ANZ reaches halfway point on workforce systems overhaul

ANZ has reached the halfway mark on a three-year technology uplift to implement a global workforce portal based on SAP’s SuccessFactors and ServiceNow.

Representatives from the bank discussed ongoing work to centralise HR systems under the PeopleHub portal at the ServiceNow Knowledge 2022 conference in Sydney.

PeopleHub, which is being led by ANZ’s Talent & Culture (T&C) arm with the assistance of EY, will eventually be the single point of entry into all HR services for employees across 32 countries.

Efforts to replace largely legacy-based HR services were prompted by the pandemic in late 2020, following on from a smaller scale initiative in 2018.

“The original objective was focused on experience, so how do we improve the experience for people at ANZ, whether they’re joining, moving or growing their careers,” program director Colin Scott said.

“That was the kind of the genesis of it, but we went through a fairly long cycle to make sure we got everything aligned.

“Of course, in 2020 Covid-19 happened, and that crystalised the importance of the journey even more because of the pressures and the changes that caused for the bank.

“Just simple things like taking the pressure off the people channels and the call centres to be able to deal with a large number of queries from people who weren’t able to get into the office.”

18 months in

In the 18 months since the program kicked off, the T&C team has progressively rolled out services using ServiceNow as the system of flow and SuccessFactors as the system of record.

Head of Technology for finance, treasury, procurement, HR and corporate experience Darrin Burke said the program initially focused on “digitisation across the employee flow”.

“From a delivery perspective, one of our objectives was to get to value really quickly,” he told the conference.

“We started the program and launched into wave one, which was really about deploying the HR service desk in ServiceNow.”

In August 2021, the team deployed a chatbot channel to access global knowledge content, having previously established the underpinning framework.

“That was really the first release of capability – knowledge and chatbot capabilities, centralising everything into one global process for ... getting help with HR services,” Burke said.

Following that initial release, the bank then “very quickly” moved onto the onboarding, which is “tightly integrated with the SAP recruitment capability”.

Burke described the capability – which was deployed over December 2021 and January 2022 – as an example of “speed to value in the first drop”.

ANZ hires around 6000 staff and 8500 contractors globally each year, meaning this was a “really key enabler” for the bank.

Simplification efforts have also seen ANZ decommission “300-plus online forms and about 15 separate mailboxes" used for HR assistance, emails, and collaboration tickets.

“All of those are gone now, everything happens in ServiceNow and we have full transparency of all the capabilities through that platform,” Burke said.

Positive feedback

Since go-live in August 2021, around 27,000 queries and 22,000 chatbot interactions have already occurred through the PeopleHub portal.  

Around 4000 staff have also been onboarded using the onboarding capability, with the majority providing “really good feedback and sentiment”.

Burke said that “flow” would only increase as contractor onboarding – the next wave – came onto the platform.

“Across the 32 countries, everything is really transparent,” he added.

“The ServiceNow platform give us amazing insights into ticket closing times, where tickets are getting stalled and provides automation capabilities are actually showing us how to increase that flow.”

Next steps

The bank is now looking to transition its core HR and payroll functions.

“The next big phase for us is to actually decommission and migrate to the new HR platform, including payroll, for all of our big countries,” he said.

The evolution of “employee flow through ServiceNow into our core HR system” will be a key enabler.

Burke said this would involve some “really big integration changes”, describing this as the “central nervous system of HR data”.

“As part of the core HR, we’re also looking at some foundational data elements that will both enable ServiceNow flows for the organisations, but also downstream business services,” he said.

“So that’s our next drop; that really core HR and payroll, and then shortly after that we’ll then be focusing on learning, performance management and talent management, which really completes the HR business service ecosystem.”

ANZ is also looking where it can use ServiceNow elsewhere in the business, starting with finance and procurement.

“We’re about to launch procurement into ServiceNow as well for their case management and knowledge,” Burke said.

“And we’ve got some really big programs and projects now looking at audit services, risk services, workplace services and quite a few IT functions as well when we think of security and BCP [business continuity planning] capabilities.

“So suddenly, all of this is coming together, and the data visibility is just really enormous about how you connect those cross-corporate flows together and drive massive self-service.

“And probably the key thing that we’re now starting to think through is that unified portal experience and that unified mobile experience.”