It’s time for another edition of the Employment Hero product update, where we share all of the latest and greatest updates over the past month.

In October, we launched lots of brand new features, making this one of the biggest and most exciting months we’ve had all year. From launching Hero AI and SmartMatch, right through to our brand new Compensation Management tool and more, it’s all in here and ready for you to use in-platform.

Because the October product update deserves a round of applause.

Introducing SmartMatch

At Employment Hero, we’re driven by one mission – to make employment easier and more valuable for everyone. And SmartMatch is the latest way we’re helping SMEs do just that.

We all know that the hiring process can be a challenging road, filled with stacks of applications and time-consuming screening. But what if it didn’t have to be? With SmartMatch, we’ve introduced a smarter way to recruit.

Thanks to our continually evolving AI, SmartMatch matches you with top talent for every role in your business, so you’ll always have work-ready talent waiting in the wings.

SmartMatch works by connecting you with relevant candidates for jobs that you’re hiring for, and roles that you may not have yet thought about. This means that you can be matched with candidates for your existing roles, helping to rapidly accelerate your ability to find and hire new employees.

Whether you’re looking to expand on additional teams, create more depth to existing functions, or replace employees that are leaving, SmartMatch is the most efficient way to connect with candidates.

Learn more about SmartMatch here.

Hero AI is here! Your new workplace superpower

Every people leader knows the drill — the repetitive questions that pop up time and again. “What’s our leave policy?”, “what’s our flexible working policy?”. That’s where Hero AI steps in.

Hero AI protects your time by deflecting repetitive questions and freeing you up to focus on the mission-critical work you do, so you can get back to working ON your business, not in it.

Hero AI is a chatbot designed to streamline the access and understanding of policy documents for employees. Using state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies, Hero AI offers a robust Q&A interface that transforms complex policy documents into easily searchable and understandable formats in the Swag app.

Learn more about Hero AI and keep an eye out for upcoming product developments.

The WorkZone mobile app has been transitioned to Swag

Having everything in one place, just makes life easier. Which is why we’ve made the decision to move the WorkZone mobile app over to the Swag app.

On 12 October 2023, the WorkZone app was decommissioned.

You can download the Swag app here for iOS and here for Android to get started. Please note that the Swag app has all of the features that the WorkZone app has, so you’re not losing any functionality by switching from WorkZone to Swag.

If you would like to know more about the transition process, see this article for how to configure the open beta to access WorkZone features in Swag, or read the FAQs about the open beta configuration.

Disclaimer: The WorkZone decommission date of 12 October is specific to customers billed directly by Employment Hero Payroll and KeyPay. This does not affect businesses using QBO Payroll powered by Employment Hero.

Say hello to the Compensation Manager – the easiest way to manage employee compensation

We are super excited to announce that we’ve launched our brand new Compensation Manager tool, allowing you to manage compensation reviews in one place.

Now, you can make sure that any compensatory changes are managed fairly and efficiently, and are properly administered to the individual employee. This new tool is designed to streamline and automate the compensation review process – which every HR and payroll professional can attest is usually a big administrative burden.

Powered by over 400,000 Employment Hero data points, the tool also provides salary benchmarking for your team based on seniority, industry, and residential state. Plus, helps managers by telling them if an employee’s salary is low, medium or high compared to the benchmark, and how confident the tool is in the benchmark banding.

The Compensation Manager feature is ‌currently on a pre-release trial to Premium & Platinum users. Further details regarding the full release will be announced soon.

Learn more about the Compensation Manager.

You asked, and we listened! We’ve added more features to how you customise the Employment Hero navigation menu

We all know that every business has their own way of working. You know what you need to do, where you need to go and when you need to do it. That’s why we’re giving you greater flexibility to pick and choose the menu items that you, your employees and contractors use frequently and have access to – helping everyone access what they need to more easily.

Although this is an existing feature, we’ve added additional product features to the list, so you can customise it even further for your team.

This includes the option to toggle the menu customisation for the following features:

• Documents
• Bulk Issue Documents
• Document Templates
• Induction content
• 1:1s
• Feedback
• Goals
• 360 Reviews
• Performance Reviews
• Compensation management
• Staff directory (Swag only feature)

Menu customisation is available to users on Premium and Platinum subscriptions.

Learn more about customising the menu.

Introducing the new HR Metrics widget on your dashboard

We know how important it is to understand your team and organisation so you can make quick and impactful decisions, which is why we’ve just rolled out our dynamic HR Metrics widget on your dashboard for platform admins and owners.

Available in trial for Premium and Platinum subscriptions, the HR Metrics widget has been designed to give you an instantaneous snapshot of your organisation’s HR health with customisable filters and real-time updates. From salary distributions to turnover calculations, we’ve handpicked the top 5 HR metrics to empower you to make informed decisions more efficiently than ever before.

Clock in and out with Swag

Employees that need to clock in and out can now do it in the Swag app and have a timesheet created from the entry.

The Swag app Clock In and Out feature allows an employee to submit their start and end shift times, and log any breaks they’ve taken during their work day.

You can also change your work type and location if needed, and add any required notes to your clock in submission.

Learn more about clocking in and out with Swag.

The Paid Break function can now apply in the rules tester

In February this year, we let you know that functionality had been released which allowed businesses who have the billing plan inclusion “Time and Attendance” enabled, to record both paid and unpaid breaks.

At the time, this functionality didn’t extend to the rules tester, which meant that the costing and results within the rules tester could not be directly compared to the pay run. This work has been extended, and now includes the rules tester.

In order to include paid break conditions within the rules tester, tick the box in the ‘Paid break’ column. If you are importing timesheets with paid breaks, the rule tester will automatically keep that setting.

Learn more about Rule Sets here.

Managers can now search for employees they manage on the search bar

Need to find out employee information quickly? Now managers can search for their direct reports in the search bar. This makes it easier to find out employee details and information, without having to manually search through the employee list. It’s a small change, with big impact.

We’ve added new workplace compliance templates to the UK template library

HR documents and templates help govern everything employment-related – from onboarding an employee right through to managing performance.

Keeping our template library updated and in line with legislative requirements, we’ve made updates and added to our range of templates available.

You can now find the following disciplinary templates in-platform.

• UK – Disciplinary – Letter confirming employee suspension pending investigation
• UK – Disciplinary – Letter notifying disciplinary investigation
• UK – Disciplinary – Letter inviting employee to disciplinary investigation meeting
• UK – Disciplinary – Investigation Report Template
• UK – Disciplinary – Invite to disciplinary hearing
• UK – Disciplinary – Disciplinary Outcome Letter
• UK – Disciplinary – Invite to Appeal Hearing
• UK – Disciplinary – Letter Confirming Appeal Outcome

Variable Automated Pay Schedules

Looking to save time? Automated pay runs are here!

We’re giving you time back in your day by allowing you to automate pay runs, meaning users don’t have to perform the pay run action themselves. Now, the system can do it automatically in the background.

When setting this up, you can choose what components of a pay run you want automated and what components still require manual intervention.

Learn more about Variable Automed Pay Schedules.

FPS Audit report

We’ve made some updates and additions to the FPS audit reports and what you can do with them.

1. If you have RTI submissions set to be submitted in test mode, when you submit an FPS this will now show on the FPS Audit Report highlighting that it has been submitted in test mode. To check if RTI submissions are set to be submitted in test mode go to: HMRC Settings > Would you like to make RTI submissions in test mode for this business?
2. You can now also preview the FPS file that has been submitted via the pay run by clicking on the report button in the pay run actions options.
3. There is now also an option to preview the National Insurance figures that have been included in the pay run and on the FPS. Click on the report button in the pay run actions options and select FPS NI figures preview to access.

Learn more about the FPS National Insurance Figures Preview and the RTI Submission Messages and FPS Audit Report.

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