): As a software engineer, I’m passionate about adopting new technical skills. ADP offered a rewarding career, with challenging opportunities to understand our core business and develop products with the latest technologies.
Pradip P. (Principal QA Engineer; 5 years): ADP is a growing organization with many opportunities. I knew the role would be challenging and that I’d learn a lot.
Karan N. (Technical Lead; 4 years): I was looking for a role that would help me grow my technical skills and personally. Luckily, I met someone from ADP who shared his experience and told me about the fantastic culture. That’s exactly what I’ve found here.
Damodhar M. (Manager, 13 years): I’m very excited to work for ADP. It’s an excellent company with plenty of opportunities to learn and grow. The business model ADP follows (Simplify-Innovate-Grow) provides me opportunities to work on multiple technologies.
Vasudeo J. (Consultant, 6 years): I heard about ADP from my friend, and he told me that ADP is the best place to work among all IT companies and suggested that I join. My decision was correct. I love working with ADP because of culture in every sense, i.e., work, fun at work, family day, and all other mega-events that happen when we are working in the office.
Shivani K. (Senior Member Technical, 5 Years): This is a super cool company to work for, and it’s been great to get a job here.
Gyan S. (Member Technical, 3 years): ADP has a fantastic work culture. It values its employees as much as the customers. Every day at work brings new challenges and learning.
Sunil K. (Member Technical, 1.7 years): It offers an excellent opportunity to learn and implement innovative ideas. I like the ADP work culture.
Preeti R. (Member Technical, 1.6 years): When I got hired, I felt my skills are particularly well-suited to this position. But I like ADP’s culture too.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself.
Karen H.: I love to ski. During the winter, I teach skiing in my spare time.
Gina G.: I’m a thrill seeker! I once sky-dived, and you’ll often find me hiking the mountains in Hawaii. I find thrills at work, too. I love being a part of digital transformation efforts that simplify client experience and streamline our internal business processes.
David Z.: Nineteen years ago, I formed a team in the Metuchen Softball League, and we finally became league champions. I also play on a 50 and over team that has won the Middlesex County champions a couple of times, and for the past three years, we’ve won the state championship.
Bhargav A.: I’m always eager to learn new things and implement challenging solutions. But when I get some free time, I love to disconnect from the world to visit wildlife.
Pradip P.: I like sports—watching them, but also like getting outside and playing them myself.
Karan N.: I love playing badminton and exploring new places with my friends.
Damodhar M.: When I’m off work, I love to follow current events across the world to stay updated.
Vasudeo J.: I love sleeping. A few months back, I got a call from my friend at around midnight, had a conversation, and had no memory of it the next day. I guess I made sense, he didn’t realize I wasn’t awake.
Shivani K.: Reading a new book or creating a craft.
Gyan S.: I try to add and refine my skills so that I can become more productive at work. I take time to analyze how can we improve as a team, raise the bar and have fun too.
Sunil K.: If the world is facing a big problem, I imagine myself as a hero who saves the world.
Preeti R.: I have a huge sweet tooth!
There you have it!
Team, thanks for sharing your ADP experience, and congratulation for a job well done!
Tech & Innovation Blog
Team effort: Building a better customer experience through cross-functional collaboration
How We Work, Voice of Our People, Team Collaboration
At ADP, every milestone is achieved–and celebrated—together. The work by Sachin Ghag and his team to improve the year-end testing experience for 401(k) administrators is no exception. Along with the Architecture Group, the “Agile Archers” and the “Avenging Explorers” worked across time zones and collaborated with other ADP teams to bring a brand new user experience to life in four short months. Hear from Sachin about how his team got it done.
By Sachin Ghag, Senior Manager, Global Product Development and Technology, Retirement Services
At ADP, every milestone is achieved–and celebrated—together. The work by Sachin Ghag and his team to improve the year-end testing experience for 401(k) administrators is no exception. Along with the Architecture Group, the “Agile Archers” and the “Avenging Explorers” worked across time zones and collaborated with other ADP teams to bring a brand new user experience to life in four short months. Below, hear from Sachin about how his team got it done.
****
At the start of every new calendar year, retirement plan administrators at millions of companies across the U.S. add the same pesky item to their to-do list: year-end testing. To ensure their businesses are compliant with federal law, they must confirm that their 401(k) plans are within a half-dozen or so Department of Labor standards, which cover everything from which employees qualify for a plan to how much they contribute. If administrators discover any issues, they must resolve them relatively quickly.
For years, this process was largely manual. Test results came in a single PDF, and companies that needed to take corrective actions had no online option to track whether those issues had been marked as resolved. Instead, administrators had to call ADP for a status update. But we saw an opportunity to save our customers time and better use our resources. It was clear that we could offer a better experience.
We’re always looking for ways to optimize our processes, so a self-service dashboard for year-end testing had long been on our list of projects to tackle. And the timing was perfect: ADP had just started accelerating digital transformations across the company. Our plan was ambitious: We wanted to give clients not just a real-time view of their status, but a central hub for every resource they’d need to resolve any issues. By September 2019, our team in Global Product and Technology (GPT) was ready to dive in. But we knew that the GPT team would need help from our colleagues along the way.
To kick things off, we held a discovery session with the dashboard’s product owner and the UX team, who had already created a mock-up of the end-to-end user experience. Once we made sure we fully understood what we needed to build, we broke the desired product down into features, created user stories for each one, and developed a timeline based on three-week sprints. We wanted to leave plenty of time to test every scenario before the January 10th launch, so we set a target date of December 12.
The first step, we knew, would also be the hardest: Before we could build the APIs and UI that would make our self-service dreams a reality, we needed to move data from a highly complex mainframe system—which most of the Retirement Services GPT team had never worked with before—into SQL. So once our chief architect had offered some invaluable initial feedback, including new processes for transferring the mainframe VSAM data into SQL, we turned to ADP’s subject-matter experts: the Mainframe team. Together, we decided they would extract the millions of records we needed into a text file, updated daily, which we would then import into the SQL site. And of course, updates had to go both ways; we also needed to figure out how to send changes back to the mainframe—re-running tests as soon as possible after users completed corrective actions to ensure the two sources were synced.
Throughout the development phase, collaboration was key. A challenge with the time difference, when our India Global Product and Technology team was half a day ahead of our Mainframe colleagues in the U.S. Being flexible and thoughtful, we managed to meet jointly for an hour or two nearly every day, and were even able to turn the time difference into an advantage. Because our U.S. teammates worked while we slept, they would often have suggestions and solutions ready for us by the time we started the next day.
Once the initial development work was done, yet another phase of collaboration began. We asked our colleagues in Service Operations, who work directly with clients, to help us test the dashboard. Sure enough, their real-life experience helped them find issues we hadn’t—especially around ADP’s 401k Sponsor site, which is used by plan administrators. If a user clicked on certain links within their ADP Task Tracker, for example, we wanted to send them directly to the new self-service dashboard—but many of those links still needed updating. The Service Ops team recorded each issue they found in a spreadsheet, and we fixed them, one by one.
In the end, thanks to hard work from our team and our colleagues across UX, Mainframe, Service Ops, and beyond, what started as an ambitious plan turned into a success story for our teams and our clients. In early January, we launched smoothly, on time, and with a warm welcome from tens of thousands of happy clients—whose reviews ranged from “I love how easy this was to navigate” to “You made my freaking day!” ADP’s leadership team also recognized our work with an award of appreciation.
The new year-end testing dashboard.
Since that first release in January, we’ve already built out some additional features—and we have plans to add more for 2021, including web identification of data integrity issues, which will allow our clients to visualize and modify data within their web session. But even when we aren’t actively working on the dashboard, the experience of building it continues to benefit the GPT team every day. We’ve been able to use the technical knowledge we gained to improve our work on several other projects, both within and outside of compliance. And most importantly, we’ve built relationships with other ADP teams that will help us better serve our clients for years to come.
Given all the things 2020 has given us, our clients will have a smooth year-end. A nice gift after everything that has happened in the world.
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Tech & Innovation Blog
Podcast: Fireside chat with Don Weinstein, CVP, Global Product & Development on his career and the latest tech happenings at ADP
Career Path, Fireside Chat, Latest Tech
ADP Technologist, Nik Palmer, hosts an engaging chat with our Global Product & Techology leader, Don Weinstein, and the executive sponsor for our Generations Business Resource Group. Don chats about his career path and gives some advice. He also shares the latest tech happenings at ADP, machine learning, and our evolving products. The Generations BRG focuses on creating connections between emerging and established professionals.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
[LOGO] ADP, Always Designing for People
[NICK PALMER] Howdy and welcome to the GENcast podcast. My name is Nick Palmer and I will be your host for this episode with Don Weinstein, Chief Product and Technology Officer here. Don is also the Executive Sponsor of Generations.
His role is somewhat unique as most companies separate product and technology. And what’s also interesting is that Don has a background in aerospace engineering and consulting prior to coming to ADP to work in corporate strategy and technology. Don, welcome, and thanks for sitting down with us.
[DON WEINSTEIN] Thanks, Nick. It’s great to be here.
[NICK PALMER] So to get started, let’s find out a little bit about you and tell us a little bit about what generation you identify with most closely and what are your standout roles.
[DON WEINSTEIN] Great question. I’m Generation X through and through. I do like from time to time looking at those different examples about the– or the differences in the different generations. And the one that always stuck out to me with Generation X being kind of a sandwich generation.
Stuck in between the boomers and the millennials is just kind of being the pragmatists in the room and figuring out how we help move things forward and make progress and maybe less about it was stuck between the me generation and the we generation before and after us.
[NICK PALMER] Building bridges versus building walls.
[DON WEINSTEIN] I like that. I hadn’t heard that, but I’ll quote you on that going forward. It’s really about just again, not trying that overly call attention to ourselves as a generation as much as just moving things forward. I was going to say, my top two stand out roles are advisor provider, which I was told was a somewhat unusual combination, but that’s all I know.
[NICK PALMER] Right on. Yeah, I don’t think I’ve met one of those yet. So that’s interesting. So tell us a little bit about some technology happenings here at ADP. If our listeners haven’t had a chance to listen to your recent HRExaminer executive podcast with John Sumser, we’ll make sure that we put a link up there and encourage them to take a listen.
In that podcast, you cover some excellent material there about how ADP is addressing diversity and inclusion via our products and our client services, most of which is just given away for free. Can you share a little bit about the GTP diversity and inclusion strategy and its intended impact for both clients and associates?
[DON WEINSTEIN] Yeah, I’d be glad to. And I think the first thing to peel back on is this isn’t some new idea that just came to us because of obviously what’s been happening, the increased focus we’ve seen based in large part on the recent tragic incidents with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, which I think have created a renewed focus on the problems and the challenges that diversity has and that we have with diversity as a country and in particular in the workplace.
So I am glad for that renewed focus. But this is something we’ve been thinking about for and working on for a while. I’d point you back to, it was 2016 when we launched our Pay Equity Explorer and actually was recognized as an awesome new technology for 2016 by HR Executive Magazine the HR Tech Conference.
And in particular, what made the Pay Equity Explorer great or an awesome new technology is it took this long founded challenge that we know about, disparities and discrimination and pay practices in the workplace, and took a new angle to it where we could leverage ADP’s vast treasure trove of data so we could understand industry benchmarks, both outside an organization, as well as inside an organization, and in addition to which we can apply machine learning algorithms to help identify not just– you see the classic studies that say, OK, in this context, women get paid 82 cents on the dollar.
It’s a constantly moving benchmark so I don’t remember what the latest is. But that was a relatively recent one. And it’s important. And it’s important to know. But it’s not actionable. OK. So what do I do about it? More importantly, where do I get started?
And so the Pay Equity Explorer was able to break that down using machine learning to crawl through a client’s data and identify very specific, this individual in this job relative to this internal and external market benchmark is being underpaid by this exact amount and here’s how you can take care of that.
And I think that was a real breakthrough in terms of attacking that problem. And we looked at that across all dimensions. We looked at it by gender, we looked at it by race, we looked at it by ethnicity, because trying to get multi-dimensional on the problem.
And that was really just the first such example. We followed that up with a couple of more products, one of which we focused on including a little about diversity and inclusion and inclusiveness. We’ve been very focused on accessibility in our products.
And I’m talking about making content more accessible in particular for folks who may be visually impaired or other types of impairments that would prevent them from being able to access their normal workplace tools.
So our core application, My ADP, that’s used by employees and managers, as well as our ADP mobile application, we’ve been embedded enhanced usability and accessibility controls. We’ve been doing that for years. I’m actually trying to remember when we started. It’s been so long that we’ve been at that I couldn’t I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head, but it’s been a while.
[NICK PALMER] I know I’ve supported AudioEye for a while now.
[DON WEINSTEIN] Exactly. AudioEye as a partner, we’ve worked with on both to consult with us on how to design our products to make them more accessible, and then they have plug-ins that handle all different types of impairments and get us beyond level two on the web content accessibility guidelines.
And those are just a couple of examples. I could drone on forever. You probably don’t want me to. We’re continuing to push the ball forward. We had a couple of things in the works. We’re working on some new diversity inclusiveness dashboards with our data cloud team to give clients better analytics about what they’re doing, multiple different metrics around– you’ll get the entire talent lifecycle.
Are we recruiting diverse talent pools? How are we rewarding? How are we retaining? How are we promoting? And taking all of that through a D and I lens. We’ve kind of already started working on that next iteration when obviously the external environment kicked it up a notch in terms of our priority level.
And you had asked the question not only from an external angle but also from an internal angle. So I’m super excited that we’ve been able to partner with our internal ADP D and I team, in particular Aisha who is our Chief Diversity Officer, to have ADP be client number one for any and all new products that we want to push in this area.
And actually have been having great success with Sreeni Kutam about making ADP client number one for any of our enterprise HR products. And diversity inclusiveness is just the latest example that we’re putting a lot of energy into right now.
[NICK PALMER] As we move from a service company to a technology company, it’s interesting to see that dynamic come into play and adoption of that agile startup mentality of using what we build internally. That’s awesome. So, tell us a little bit about your path towards executive leadership and how that shaped your approach towards management of people and product.
[DON WEINSTEIN] Yeah, I’ve had somewhat of a circuitous path. You pointed out in the intro that I was an aerospace engineer by training. I started my career at General Electric. And I was working in the satellite telecommunications side of the house.
So I worked on such projects as the Dish Network and GPS. So if you’re using Waze on your way home at some point or the next time you’re in the car, you’re welcome. And truthfully, a lot of people worked on that project. You can imagine I was just one of many really brilliant and talented folks who did that.
But it was fun. It was an exciting place to start a career. But how I got from there to the payroll and HCM industry, it was not a linear trajectory whatsoever. I was bought, sold, merged, acquired six different times in my first several years. GE at some point decided to get out of that business.
They sold it to Martin Marietta. Martin Marietta merged with the Lockheed Company, became Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin shut down the facility I was working at. There were 5,000 people there when I started. And I was the 10th to last to walk out the door and shut the place down.
And now it’s just an industrial brownfield site that’s been sitting there unoccupied for 20 plus years, which is kind of sad. What I learned in some of that– first thing, so, coming out of that, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
So what do you do when you’re a 20-something engineer and you don’t know what to do with the rest of your life? I went back to school and got an MBA. And then when I finished up my MBA, I still don’t know what I wanted to do with myself?
So what do you do when you’re an overeducated 20-something who doesn’t know what to do? You go into consulting and tell other people what to do. I don’t know what to do with my life, but let me tell you what to do with yours.
Consulting was a good experience for me in that up until that point, I had only known one industry, one business, and one functional area. So it really helped me broaden myself out. And I think if there’s one or two takeaways I could take away from that experience, it’s I had the opportunity to work in a lot of different industries on a lot of different problems, and having that cross-functional type of experience I think was useful.
Even starting my career at GE, they really encourage some rotational type assignments. I have noticed within ADP, we probably don’t do that as much as other organizations. Also I made a stop at IBM for several years. And we used to joke at IBM, it stood for I’ve Been Moved.
But at ADP, I think we have folks who tend to spend more time in one area. And it’s great for developing deep expertise in that area. And some of the stuff that we do, you have to be pretty deep and expert to do it.
But I think also we can benefit and folks can benefit from taking that kind of side step rotational assignment to learn about the business through another lens and then come back. It’s something I’ve been encouraging within my technology organization now. Really, two things.
One is getting more rotations within technology, including on my leadership team. So the simple way we think about it is I’ve got the applications side of the house, as you said, the product side. And then the traditional infrastructure, the technology side.
So we’ve been rotating people within products, moving from one product, maybe moving from a shared product like our identity management or reporting solution into a market facing product like RUN or Workforce Now or something like that.
Gives people a different perspective. Moving between the application side and the infrastructure side of the house. So we’ve done a handful of rotations there. And I think we’ll do some more. And also encouraging bi-directional folks from the technology organization to roll out into business type roles and vise versa.
Folks who are in the different sides of the business who have interests or an aptitude for technology to come do a tour of duty in the technology world and then go back to their functional areas with a greater appreciation for what we’re doing here.
It’s something, like I said, I was able to benefit and take advantage of early on in my career. And I think that’s something that I’m trying to encourage others at least within my scope of influence in GPT to take advantage of as well. Does that make sense?
[NICK PALMER] Yes, it does. That’s great. I think that I’m going to quote you on the merged, bought, sold, and acquired. Yeah. One of the things that you said in there that was particularly interesting was about that tour of duty in rotation.
And that’s something that I’d like to make sure that we’ve heard is covered again and mentioned again because that’s something that we’ve heard from our membership, saying how should I approach the career path and moving forward?
Should I jump around and try lots of different things? Or should I stick and go deep expertise? And I’ve obviously stuck and done the deep expertise side of things. But I tell people all the time, jumping around and gaining a broad perspective, that’s also equally valid.
They are opposite sides of the same coin. And as long as you’re holding that coin and paying attention to it, either one can afford you great insight and knowledge and career path opportunity. So thanks for sharing the opposite side of the coin from what I typically do.
[DON WEINSTEIN] Yeah, and if I could just put a nuance on that, I like to think about it as a major and a minor. Because I wouldn’t want to create the false expectation. I think too much jumping around, also a bad thing, right? I think you need to stay long enough in an area to develop a certain level of depth and expertise.
And that’s it. That’s your major. And then when you have that depth of expertise in a certain area, then when you go out into another area, you may be a novice in that new found area, but you can be valuable to the folks there because you bring the expertise about something else that they don’t know about.
So for instance, do a typical one again in my area, is if I’ve got somebody who’s super knowledgeable about infrastructure and then they go do a rotational assignment on the app side of the house, they may not know everything there is to know about app development, but they can bring to that team their richness and depth of experience on infrastructure that is going to be beneficial to the team.
And then potentially, like I said, not then move on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. But do that as sort of like a side step and then come back to infrastructure and be a better infrastructure engineer because you understand more now how the application that your infrastructure is supporting.
So a little different than saying jump around as much as you do a sidestep, come back. Maybe apply what you learned. Maybe do another one, come back. So I think it’s useful for somebody to have a major. I’ll tell you, my life experience, as I said, I started out as an engineer. Spent several years in engineering.
Coming out of engineering, I went into consulting and I got to apply that in a bunch of different areas. Then I did some work in strategy. Came back to product. Then I came to ADP. Well, did a long tenure in project management.
Went out to strategy. So I was a Chief Strategy Officer for a couple of years. Came back to GPT. So not floating all over the place, but sidestep, come back, sidestep, come back, learn a new skill, come back and apply it kind of model, if that makes sense.
[NICK PALMER] Right, and I think how I would encapsulate that nuance that you’re talking about is you have to do the tour of duty. You have to learn something, not be a tourist and jump around. So there is a difference in terms of your depth and understanding that you gain in a tour of duty versus just being a tourist to a new location.
[DON WEINSTEIN] Very well said, yes.
[NICK PALMER] So let’s get into the big elephant in the room. One of the biggest hurdles we had in late FY 20 was the rapid change to remote work modality. The business continuity team recently discussed this undertaking in their internal webinar.
And you talk about the international effort in depth on the HRExaminer podcast. The company saw some wonderful productivity engagement through the process. And as associates continue to work remotely and some areas slowly begin the process of returning to the office, what kinds of productivity and technology challenges do you see arising?
[DON WEINSTEIN] Yeah, it’s a good question. And something we’re thinking a lot about these days, of course. The first thing I observed is as we moved everybody remote, there was this certainly surge of connectivity going on that causes a lot of technical challenges. And now we’re keen thinking already ahead to like, what the year end is going to look like and is that going to be another surge.
But the productivity question is I think the one that’s even more interesting because you see different views out there and different scenarios about, well, are we more productive in a remote setting or are we less productive? That’s a question that comes up from time to time. And I’ll share just a couple of dynamics.
And these are anecdotes that I’m observing. I don’t claim to have the full settled science on is work from home more or less productive yet. But the one thing I noticed is in the past where we had most folks working in an office and then a minority working from home, I thought it was hard to be in that subset minority of folks who weren’t in the office, versus when everybody is remote, it seems like, if you’re having a meeting and there’s 12 people in the meeting and nine of them are in the room and then three are on the phone or the video, you’d see that the folks who were on the phone or the video, every once in a while somebody was like, oh, stop, wait.
Folks on the phone, do you have anything to add? Because it almost becomes an afterthought. Whereas when everybody’s remote, I actually think it makes that aspect of it work a little bit better. But now that we’re talking about reopening, and by the way, just for full disclosure, I’m in sitting in Roseland right now because part of the very first wave of US pilots, Roseland was the first office and I was in the first cohort of folks who raised my hand and said, sure, I’ll come back into the office.
So I’m in Roseland right now. But some of our offices around outside the US have already started to open up. Shanghai was the first and a handful in Europe as well. But I think it’s a challenge when you’re in this partial hybrid state, right? So if everybody’s remote, I think the collaboration works better.
And in particular getting more voices heard. But when some folks are remote and some folks are in the office and you have this partial stasus going, I’m not sure that that works as well. And that’s something that we have to be very mindful of as we hopefully at some point start to transition back.
And the second thing I’d point out is where we have mature teams of people, I’ve got a mature team of folks, they’ve been working together for a while, they know each other, they’ve been working on their products for a while, they know the products. I think those teams going remote were capable of doing so.
And it was almost a seamless transition. Now we’re at the point, it’s July, and this is the time of year when we have our new college grads start showing up. So I’ve got close to 100, I’ve got 150 total who will be showing up here over the next several months. And so the ability to onboard and assimilate those new hires into the company– so first they have to learn about the company, about the products, about the other team members.
For most of them, it’s going to be their first real work experience. And the ability to manage through that in a remote setting I think is a little bit trickier. And it’s one that I don’t know that we’ve cracked the code on, but we’re mindful of now that we’re going through a virtual onboard process.
So I think those are some real challenges that we need to be really taking seriously here the longer that this stretches out. I don’t know what that would be like to onboard as a brand new, fresh out of college graduate, my first real job, my first company, and I’m remote for six months. Nobody knows. I mean, I saw Google came out and announced they’re going to be remote at least till next summer. Not saying that they’re right, but it just shows you where things are moving.
[NICK PALMER] Yeah, the vision is definitely down the road as opposed to next week or next month.
[DON WEINSTEIN] That’s right. Definitely doesn’t feel like it’s around the corner.
[NICK PALMER] And I think the key thing, though, that you bring up is that we’re mindful of it. We’re aware that this is a potential issue. And unless we are aware of it, we can’t really do anything about it. So it’s good to hear that we’re paying attention and monitoring, even if we don’t have all the answers right now. We’re closely watching and observing to see what those answers might become and reveal.
[DON WEINSTEIN] Exactly.
[NICK PALMER] So in terms of that, how do you see the business resource groups and Generations playing a role in this remote and hybrid environment?
[DON WEINSTEIN] It’s a great question. It’s an important one. And I’ll go back to the beginning of my career and tie that into why I always felt so passionate about Generations and the work you all are doing here. And that is that I felt like I did have a good onboarding experience when I first started my career back at GE.
Again, I came in as a brand new, fresh faced engineer right out of college and got to work on some pretty complex stuff. But I was lucky to really have– and this gets the spirit of Generations. We brought people in together as a class. So we had a cohort of people I came with, that I bonded with, and some of whom are still my closest friends to this day. So I had a lot of peer interaction and learning through it together.
And then we had senior level mentoring. And I remember a couple of mentors in particular who really took me under their wing and showed me the ropes a little bit and helped me really accelerate my career by being able to learn from the wisdom of some of the folks who had been there together and enjoy the camaraderie aspect of being part of a group of people and not feeling like I was at it alone.
It’s one of the things we’ve tried to bring to, as I mentioned, and we called our GPT Development Program when we onboard the new college graduates. We bring them in as a class and try and create that spirit. And we assign them mentors from within the broader organization. And as I look at where we are as an organization right now in terms of moving folks out of the office remote, I think it’s been about 20 or so weeks here in the US since we went to remote work.
And again, I know there was this initial surge of productivity because people were certainly, we had a lot of work to do as we were responding to various aspects of the COVID crisis from a regulatory or compliance aspect. And there was just the change element there, I’d say, almost like a mini little euphoria.
I’m speaking for myself now. I’ve been coming into an office for 30 years and I never really had an opportunity to work from home for any kind of extended period. So it was just different. You get a little bit of an, I’ll call it an adrenaline rush.
But I’ve seen and I’ve also read some interesting articles by others about how that phenomenon played out in a number of different organizations. But after that initial adrenaline rush, now we’re settling in for the long haul. And how do we keep folks engaged?
How do we avoid burnout in a world where if you’re like me, the whole work life balance, whatever it was went away because I wake up and get my first cup of coffee and, boom, I’m right at it. And then I just keep going all day, all night. That’s not a recommendation or a lifestyle tip, but it makes it harder.
And so there is some notion that the longer this drags on, the current scenario, you’re worried about either, you’re worried about burnout, you’re worried about fatigue factors, you’re worried about people losing engagement, losing connectivity to their team or to their organization.
And so I think the work that business resource groups do is probably more critical now in this type of environment than ever before in terms of creating a sense of affinity and shared purpose with people who have common interests and common objectives that span organization or function or job, but rather say, we have connectivity at a purpose level here.
And so I’m thankful that our ADP, that our HR organization had the foresight to start us down this path several years ago. And we’ve got this kind of infrastructure in place now today. Because I believe it’s critical to helping folks navigate the current crisis from a personal work life relationship aspect.
[NICK PALMER] Right on. Thank you very much, Don. We appreciate your time here today. And I wanted to thank you personally for your guidance and suggestions for the Generations Group. I know that we are looking forward to an amazing FY 21.
One of the things when we connect and we talk about is books and self-improvement that we’re undertaking currently. So would you like to leave the Generations members any suggestions on what you’ve been reading or studying lately?
[DON WEINSTEIN] Yeah, I’d be happy to. I’ll just share with you what I’ve been reading. I don’t know how helpful it is. But I’ve become quite a big fan of this– is an academic, a historian at Oxford, Yuval Noah Harari.
He’s written a few books. Sapiens was a history of humankind. Homo Deus was a kind of a forward looking one. And the current book that he’s got out there is called 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. And it couldn’t, in my opinion, couldn’t be more timely.
It was sort of a little dark, if I would offer, and maybe it’s in keeping with the times. It’s funny, he published it before the pandemic or some of the unrest that we’re seeing happen. But seems to have a little bit of– seemed a little prescient in that.
But I can skip you through some of it because there are like 20 chapters like, yep, that’s where we’re at. That’s not working, that’s not working, that’s not working. And I get to the end, I’m like what’s the answer? So what do we do? And his only answer is meditate.
[NICK PALMER] I’m a big fan of those books. I would recommend them to all of our Generations members. I know we’ve shared a couple of those in previous quarterly book roundups. So thanks for the plug on those.
[DON WEINSTEIN] Absolutely. This is the generation that’s going to carry us forward. So meditating and being a little contemplate, not the worst idea right now.
[NICK PALMER] Thank you very much, Don. We appreciate your time today. And we will look forward to having you back sometime in the future.
[DON WEINSTEIN] Thank you. My 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.
Women in STEM Profile: ADP’s CTO, Urvashi Tyagi
At Urvashi Tyagi’s first job after college, there were no other women in the company. None. ADP’s Chief Technology Officer knows first-hand how challenging the path can be for a woman in STEM.
Urvashi Tyagi grew up in India. She and her three sisters are all engineers; her oldest sister paved the way. When her sister told the family she wanted to become an engineer, Urvashi’s parents, aunts and uncles were worried no one would want to marry a woman engineer. And besides, it wasn’t even a good career choice with barely any job opportunities for female engineers. After an extended family meeting resulted in an unfavorable outcome, her parents had a change of heart and let Urvashi’s oldest sister join the engineering program. When it was Urvashi’s turn, no one questioned the decision. (And she and her sisters are all happily married and enjoying their professions.)
The Only Woman
While both technology and culture had changed a lot, there were still many challenges for women engineers. When Urvashi was a college undergrad, she was one of only four women in a class of 90 engineering students.
As she was graduating, most companies were not interested in recruiting women. So, she didn’t get a job from campus interviews. But Urvashi noticed an ad in the newspaper at a company that developed machine tools and wanted to hire college grads with design and computer numerical control programming experience. She was invited to interview and was delighted to get the job.
Show up, keep learning, and often it works out better than you could have imagined.
– Urvashi Tyagi, Chief Technology Officer at ADP
When she showed up on her first day, there were no other women in the company. There had never been a women’s bathroom. “Someone printed out a sign that said, ‘Women Only’ and taped it to one of the bathrooms for me,” She says. Grateful, Urvashi overlooked the fact her bathroom was in a different building than where she worked. “I had to figure out how to co-exist on the shop floor and focus on the work. Most of the time it was good. I learned a lot about solving complex engineering problems.”
Urvashi Tyagi
Later, she found out the hiring manager never had the permission to hire her. He sent the offer letter because she was one of the top two candidates selected based on test scores and interviews. His boss was not entirely pleased. “I got the job because of one individual who did not see things in a stereotypical way and was focused on finding the right person for the role.”
While working full time, Urvashi went back to school to earn her MBA. From there, she decided to teach operations management and information systems. As an academic associate for a couple years at the premier Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, she had the opportunity to work and connect with top professors all over the world. But she realized she enjoyed solving problems more than being in a classroom. One of her colleagues encouraged her to apply to a master’s of science program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, MA. Urvashi wasn’t sure she wanted more school or how she was going to pay for it, but she looked up the program. The customizable curriculum and the focus on applied learning swayed her. She learned that the deadline to apply had already passed, but after speaking with a professor at the school, she submitted her application and was admitted.
Her family didn’t want her so far away. Once again, her older sister supported her and encouraged her family to let her go. Urvashi’s sister was also moving to the United States with her husband and promised to keep an eye on Urvashi. Her parents scraped together the money to purchase their first-ever airplane ticket and a couple months of living expenses. She arrived in Massachusetts with two bags, one full of snacks.
Learning and Solving Problems
Since graduating from WPI in 2001, Urvashi has worked for many of the big names in technology, including IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon. She’s led global engineering teams doing product strategy, architecture, and development. When you download an audiobook or send an Outlook email, know that Urvashi was involved with the engineering and teams that made that possible.
Lockdown birthday celebration at home (left to right): daughter Riya, husband Shishir, Urvashi and son Tanish.
Today, she is ADP’s Chief Technology Officer, taking on that role in 2019. “I had no idea that I would be a CTO three years ago,” she says. “I didn’t plan it. I try to live in the moment and put all my energy into what I am doing and the problems I am working to solve. That drives the next things that happen.”
Urvashi’s approach is to make sure she is always learning and delivering in her role. “While the foundations of engineering and technology may not change that often, the applications are evolving constantly,” she says. “The only way to keep up is to be a lifelong student.”
It’s also essential to understand your own value to the organization. “Always know how the work you do will impact the company’s bottom line and how your work is adding value and taking the company forward.”
This can be challenging for women of color who often experience more scrutiny of their work, more criticism, and less credit for their accomplishments. “The one area where I have experienced unconscious bias is with criticism,” Urvashi says. “I have to listen carefully and know when the feedback is genuine and when it is more about the person giving the feedback. When I understand that, I can embrace the situation and not take it personally.”
Urvashi’s best advice is to live in the moment. “Things don’t have to be planned or the way you think they should be. Show up, keep learning, and often it works out better than you could have imagined.”
Ready for more?
Explore the stories of these and other ADP Women in STEM, and learn about careers at ADP.
Related Video: How ADP Walks the D&I Talk
One way ADP encourages diversity and inclusion (D&I) among its associates is through business resource groups (BRGs). ADP’s iWIN BRG is the company’s largest with 5000+ members (male and female) from 19 countries across the business. Learn how iWIN engages, equips and empowers its members to achieve personal and professional success through networking, professional development, and other educational opportunities.
Tech & Innovation Blog
I’m a start-up founder and angel investor, and here’s why you should consider a tech career at ADP
Voice of Our People, Why ADP, Workmarket
We recently caught up with Jeff Wald, angel investor, and President and Co-Founder of ADP’s WorkMarket.
We asked him why someone should consider a career in technology with ADP. Here’s what he said:
“What may have started life as a payroll company has transformed into one of the leading tech companies of the 21st century.”
When ADP acquired WorkMarket in 2018, a lot of our engineering and product associates were curious about how a ‘payroll company’ such as ADP aligned with WorkMarket, a cutting-edge start-up. It’s a fair (and expected) question, and one we continue to answer with ease as we seek the best and brightest in tech talent to join the ever-growing ADP team.
As part of the onboarding into ADP, WorkMarket associates quickly discovered the scale of ADP’s tech workforce and the market-leading technology the organization builds continuously. The WorkMarket team realized that ADP was the bridge between the cutting-edge nature of a tech start-up and the opportunity to have that technology utilized by hundreds of thousands of companies around the world. It’s a scale that few companies can even imagine.
What may have started life as a payroll company has transformed into one of the leading tech companies of the 21st century. With a significant emphasis on how to provide a better experience for users utilizing the latest technology, such as machine learning, AI, and conversational UIs, ADP offers its product and engineering associates the excitement and leading-edge environment of a start-up.
At ADP, tech associates get to work for a company that knows security and scale better than anybody. You get to work with a massive team of 9,000 technologists around the world. You get to work with one of the largest business mobile apps in the world. You get to be a part of a team that is moving trillions (yes, trillions) of dollars around the globe. In fact, ADP has built the largest business app ecosystem, ADP Marketplace, where ADP is the connection point for hundreds of companies to interface with hundreds of thousands of clients.
Our collaborative environment also means your opportunity is limitless. As a technology associate joining ADP, you can widen your purview beyond your specialization, and have the chance to exchange knowledge with the thousands of other technologists at ADP.
And it’s not just about the technology. It’s not an understatement to say that since WorkMarket joined ADP in 2018, I’ve been blown away by how truly partnership-oriented the people are here. The culture and environment at ADP are incredible! Highly mentorship-oriented, you can learn as much as you are willing to take in. There are always people ready to help you at ADP and opportunities to expand your skills and relationship base. This, combined with ADP’s cutting-edge technology and sheer size, means that if you want to work with a company that has the breadth and scope of opportunities to influence the world, ADP is that place.
There are only a handful of technology giants that are truly changing the world, and there are only so many companies on earth where the things you build touch tens of millions of people. Where you create something that substantially impacts the way we live. You know the names of those other tech giants, but you may not have known ADP was one of them. We are just getting started! Join us on this journey.
Jeff Wald is a President and Co-Founder of ADP’s WorkMarket and the author of The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations. He is based in New York City.
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.