Highlighting Wendy Muirhead, the Managing Director from Ceridian of EMEA, we dive headfirst into the ever-evolving world of Human Capital Management (HCM) platforms, focusing on Dayforce - one of the industry's rising stars. With Wendy as our guide, we explore how Dayforce is enabling organizations of all sizes to deliver fantastic employee experiences, from recruitment and onboarding through to payroll and on-demand net pay. We also touch on the groundbreaking Dayforce Wallet feature, which is revolutionizing the way team members advertise, collect shifts, and get paid instantly.
We follow Wendy's fascinating journey from working in finance to a career change into tele sales at Ceridian, and how she came to understand the intricacies of payroll. We delve into the crucial role Dayforce is playing in championing the payroll industry, particularly in the trying times of the pandemic, and how technology platforms have been instrumental in ensuring smooth payroll operations amidst the crisis. Wendy's insights into the reactive nature of the payroll industry and its importance in keeping people paid are particularly enlightening.
If you are thinking about a new HCM or Finance product, take 30 minutes, have a listen and maybe, Ceridian Dayforce could be what you are looking for!
Check out more of the Focus Cloud Group Podcasts and chats on your favourite media players!
Youtube, Spotify, Apple, Google!
Highlighting Wendy Muirhead, the Managing Director from Ceridian of EMEA, we dive headfirst into the ever-evolving world of Human Capital Management (HCM) platforms, focusing on Dayforce - one of the industry's rising stars. With Wendy as our guide, we explore how Dayforce is enabling organizations of all sizes to deliver fantastic employee experiences, from recruitment and onboarding through to payroll and on-demand net pay. We also touch on the groundbreaking Dayforce Wallet feature, which is revolutionizing the way team members advertise, collect shifts, and get paid instantly.
We follow Wendy's fascinating journey from working in finance to a career change into tele sales at Ceridian, and how she came to understand the intricacies of payroll. We delve into the crucial role Dayforce is playing in championing the payroll industry, particularly in the trying times of the pandemic, and how technology platforms have been instrumental in ensuring smooth payroll operations amidst the crisis. Wendy's insights into the reactive nature of the payroll industry and its importance in keeping people paid are particularly enlightening.
If you are thinking about a new HCM or Finance product, take 30 minutes, have a listen and maybe, Ceridian Dayforce could be what you are looking for!
Check out more of the Focus Cloud Group Podcasts and chats on your favourite media players!
Youtube, Spotify, Apple, Google!
I'm super excited to be joined by Wendy Muherd, who is the Managing Director from Ceridian of EMEA.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, I'm super excited to be here.
Speaker 1:So Wendy, being Managing Director of Ceridian, I hear, or a little birdie tells me there's this exciting product that is taking the HCM space by storm at the moment. It's called Dayforce, right.
Speaker 2:Dayforce yeah, world domination for Dayforce. You might have seen that on LinkedIn a few times Never. Dayforce is one of the fastest growing, fastest leading industry HCM platforms on the planet. It's really exciting because it supports organizations of all shapes and sizes, really give great people experiences to help attract and retain their people. But it does everything from recruitment on board in HR, workforce management, payroll and even net pay on demand, which is terribly exciting.
Speaker 1:The Dayforce wallet product, isn't it?
Speaker 2:The Dayforce wallet. So yeah, it just recently launched here in the UK, just at the back end of last year, and organizations that we work within our amazing Dayforce community they're seeing real benefits. And the benefits that they're actually seeing Lloyd is that they're using the wallet to advertise for shifts. So say, for example, you're a healthcare organization, you're looking after 12 nursing homes and if somebody can't make it in for their shift, there's an unfulfilled shift. But they have to have so many people in to be able to care for the patients that they look after. And so one of the CEOs of our amazing community she will post that on Dayforce. The existing team members who are available can see that shift, they can collect it, they can do the shift and then they can get paid immediately for doing that work.
Speaker 1:They just literally log into the app, press a button.
Speaker 2:Net pay as soon as they clock out because of the calculations all in one data architecture. With Dayforce, which is really unseen of in the industry, because that's the functionality that we've got, they can get net pay on demand immediately. Now the saving for her on bank staff is over £400,000. So, rather than go in a bank staff where you're paying premium for that labor, she's actually able to use somebody that her patients know, because it's someone who's part of her core team. They get extra money available immediately to them and it's paying for Dayforce. That's really what we're trying to do within Ceridians to make work life better, and Dayforce is the technology platform we use it at Ceridians, so it's how I manage my team.
Speaker 1:I think we're about to join as well. I think.
Speaker 2:I hear a little birdie has told me that I'm terribly excited because when your partners are actually your customers and you're part of the one community, it's so exciting because you're no first hand. The power of high technology can really help you be able to drive your business and help accelerate your people.
Speaker 1:Looking forward to it Really looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:I'm super excited to join.
Speaker 1:I was a part of that original event when you launched Dayforce Wallet and I stood there and listened to your presentation. Actually, oh, is it. It was your presentation and I was like this is a game changer. How can they do that? Can I tell you why?
Speaker 2:Well, no one else in the Gartner Magic Quadrant could do it. Here's why right, because your demographic data, your HR data, is there you build. The growth in the cloud is your workforce management, your shifts, the time people work. All of the payroll rules are all in the same data architecture. And then with payroll, it's continuous calculations, so I can literally go into the app. I can look at exactly what is my growths to net pay, what's my available pay, even today. I can click on it. I'll have a full payroll cycle on my app and then I can draw down what I want. So if I want to take for a coffee after this, it can be on my Dayforce Wallet card. And that's why Because a lot of organizations have grown their businesses up and they know HR, they know workforce management and there's this push and pull or global payroll. There's this push and pull of data, and because the data actually sits in the one place. That's why it's such a game changer and that's why I think it's quite a unique proposition.
Speaker 2:I don't feel that we're really well known in this market. In Amia and that's part of the challenge we're really championing our customers who are making those incredible savings, and you know what it's like when you have a good person in your organization If they are headhunted from another organization to go and work for a competitor. It's recruiting costs, training them up, getting them to the same level, and sometimes you might never ever get into the level of that person who was incredible to work with before. And so, actually, if you've got technology that you can make those moments that really matter in somebody's career, the technology makes those things and nudges in the right direction. That's the power of where we're going, using AI and machine learning all in the background to really make those memorable moments matter. And it makes it easier for line managers to be able to navigate. You know how they support their team members. Career Exploits are a really exciting new thing that we're excited about. Tell me all about it. Oh, my God it is. It's really exciting.
Speaker 2:And actually I think you'll be part of the community. So our community has a Q3 forum in August. So we get our community together every quarter from all over me and it's a hybrid environment because we've got customers that are in South Africa, mauritius and all over Kenya. You know we've got the biggest retailer in Kenya. They're amazing customer. But we try and really share our news of what's going on in our business and what we're innovating with the day force product, because our customers are asking for these things. So their feedback is what drives our roadmap. It's not a market instance, it's really true.
Speaker 2:So we have our user groups that happen on the first month of the quarter and there are six user groups here in Amin and led by customers who really volunteered, which countries? All over Amin. So we have it virtually so that anyone from Amin can join. We've got organizations that are headquartered in America and in APJ who also join us. So you literally just register for the link. If you're a day force customer, you get access immediately to it, and we've got six. We've got HR, recruitment, learning, workforce management, payroll and we've got a new one from the day that we met actually at the wallet launch, a wonderful chat called Stuart Privid. Big shout out to Stuart. He runs our Power BI reporting and dashboards user group and at that event he asked if he could lead that group. I'm like, absolutely, you're incredible and he's done wickedly amazing things with day force in his experience.
Speaker 2:And it's about bringing the groups together and sharing insights into how they use the platform. And so I always think that if you share an insights, a problem shared can remove that problem altogether, and the more that you can learn from one another. I think that's when Genius really starts to build, and we're seeing that just from the teams getting together across the community. That's month one. Month two is the forum where we get everyone together again in person and we have the hybrid virtual experience as well and we share a bit of an update what's going on in the business. We'll share new things that are coming out. We normally have one of the execs come in and support, educate the direction that we're going in. And then the third month of the quarter in fact it's tomorrow at 1.30, we have our community product feedback loop and that's where we'll have all of our customers come in and then say I want this, I would like that, oh, this is a great idea we've had, and so they feed all of their back directly to our product leadership team.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask you some more about that. Very cool.
Speaker 2:It's very, very cool.
Speaker 1:So where was don't take this literally, where was Wendy born? How did, how did Wendy come about? You know?
Speaker 2:Well, I have wonderful parents.
Speaker 1:And I was born in.
Speaker 2:Scotland. I was born in Govan, actually, which is where Sir Alex Ferguson's from. Oh, very nice it's not the most affluent of areas of Glasgow, but, yes, I was born in Govan, so in Glasgow.
Speaker 1:So what did you? How did you? How did your career start? You know what are your, what are your major career milestones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I first came out of uni, I worked all the way through uni, actually put myself through uni. I thought that was really important things. My parents weren't rich, so I worked full-time at Toys R Us yeah, toys R Us, jeffrey the giraffe, but that was how I got my way through uni. But yeah, I started my career in GE and I was in finance actually, and then I wanted to change a direction. I had a pretty big team and I was quite straight out university. I worked my way through the team at GE and built a team up and had quite a lot of responsibility, but I wanted to be more at home and so I wanted nine to five and there was this company advertising called Ceridian. I didn't have a clue about payroll and there was this payroll company.
Speaker 1:So what was you doing at GE? Just really quickly, so I can kind of link that to where you are now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, no. I was basically in finance running a team where we had responsibilities. At that point I had a team of about eight. They were wanting to increase it even further. I looked after people all across Northern Ireland and Scotland and the north of England, so I was doing a lot of travel on the road and back in those days. Lord, this was before the internet. Right, show my age here, right, but it's when I started in recruitment, we used to fax CVs.
Speaker 2:Remember you'd go in and you'd say I've got a business card and a smile, Can I get some details from you? Or you'd start going through the roller decks and you'd start doing your research and hitting the phones. It was a different world back then. But yeah, no, I started off doing that and I joined Ceridian and I had not a clue. The only interaction I had with payroll or HR was handing my MacB1 for me when I was pregnant with Jacob Right. So I had no clue, but I liked learning and it was nine to five, it was close by. I had my mom. I could drop him off and go to work and learn and interact with customers.
Speaker 2:I did tele-sales, Right. What's that? Tele-sales? Yeah, tele-sales at Ceridian. And within the first couple we had a great operations team upstairs. Some of the team are still part of our team at Ceridian Day Four today, because we've been through a bit of transformation ourselves and I learned how to I actually can process my own payslip manually.
Speaker 2:I'm quite proud of that Because of the fact that I sat with incredible people and I learned and then learned more about HR, HR, employment law, global payroll. I'm really passionate about global payroll. I love global payroll. I'm kind of geeky about that, but that was where I started my whole journey with payroll and I loved it that much that I just don't see the industry really championing themselves. So payrollers are inherently amazing people who will be so committed, Lloyd, that they will not go on holiday if they know they've got their payroll run Right, and so I think that they don't champion themselves enough. If there's an opportunity to celebrate the payroll industry as a whole, global or local, I think that's really important and I think they do incredible work, especially during the pandemic. You know, keeping people paid in the work that they would do.
Speaker 2:And some technology platforms aren't like Day Four. You can work anywhere in the world because it's online all the time. It's available. You could be sitting at the side of the pool. You could be sitting in your back garden. You could be sitting. You don't have to go into the office to operate that technology. Not all systems are like that. So during the pandemic, a lot of my friends in the payroll industry. They were having to go in and risk you know that you know risk of catching COVID before we started getting the vaccinations.
Speaker 2:I remember Right, and so you know there was a lot of people that were, you know, operated in that way to try and keep the lights on and keep people paid, and so I really think that the industry did a huge amount and they really came together over the pandemic. So the more that we can champion for it.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. I agree with you. It's not something I've ever thought about, but when I think back to all the challenges that we've had as an industry and as a company, you know, good for payroll.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good for payroll. Nobody ever phoned you up and said you did a great job, well done, my pay's right, but if it's wrong, you were the first one to hear.
Speaker 2:Very true, right, it's a very reactive industry and so that's why they're so passionate about making sure it's right all the time, because it's also. I had a number of conversations with my friends in the industry and I think it was Greg, actually, one of my friends. He's the global payroll manager at Amazon and we were chatting and he's like it's the first promise that you have when you get the contract. You know, here's the job I'm going to do. I'm signing this piece of paper. You're going to promise to pay me. So it's the first agreement, which is why it's so emotional, isn't it Right?
Speaker 2:When you think about it, you're down tall. It is If you've not been paid, 5p wrong. Why is it 5p less than last month? And it might be 5p, but if it's £5 over, not very often do people pick the phone up and go oh, you overpaid me 5p. So it's that sort of audit control and just really making sure that your business operates. If you don't pay people, they walk out the door and they don't look back. So it's a really important part of running a business and the compliance elements, the always changing compliance requirements that happen, and when you're in different countries as well, you're just multiplying the risk. So it's like how do you make sure that you can tell I love payroll. I get very geeky about it, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:After we finish recording, I'm going to ask you some more technical questions about payroll.
Speaker 2:I'm very excited about it Very excited. But, as I say, my whole journey with Ceridian was that the organization originated from the 1930s, from IBM, hence batch processing and it was based on the limitations of a computer Right, and so that's why payroll is typically batched. You typically have a cutoff point. You typically allow the payroll team to put all that data together. They calculate it. Some engines take days for that calculation to happen, but with wallet, you click a button, it's done instantly.
Speaker 1:My daughter. My daughter has just started a new job at Galwick and she's 17. And she's had to work whole month and she is about to get paid. She gets paid next week, I think. And the amount of times I've heard she's picked up the phone and I hear her on the phone. I'll see her on my mobile calling. I'm like how much is it going to be this time? You know, dad? I'm like, yes, you know how much she loved me. I'm like how much? Right, and the reason why she wants to do that, or the reason why she's doing that, is because she hasn't got any money to last her until she gets paid and she's having to spend all this money on travelling because we live. She's about an hour away on the train from where she's working, so Dayforce Wallet for her organisation would be a game changer.
Speaker 2:But it's true because I mean my son. He's so major as your daughter and Jacob works for our local authorities. He's a leisure attendant right. So he's taken a year round and he's decided he wants to earn some cash. He's doing really well but he, I think, went best part of eight weeks and it was the bank of mum. Can you tie me over Because I can't afford the bus fare? Can you tie me over? I really want to go on a date. Can you tie me over?
Speaker 2:And it's like such a long time before that first pay cycle. And actually what you find, we've got data on it because we've now the over a thousand customers of our 6,179 customers that we've got globally. Over a thousand of them have signed up for Wallet in the States, canada and the UK and it is something that we're really excited about going like with all of our payroll engines. It's a really exciting proposition. So that's the journey that we're on.
Speaker 2:But what we find is that majority of people will spend. Like you know, they get paid. They put their bills in their direct debits around payday, so the bulk of what they've been paid it's already been like taken at their bank account with bills in like up to 60 odd percent that's taken on. And actually it's just towards the end of the pay cycle, just before next payday, that they're hitting their credit card and they're putting. In fact I was on the phone with an HRD this morning. He was saying it's saving me 70 odd pound in interest, the fact that I can use Wallet to draw a dime rather than hit it on my credit card for fuel, food, shopping, those grocery items just before the next payday.
Speaker 1:One of your customers as well told me that that retention's improved by 21 percent. I think they mentioned more like 60 odd percent, I don't know over what period it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm taking that number from the global, what we're seeing globally of attrition, because, again, the one thing about day fours is we measure every single element of the system.
Speaker 2:So you know we're measuring NPS, we're measuring utilization, we can see where and drilling into the data, because it's all one data, like architecture, so it's really easy for us to be able to sort of drill in and measure these key metrics.
Speaker 2:And that's actually how we build our value case so that you, year over year, can actually contribute KPIs that we build in the technology that you can measure year over year, over year. So it's not just a case of we've got great partnership, we've made some savings and my payroll's accurate, right, it's not fluffy Like it's real and it's based on what's your engagement scores, how's your attrition reduced. So you know how quickly can you hire, where are the benefits to be able to hire and you know Zoe Blatchford is always talking about how wallet, for example, is the number one benefit that helps her attract people to her organization, when you know she has four universities that she can hire from with that level of expertise into her, yeah, and you know she's got roughly about 60 people come out of university that've got the skillset that she's looking for and it's a highly competitive market.
Speaker 2:So actually the fact she has wallet is attracting more of those individuals to come and join her Of course it will. Yeah, Because they love the fact that they can be able to draw down from the day that they get paid. You've done your days work. It kind of goes back to the olden days where you got your brown packet at the end for doing your farm work. You know like it's that kind of.
Speaker 1:I've got to think back, got to think back to my early career. Would I have joined an organization that allowed me to access my money instantly? Damn right, I would have, even if it was less.
Speaker 2:I think it's control. You're putting control in the employees hands of when they want payday to be. And I know there's a lot of people in the industry that worry about financial recklessness. But if somebody's financially reckless, they're doing it with alternative means. They're using the savings, they're using credit cards, they're using an overdraft, right?
Speaker 2:I mean, like I was a student, I had a like you know, I your Loan repayments and you know, is there an opportunity to get lumped up, some why I was a student? Like, yes, absolutely, I did that, paid it off a few years later. But you know, it's, it's you have to learn how to deal with debt. I think I was joke with my son about you're not an adult until you've got debt, all right, and so you're only an adult once you've got that. And and the whole purpose of this is actually Educating people and you could set controls, right, there's some organizations that won't allow people to draw down more than 50. There's some that will say, well, if you've taken that extra shift, you can get paid for that extra shift. That's not, maybe, necessarily for the full-pay cycle. So there is areas of control that we allow our customers to have, and so if they want to start off with a certain threshold Doesn't mean that it's one and done.
Speaker 2:It's like they can change it, because businesses are always going to change, and that's the beauty, actually, I think, of the tech, because as the technology evolves and develops and there's new things that's coming out, the releases are available so that you get all the compliance updates. You've got all of those things. You don't need to worry about actually getting something and manually update, and you know Something else. We will be managing the compliance releases for our customers where it comes, particularly for payroll, and so that's, that's the areas where it's it's. It's just a game changer.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree, when I was like I said, when I saw it I was like Wow, and I think when you're one of your sales guys was next to me actually and I was like that's a game changer. Yeah it's absolutely a game changer. He was like you know.
Speaker 2:Well, that's why. That's why there's so many people that want to join. So, really, I Genuinely don't have enough jobs for the amount of folks that are excited about the culture that we've built. So it's exciting.
Speaker 1:It'll be even better when you can, when you can do it, when you can roll out wallet right across the whole of the major.
Speaker 2:Do you know that be so exciting, so exciting? Oh well, germany, we we're yeah, we've. We launched in Germany in 2020 and we've got some amazing customers. They're in the Dak market, amazing customers, some of our biggest customers in the world actually from the Dak market, which is exciting and, and you know, for us, that's that's an area that we're really leaning into and, and you know, get in the name Serenity never had presence in Central Europe and so actually to get the name day force into the market over there is Terribly excited, but it's the same thing.
Speaker 2:We've got our offices in Mauritius, which always everyone wants to go. Last time was that rain the entire time, but it's, you know, it's amazing, amazing team that are there and incredible, incredible location. They really care about their customers and actually the growth that we've seen in South Africa, in Kenya, we've seen more and more in the Middle East, it's really starting to evolve. But it's our customers and them sharing their value that they see in the technology. We call it quantifiable value and that's how we're measuring. You know, if someone, if it takes you previously you know, half an hour to book a holiday, that's half an hour that somebody isn't hitting the phone for you or put in a candidate through an interview process. You can make that something that's really instant. They can just do as they're like, at the side of their desk or on the way to the bus stop. You know you, you have value immediately and making it easy for the employees to use it should feel like Facebook and also you've got real-time information as a business leader your fingertips.
Speaker 1:That's what I love about it, that's what I really like about it. It gives, I mean it will, it will transform, it will certainly transform our business from where it is, and there's I think there's things with our implementation that we haven't started the implementation yet, of course, but when, when we plan to go live, what I'm looking, what I'm looking forward to, is the things that we didn't expect to gain from it as well.
Speaker 2:All the extra points.
Speaker 1:So we've got the core we've got the core bits and we know that we want, you know, want to be able to book holidays, want to be able to do appraisals. Of course we're going to have payroll and wallet, of course is part of that which, you know, a lot of our guys earn lots and lots of commissions. So would they? Would they use that perhaps to train easeward whilst they're getting up and running? But some of the established guys won't need to.
Speaker 2:You can even base it on, I mean, and and again. It's conversation for you to have and make your own decisions on. And again, you don't have to stick with that decision for life, right? We want you to love day force and be with us forever, right? So it's not something that is is fixed, so you could start and just base it on their base salary.
Speaker 2:And actually what we find is the average is drawing about 120 pounds and it's normally over 25 different interactions during the pay cycle and it's fast food or it's fuel or it's you know it's. It's those interactions. We haven't seen any big, big spends. We haven't seen massive blips where we've seen people draw. I think the other bit I really personally like about it is the fact that you know, I can draw it down on my wallet card and I can spend on my wallet card, but I can also send it straight to my bank and there's instantly in my bank. That's super cool, so like because I just have to transfer functionality so I can send it straight to my bank. So if I've worked today rather than sitting in Surinne's bank account, I actually can move it into my bank account and make interest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just thought another thing like oh great, and we're going on holiday middle of the month, for example for other people. I wasn't talking about specifically myself.
Speaker 1:I'm going on holiday, actually on Tuesday, to Italy, oh, very nice. I'm afraid of days. But someone else in that situation? You know what it's like when you book a holiday and you're halfway through the month, so you've paid your bills and therefore you're not left with a lot of money in the month, are you? You could effectively draw down that money to use on holiday for when you come back and then you get paid again. There's so many use cases that I didn't even think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it just again. It just puts the power and the control into your hands. So if you don't want to use your savings and you want to just balance it in a different way, it is and like when I first got it and it was amazing actually the conversations that I, of course, was on the charter because I wanted to test it. So I said, I put my hand up.
Speaker 2:I would definitely be your, peter, so I was really excited about it coming to the UK and my kids, it was the conversations that we had around them actually understanding what's the difference. So what is that and why do you have that? You have taxes, you have deductions. So I said what does that mean? And then it's like get back tomorrow, get to work, because I want to see that number go up. And so it became like a bit of a gamification thing with the kids where we had loads of conversations around. You know, oh, so you work and you do that and that's why you're getting paid and actually just even understanding what pay slip is and then understand the mechanics of budgeting and those types of conversations.
Speaker 2:I don't think that should be a responsibility for school. I think as a mother, that's my responsibility, Right. And what I loved was it just kept the conversation and really knighted it because they could see something like these kids today are all on iPads and gaming and they want to see and feel in their instant, instant. When's that Amazon package coming? What hour is it coming? Like that knows them. Your head boys.
Speaker 2:But you know, instant people are instant access, and if you can't service people who are looking for that level of instant access, like your daughter and my son, they're not happy about having a way you know. And so actually it's like, how do you make sure that it's done in the correct way, a thoughtful way, an educated way, but also that you can really give a great people experience to your employees? And that again, is another reason why investing the tech Tech isn't, it's not cheap. It's not cheap. It takes time. You need to learn it. But that's any technology If you're going to get the best out of it, learn how to use it properly, Be part of the community and share ideas and innovations. And that's what we're building in our community. But those are the things that once you've made that investment, you start to see all these benefits and if you've got that interaction with the tech and you can start to measure.
Speaker 2:So what we're doing with Career Explorer that I've got excited about earlier is that you know you can. Actually it's going to have like a skills marketplace, so you know, if people want to aspire to this particular role, well, what do you need to have to be in that role? If that's the next step in your career. Do I have that skill? I can put my own skills in, but actually I might need that skill to be able to be in that next role. So how do I go through day for slurning to actually up skill myself and actually get myself ready for that new role? How can I find mentors who can help me in this position? How does the technology keep that conversation going to nudge their career in the right way? So it's wickedly exciting.