LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
IN ACTION
Think Beyond Today
Driving a #OnePaychex Culture
NPS Surveys that our team receives post-implementation frequently commented on the Paychex departments feeling segregated, specifically between Time & Payroll. So, I began meeting bi-weekly with supervisors on the New Client Onboarding (NCO) Team with the main objective of establishing a higher level of partnership between our teams to become #OnePaychex and improve both our clients' and employees' experiences. Our successes include (1) creating visibility to easily identify the assigned NCO/TAA specialists, (2) the development of KCS articles providing additional resources on the NCO & TAA processes, (3) establishing a WebEx Space that NCO & TAA reps join and easily connect to ask questions, (4) brainstormed requirements for "Time Live with First Payroll".
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Leading Change - Time Live with First Payroll
As a result of my experience from the NCO Partnership, I was selected by Senior Leadership to represent TAA in our Sr. Director's pillar project to make "Time Live with First Payroll" a standard process instead of an exception. We have formalized a request and approval process for both MPSC and OS clients who require this set up. The purpose of this process is to ensure that Sales is setting attainable expectations with clients regarding implementation timeline & ensures our TAA ICs won't experience any road blocks because we partner with NCO to confirm the minimum set up requirements have been met on the payroll side prior to approving. This is just the first step in establishing this culture change. Post year end, we are looking to cut down the approval process by having PACO updated to include a field that indicates TAA Live with First Payroll. We will also be coordinating meetings with Sales to educate them on what our requirements are. Ultimately, once this project is complete, there will be no manual approval process and this will be an option available to all new Paychex Flex clients, giving us a more competitive edge in the market.
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Influencing a New Approach to Retention
Our Implementation space previously had no Blue Chip regarding retaining clients. In Fall 2020, I found that 38% of clients cancelled during implementation. As this was a clear opportunity for us, I drafted a proposal for a Retention Blue Chip that would reduce our cancellations by 6%. I came to this percentage after categorizing our losses as controllable, semi-controllable, or uncontrollable and then walked down our controllable losses by 20% and our semi-controllable losses by 5%. My peers and managers were receptive to this Blue Chip and we decided to add it into our metrics.
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Come Fall 2021, a peer and I started the "Retention Committee" that is comprised of some Implementation Coordinators and our Team Leads. The purpose of this committee is to drive new ways of thinking and develop new approaches when working with clients who are unresponsive, idle, wanting a delay, or have different expectations regarding they system's functionality and/or our implementation process. We are currently preparing a new pilot for unresponsive/idle clients, developing retention word tracks, and facilitating round table meetings with our Sales partners. Many great things still to come!
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Drive Results
Empowering Employees to Succeed through Visibility
To increase employee visibility of their metrics and ultimately increase their performance, I created a Salesforce Dashboard for my team of direct reports. It displayed case counts, clients approaching last touch, clients out of SLA for last touch, clients out of SLA for first contact, aged cases, current and previous month graduations & cancellations, and unresponsive/idle/covid-delayed clients. This tool is emailed to my team each morning and they have the ability to refresh the dashboard to receive in-real-time updates. The Salesforce Team Dashboard has proven to help employees stay organized & on track with their clients, identify where they must take action, and take accountability for their performance.
My employees found this tool to be so beneficial, that my peers adopted it for their teams as well!
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Driving Employee Performance with Enhanced Inspection
I led our Business Inspection Committee and worked with our Analysts to revise our PowerBI Dashboard. Our Employee Scorecards previously gave a daily snapshot of employee metrics, but it was not intuitive enough to detail an employee's performance-level over time. This hindered our ability as leaders to identify their areas of opportunity for coaching, review their progress made, and provide accuracy and consistency in their performance reviews. The updated OS IMP Dashboard has been live since February 2021 and has been key in developing our employees into successful contributors.
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Contributing an Analytical Approach to Develop Client Experience Scores
During our FY22 Blue Chip discussion, we were looking for a way to accurately determine our employee's impact on the client experience while taking into consideration multiple key performance indicators - responsiveness, unsolicited feedback, call monitors, survey results, etc. I took initiative to compile these individual metrics into a single score - The Client Experience (CX) Score - by replicating the formula used for NPS. Each supervisor is now able to leverage this tool in Excel to track their IC's various service KPIs and output an overall CX Score. My analytical approach to developing this new blue chip positioned me to act as a leader amongst my peers. I guided the conversation, provided thoughtful insight, and drove this into fruition.
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Delivering a Department-Wide Contingency Plan
Calendar Year End is always a high-volume time for Paychex. I initiated meetings with our partners from Support, Projects, Billing, ASO/PEO Team, and EMPSC to discuss how we can partner during our high volume. I then established a guide with status/bandwidth parameters accompanied by action plans for each team. This tool allows us to easily identify when a team needs assistance and who they can leverage for additional support. To ensure strong communication between our teams, I scheduled weekly status meetings and developed a daily status board so all teams can easily identify who can be leveraged for assistance. I then conducted a presentation for next-level management. Since this action plan proved to be a success last year, we have decided to use it again this year and add in some additional teams!
Be Agile
Maintaining Efficiencies With Low Leadership Presence
During the first 6 months of FY22, our organization underwent significant leadership turnover - 3 peers promoted internally, 1 peer left Paychex, and 2 went out on leave. With the coming and going of not just leaders, but also direct reports, I took initiative to manage the team restructures every step of the way to ensure (1) minimal movement & disruption to employees and (2) keep the teams of existing supervisors balanced for maximum efficiency during such a difficult time.
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Expanding Recruiting Efforts
Paychex, along with many other businesses, has struggled to recruit and retain talent. Our Implementation Team typically follows the Career Path and we hire internal applicants who already have the product training required for this role. Unfortunately, this approach was not producing enough candidates to fill our open positions before going into Year End. So, I partnered with our Recruiter and Onboarding Excellence Team develop a new hiring strategy. We opened up the posting not only to candidates outside our department, but also external to Paychex. This resulted in Online Services TAA Implementation being 100% staffed in preparation for Year End.
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Reallocating Volume & Talent in Support of #OneTime Team
After OS Implementation became fully staffed, we were leveraged by our MPSC Implementation peers to assist with their volume and encourage employees apply for their open positions, as they were down 13 employees and their ICs were averaging 70 cases per IC. I partnered with our Team Lead and MPSC Supervisor Team to understand the types of cases they implement (Add-Ons, Non-PM New Clients, New Enterprise Clients, etc) and facilitated the re-routing of Add-Ons & Non-PM New Clients to our OS Implementation Team and training on the process variations. In just 1 month, we were able to drop their average case count per IC to 55 and significantly reduce their escalations, as their dedicated ICs now have more bandwidth to meet their clients' needs. We collectively supported 11 OS ICs who were all promoted over to the MPSC Implementation Team, bringing the team close to their Budgeted Headcount of 41 ICs. We were strategic in planning for this large reallocation of our talent. We negotiated to have the transitioning ICs keep their current books of business and partnered closely with our Time Teams (Support, Projects, & ASO/PEO) to coordinate shadows, drum-up applicants, and establish flexibility with release dates to limit the impact felt by Online Services Implementation.
Inspire Others
Emerging as a Leader Amongst Peers
I emerged as a leader amongst my peers throughout the creation of Mid-Year Review for our Senior Management Team. The purpose of this presentation was to report on the health of the business and the various actions that we had taken to set our team up for success. We discussed as a team the different points we wanted to cover and distributed the work amongst us all. In our group meetings, I recognized that some of my peers were struggling to tell their stories. I met with those individuals one-on-one, as well as offered perspective in our meetings all together, to break down what exactly the opportunity was, the action they took, and the results. I'd like to think that the coaching I provided helped my peers gain skill and courage to feel successful. In fact, I did receive feedback from my peers throughout this exercise that I was integral in creating the flow of this presentation and driving its success. A quote from one of my peers can be found under "Feedback".
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Collaborating in the Employee Engagement Committee
This is the 2nd year that I've participated in our department's "Team Building Engagement Committee". I work with my peers to brainstorm and facilitate various activities, contests, and events. With our current team organizer going out on maternity leave, I'll be facilitating our bi-weekly committee meetings to promote discussion and empower members to work on initiatives & boost moral.
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Developing Employees for Career Advancement
I've encouraged and assisted my employees in their development so they can take their next step in their careers. In my 2 years as a Paychex Leader, I have had 4 employees obtain their Senior title and 10 employees promote further into other roles including Supervisor, Quality Assurance Analyst, MPSC Service Partner, & ASO/PEO Service Partner.
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Waggl Results
I am dedicated to creating a team of engaged & passionate contributors. Below are my Waggl results from the most recent surveys:
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May 2020 - RTO Service : 93%
April 2020 - Service : 100%
Nov 2020 - Engagement : 86%
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