Why Deloitte Australia’s HR technology is winning awards

In the midst of chaos, there is always opportunity, as a smart man once said. For Deloitte Australia, the pandemic proved the perfect chaos to innovate in employee experience.

Created because of, and during, the COVID-19 pandemic, to directly address the challenges of remote working, Deloitte Australia’s innovative mobile app experience WorkforceX is leading the charge in HR tech.

The app was crowned top HR tech dog at Australia’s prestigious HR awards, the annual AHRI awards organised by the Australian HR Institute – the leading national industry body for human resources professionals.

The Big Four firm took home the Peter Williams HR Technology award for its outstanding use of technology to address workforce challenges of the day – one that connects, engages and empowers employees, and achieves business outcomes. 

HR tech increasingly critical in post-pandemic world

In a post-pandemic world, as organisations move to more remote work operations, HR tech has become critical in helping companies address the significant challenges that come with such a shift. 

Not only is HR technology helping organisations allow for widespread remote work, but it’s also proving critical in improving engagement, performance and productivity making it easy for HR teams to gain insight into employee motivations and make the necessary adjustments to keep worker morale high and ultimately retain talent.

This is especially crucial now, during what is essentially a talent crunch with increasing numbers of employees leaving jobs where they don’t feel motivated, connected, or don't have the flexibility to work how and when they like. Recent data from Gartner paints a picture of a decline in Australian workforce health and confirms the heavy toll of more than 18 months living and working through a pandemic with The Great Resignation likely to hit Australia in 2022.

According to Heidi Chambers, Deloitte Australia's Workforce Experience and Digital Transformation lead, “we are now working in an era where bringing humans and technology together is one of the most important challenges for organisations to solve to ensure we thrive in years to come.”

Why WorkforceX is leading the HR tech pack

It was during COVID-19 that the HR leadership team at Deloitte set about developing a solution that could better connect its 600+ national workforce and keep people engaged and inspired to work in new ways. 

WorkforceX was born, and is now in operation across Deloitte Australia’s workforce and has been rolled-out as an external offering to the firm’s growing global client base of more than 150 firms. 

With a simple interface and human-focused design, the app connects employees, monitors employee wellbeing, and helps maintain engagement, while simultaneously answering the most common pain-points in communications and information accessibility.

It delivers personalised communications, including via surveys, and combines them with integrated access to learning resources, account management tools and other personal information needs. 

And it has certainly already resonated with Deloitte employees, with employee engagement of the app above 60%, more than twice that of the industry average.

“We have created something that resonated with our employees and allowed them to be their best selves by building the capability, simplifying their experience, and engaging their curiosity through a single, mobile-enabled communications platform,” says Deloitte partner Dave Brookes. 

WorkforceX was praised by the judges, including experienced industry practitioners, AHRI committee members, HR academics, among others, for creating faster communication channels and easier access to information across Deloitte’s nationwide workforce. It was further commended for enhancing the way employees experienced work, and for connecting and empowering key stakeholder groups. 

The judges said: “WorkforceX showcases the firm’s creativity in thinking about digital adoption, transformation, and workforce experience initiative to address problems relating to communication and accessibility of systems and tools.”

The app is now being rolled out to clients. “I look forward to sharing our innovation with our clients and the market to see a more engaged, empowered and productive workforce,” says Chambers. 

TCS among finalists for the HR tech award

Among the finalists for this prestigious HR tech award were James Hardie, Origin Energy, BHP and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). 

• TCS – to effectively navigate the ambiguity of the pandemic environment, TCS created the ‘Let's Chat COVID-19’ platform, helping to integrate information seamlessly for TCS’ Business Continuity Plan with health and safety priorities. 

• James Hardie Industries – the global building materials company innovated a new technology to train and assess its operators in the manufacturing plant, ensuring they are confident and competent at the tasks they perform. It has positively impacted how they produce training records, adhere to compliance requirements, and support the business to close capability gaps. 

• Origin Energy – the People & Culture Optimisation program was created as a HR transformation project enabling employees to self-serve common HR enquiries, reduce service delivery costs, and improve employee satisfaction when dealing with HR. this was achieved via this new tech which included a service portal, robotic process automation and AI systems.