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Featured
8 min read
Jamie Strnisha
Given the Great Resignation, recent mass layoffs, and store closures, the past year has shown just how crucial strategic workforce planning can be to overall organisational health and longevity. But it’s not always easy for HR teams to understand where to start when developing workforce planning strategies. So let’s dive into what strategic workforce planning is, how it differs from organisational workforce planning, and how people analytics can transform what your HR team can achieve with your workforce planning strategies. What is strategic workforce planning? Strategic workforce planning in a nutshell is having the right people in the right roles at the right time at the right costs, which can lead to better productivity and lower costs. Strategic workforce planning is one of the most important elements of HR strategy. It helps businesses identify skills gaps, carefully manage resources, benchmark performance against competitors, and ensure proper budget allocation for the organisation. Strategic workforce planning is the process of analysing an organisation's workforce needs, both present and future, and developing strategies to meet those needs. It involves assessing the current workforce, developing scenarios, identifying gaps and future needs, analysing people data to inform decisions, and creating plans to address those gaps and needs. Practising effective workplace planning also involves continuously measuring and monitoring the implementation and effectiveness of those plans against your KPIs and organisational goals. The process typically involves gathering and analysing data about the current workforce, such as employee skills, cost, and demographics, as well as external factors that may impact workforce needs, such as changes in technology, industry trends, and economic conditions. This can include hiring new people, training current employees, and planning for future changes in the workforce. The difference between strategic vs. operational workforce planning Strategic workforce planning and operational workforce planning are two different approaches to managing an organisation's workforce needs. Strategic workforce planning focuses on long-term workforce planning, typically looking at a three- to five-year horizon or beyond. It involves analysing the organisation's strategic goals and objectives and determining the workforce requirements needed to achieve them. This includes identifying the skills, knowledge, and capabilities that will be needed, and creating plans to develop and acquire those resources. Strategic workforce planning is a high-level planning process that is typically undertaken by senior management and HR leaders. Watch a One Model strategic planning session. Operational workforce planning, also known as strategic staffing or headcount planning, is more focused on short-term workforce needs, usually over a six-month to two-year time horizon. It involves short-term management of the workforce and is focused on ensuring that the workforce has the resources it needs to succeed. For example, this may include ensuring that an organisation can staff up to meet seasonal demands (retail at Christmas, farming during the summer, etc.). Operational workforce planning is often carried out by mid-level and front-line managers. How has strategic workforce planning changed over time? Strategic workforce planning has undergone significant changes over time in response to changes in the economy, technology, and social trends. Here are some of the key changes that have occurred: Increased focus on skills: In the past, strategic workforce planning tended to focus on job titles and positions rather than skills-based workforce planning. However, today's strategic workforce planning is more focused on identifying the specific skills and knowledge that are needed for each role. Data-driven approach: Advances in technology have made it easier to collect and analyse workforce data, leading to a more data-driven approach to strategic workforce planning. This allows organisations to make more informed decisions about their workforce needs. Emphasis on flexibility: With the rise of the gig economy and remote work, organisations are increasingly seeking more flexible workforce solutions. This has led to a greater emphasis on strategic workforce planning that can adapt to changing conditions — empowering organisations to optimise which roles should be full-time or contract, or which roles can be hybrid or in-office. Strategic alignment: Strategic workforce planning has evolved to be more closely aligned with organisational strategy, helping organisations ensure that they have the right people with the right skills in the right positions to achieve the organisation’s strategy. Peter Howes does a great job of showcasing how HR workforce planning has changed over time. Watch the recorded webinar. How strategic workplace planning impacts workforce planning Strategic workplace planning can have a significant impact on workforce planning in a number of ways. Here are some examples: Attracting and retaining top talent: A well-designed workplace can be a major factor in attracting and retaining top talent. Promoting collaboration and productivity: By designing a workspace that supports teamwork and communication, organisations can help employees to work together more effectively and reduce workforce productivity issues. Supporting health and well-being: Creating an environment that is focused on keeping employees healthy and reducing stress helps with your long-term planning by ensuring your workforce stays at peak performance. Adapting to changing workforce needs: If an organisation is shifting towards more remote work or hybrid work arrangements, workplace planning can be used to create a workspace that supports those arrangements. What role does people analytics play in strategic workforce planning? People analytics plays an important role in strategic workforce planning by providing data-driven insights into an organisation's workforce. By using data and analytics tools, like One Model, organisations can better understand their current workforce and identify trends and patterns that can inform their workforce planning strategies. People analytics can help organisations to: Identify workforce gaps: By analysing workforce data, organisations can identify areas where they have a shortage of skills or talent, allowing them to focus their strategic workforce planning efforts on addressing those gaps. Forecast future workforce needs: People analytics can be used to project future workforce needs based on factors such as demographic changes, industry trends, and business goals. Optimise workforce efficiency: By analysing workforce data, organisations can identify opportunities to improve workforce efficiency, such as by reallocating resources or adjusting work schedules. Measure the effectiveness of strategic workforce planning: People analytics can be used to track the success of workforce planning strategies over time, allowing organisations to adjust their plans as needed to achieve better outcomes. Increase ROI Businesses can make fast decisions, optimise ROI, and improve customer and stakeholder satisfaction by leveraging data-driven insights into trends and predicting future needs. How One Model supports better strategic workforce planning One Model is a people analytics company that helps organisations transform their workforce data into actionable insights for better decision-making. By leveraging advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, One Model can support better strategic workforce planning capabilities for businesses of all sizes. One of the key strengths of One Model is its ability to integrate data from multiple HR systems, such as HRIS, ATS, LMS, and others, into a single data warehouse. This allows organisations to gain a complete view of their workforce data, eliminating the need to switch between different systems to analyse data. In addition to its advanced analytics capabilities and intuitive interface, One Model also offers a customizable dashboard that allows HR professionals to monitor and track key workforce metrics. With this tool, HR teams can identify areas of concern, measure the success of their workforce planning strategies, and adjust their plans as needed. Overall, One Model supports better strategic workforce planning by providing a single, integrated platform for workforce data analytics, advanced analytics models, and customizable dashboards. This enables organisations to make more informed decisions and, ultimately, achieve their business goals. Discover how One Model’s People Analytics can support your strategic workforce planning.
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Featured
6 min read
Jamie Strnisha
In today's competitive business landscape, it's more important than ever for workplaces to provide value to employees, customers, and investors. Attracting top talent, boosting productivity, enabling innovation, and improving employee experience are all key goals to achieving higher value. Many progressive companies are accomplishing these goals by tracking facility analytics — including attendance tracking and workplace tracking — to make facility improvements. That’s right. Companies use facility analytics to improve their environments and retain top talent and you should too. What is Facility Analytics Facility analytics is the process of collecting data about how a workplace is being used daily. Space utilization data is one type of data that can be collected (through sensors, badge swipe, surveys, or observation studies) and integrated into your overall people analytics data lake. With this workplace analytics data, managers can use it to transition to make proactive, positive changes in the company’s culture and work environment. This can even include transitioning away from assigned workspaces to flexible shared spaces and remote work. Since the pandemic, many companies have made changes, like these, and were able to reduce property costs and optimize public use spaces. After analyzing which departments are using which spaces, changes can even be made to bring teams closer together to improve mobility, increase employee connections and boost productivity. Why Use Facility Analytics and Workspace-Related Data? There may be some that are afraid facility analytics may be too intrusive but, done correctly, it could actually be a critical tool in improving the overall workplace experience. A few examples of what time and attendance people analytics can help track include: The best days for employee gatherings (monitor the days where most employees are in the office). Collaboration among employees by using survey data to track communication and teamwork trends. Employee burnout and workload to determine what generative attributes are leading to turnover. Office movement to know where employees’ desks are versus where they actually worked. Hoteling policy and proximity analysis so managers can see who is using the hotel desks and if additional desks are needed. Energy-saving initiatives, such as changing the temperature or adding motion-sensor lights in unused workspaces. Office activity and meal planning. Contagious illnesses tracking (e.g., COVID-19) to identify and mitigate risks in the organization by knowing who is in the office on any given day. Facility data in people analytics can also be used to track employee productivity. If you find that teams are travelling long distances to meetings, you can move teams and/or encourage online meetings to reduce travel time and increase work availability. In addition, if you see that some people are consistently at the office for long periods of time, you may be able to intervene to prevent burnout. How to Use Attendance Tracking to Future-Proof Your Facility Offices provide social interaction, creativity options, and collaboration. Your goal should be to design a work environment that meets those needs and more. COVID-19 has changed the workplace as we know it. The pandemic gave many people a taste of remote work they never had. With so many employees working remotely, companies are starting to realize that the traditional 9-5 in an office setting may not be necessary. In fact, Forrester Research found that 60% of companies are now utilizing hybrid schedules where employees can work from home and in the office. This "next normal" workplace will require a new way of thinking when it comes to managing employees and facilities. Luckily, when you merge survey data, facility data, and your HRIS, you can start to understand how best to meet business objectives and employee needs by team, cohort, or distance from the office. Ways to Capture Workplace Analytics Wi-Fi Sensors Common Workplace Analytics can be tied to People Analytics and provide a more in-depth understanding of your people. Wi-Fi sensors can be used to track employee movement and usage of common areas. This data can then be used to make adjustments to the layout of the office, as well as cleaning and sanitizing schedules. Additionally, Wi-Fi sensors can be used to send alerts to employees when they enter an area that has been recently cleaned or sanitized. Mobile Apps Mobile apps can be used for a variety of purposes, such as monitoring attendance analytics, sending notifications and alerts, and providing access control to certain areas of the office. Reservation Systems Reservation systems allow employees to book workspace in advance. Additionally, they can be used for location analysis and people analytics (e.g., tracking employee usage of common areas). Badging Data Badging data refers to the workspace-related data collected by security badges that employees wear. This data can be used for a variety of purposes, such as tracking employee movement, identifying trends, attendance tracking, and improving security protocols. Get Maximum Value From Analytics Workspace With One Model Unlock your valuable facility analytics and attendance tracking data with One Model and specialized data modeling that enables you to extract, aggregate, and analyze your data like never before. See for Yourself. Connect with Us Today. Facility analytics is a powerful tool that today's workplaces can use to improve employee experience and boost productivity. One Model seamlessly connects your facility tracking data with other third-party resources — such as a Human Resources Information System (HRIS), Integrated Workforce Management System (IWMS), and surveys about the workspace — to help you improve the workplace and stay ahead of the competition.
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Featured
4 min read
Jamie Strnisha
Fundamentally, people analytics is about using research and data to reduce the mistakes of human bias. Consistently collecting and analyzing workplace data is an important step in removing bias from your organization. Today's businesses need to focus on not only monitoring hiring metrics, but also effectively analyzing diversity reporting to make meaningful changes. People analytics software can help eliminate human bias and provide enterprises with the data they need to create programs and policies to support sustainable workplace diversity and inclusion. There is no better example of this than what I’m seeing some of our customers do today. They are using One Model to build powerful visuals to track and communicate their progress in order to increase workplace inclusion at every step and build an enduring diversity-rich strategy. Journey with me as I show you some of the cool things our customers are doing. Tracking Female Representation in the Workplace Over the past few years, we've seen a huge push to prioritize tracking female representation in the workplace. In fact, there were 74 female CEOs employed at America's 500 highest-grossing companies as of March 2022 — up from 41 in June 2021 and 7 in 2002. One Model is allowing enterprises to both better report on their data and also more easily track and monitor changes, determine key KPIs, and see how improvements they’re making internally are affecting the data. One such example includes a 2022 Fortune 500 Company X (name anonymized), who used One Model’s people analytics software to set measurable goals for tracking female representation, diversity slate candidates, interviewer diversity, and more. Company X set an aspirational goal to have 50% female representation by 2025, then used the One Model dashboard to set periodic goals, track performance, and benchmark its growth path. The dashboard allowed Company X to monitor its year-end AIP target, current female representation, deficiencies, and drivers. It also allowed them to answer important questions, including: Are our HR process driving gender equality? Are our hires evenly distributed across genders? How are we trending against our current year-end target? What does our long-term trend look like? One Model would like to help companies take the above approach a step further by breaking down their analysis by grade level to ensure women and diverse racial and ethnic groups are being represented beyond entry-level positions in their organization roles at the level of manager, director, vice president, and beyond. Seeing where their organization currently stands in comparison to their diversity goals while simultaneously analyzing local and national diverse candidate pool availability can allow them to put in place concrete and practical recruiting, hiring, and talent management strategies. These strategies begin to break the cycle of diversity decreasing as grade level increases. Using Data to Give Everyone an Equal Opportunity to Succeed Workplaces can only move the needle if they make diversity reporting and change a strategic priority. With One Model, enterprises can set clear periodic goals and performance measures, benchmark progress, and ultimately make long-term changes. By bringing diversity data to light, businesses can make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Would you like to see these diversity dashboards in action? Schedule a demo today.
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Featured
11 min read
Jamie Strnisha
One of the most common reporting challenges companies face is balancing headcount over time by adding and subtracting Hires and Terminations. How to Calculate Headcount? The process seems like it should be simple, especially when someone with a background in finance or accounting first looks at the issue. The misconception is that the company’s headcount will balance in much the same way money in a financial statement balances, where the analyst takes an initial amount of money the company has, and adds the money that came in for the month (e.g. customer sales, invoices) and subtracts the money that went out for the month (e.g. transportation, payroll cost, rent) and results in a final amount for the month, which then starts over the next month. If that’s how a financial statement is balanced, it seems that the same concept should be easily applied to balancing headcount reporting metrics. It might seem that a company should be able to use the following formula: Starting Headcount + Hires – Terminations = Ending Headcount And everything would balance and net out. Unfortunately, accounting does not seem to work out the same way in HR as it does in Finance. Rarely (if ever) does this simple formula work when counting people instead of money. There are a number of common reasons why this formula fails when applying it to the reconciliation of headcount reports over time: People that start at the beginning of the month are included in both starting headcount and hires for the time period, leading to some of the same people being counted twice. People that leave at the end of the month are included in both ending headcount and terminations for the time period, again leading to double counting. People that are on leave of absence may suddenly enter or exit headcount without hire or termination. The company may have restrictions on certain types of workers (e.g. Interns, Contractors) and exclude them from the headcount when they are in that category. If these workers move from an excluded category to one that is included in the headcount, or vice versa, they might suddenly appear or disappear from the headcount without hire or termination. The company may want to exclude certain Hire and Termination actions, such as acquisitions or divestitures, which again will cause an unbalanced headcount and a worker to suddenly appear or disappear from the headcount Fortunately, One Model can solve all of these issues in balancing headcount relatively easily by creating a new set of metrics specific to the company’s data that include populations that might not normally be counted, and exclude or include Hires and Terminations at the beginning and end of a time period. The New Metric: Reconciliation Headcount This Reconciliation Headcount Reporting Metric is effectively a more accurate mathematical equation that balances headcount to reflect these quirks in people data to match the financial statement approach to reconciliation. Each customer that works with One Model will have a slightly different version of a Reconciliation Headcount metric based on the methodology they use to count a Hire or Termination. An example formula for this metric may look like this: (Ending Headcount + Terminations on the Last Day of the Previous Time – Terminations on the Last Day of the Current Time Period) – (Starting Headcount + Hires – Terminations – Divestitures) When properly constructed, the new metric will correctly sum to 0, eliminating the problem HR sometimes has in justifying apparent irregularities in reconciling headcount. If the Metric does not equal 0, it means that there is at least one person or event in the data that does not have a requisite hire or termination to balance it out and that the company should investigate the record. One Model can also provide the company with a set of metrics that explain the difference between the events and populations that are included in the inputs for the new metric calculation and what the company would otherwise use for standard reporting on headcount, hires and terminations. One Model Application: Using the Reconciliation Headcount Metric Once the Reconciliation Headcount Metric is created, it can be used to monitor and understand data changes over time that might not be apparent in a less refined approach to reconciliation. The following is an example of the Headcount Reconciliation Metric for Company A across 4 months. If all factors that affect headcount are included in the reconciliation calculation, then each month the Headcount Reconciliation Metric would show as 0. In this example, it appears that the headcounts for November and February have no irregularities, but for December and January, instead of the expected 0, the results show 1 in December and 2 in January. Pinpointing the Discrepancy: Is it Even Possible? Without the Reconciliation Headcount Metric and One Model, it could be difficult to pinpoint the source of these discrepancies. In fact, it might not be possible at all, depending on how the data was reported. If an analyst was lucky enough to be using lists of individuals to perform the reconciliation and had the actual records for all relevant points in time (the beginning and end of each month), they might be able to figure out the specific people accounting for the differences in December and January by using vlookup formulas in Excel to locate each difference. Of course, this would make the entire reconciliation process very time consuming Reconciling headcount may not even be possible in all situations. In some cases, the analyst may be adding or subtracting data from past months’ reports that have already been aggregated. Using aggregated data would make the reconciliation process almost impossible, since the data in the source system may have changed since the reports were run, and the analyst would not be able to pinpoint the specific people whose situations are creating the discrepancies. One Model’s List Report Feature: Easy Identification of the Discrepancy in Headcount Reporting Metrics The One Model platform has a unique feature that eliminates all of these problems and makes the reconciliation process very easy. This feature is called List Reports. In One Model, a user can take a metric and then look within it to find the data points that are causing the discrepancies. In the example of Company A, where it appeared that there were discrepancies in the December and January headcount reports, the analyst creates a List Report that includes the Headcount Reconciliation Metric, Worker Number and Name of every individual accounted for in that period. Any individual whose status changed during the time period but was not properly accounted for in the reconciliation process would be flagged as a + or - in the Headcount Reconciliation column. The List Report can then be filtered to show only those individuals whose records are the cause of the apparent accounting error. In the example of Company A above, there was a net discrepancy of one for the month of December. By exporting the data and filtering out the 0s, only one record had a +1 in December: In only a couple simple steps, it was easy to determine that Joe Williams’s record is the source of the discrepancy in the headcount for December. Identifying the Reason for the Discrepancy and Rebalancing Headcount After identifying Joe Williams, the next question is why his record caused this discrepancy. Since it appears that his record caused an addition to headcount, it may make sense to first look at the data for hires and see if a new code was added to Company A’s HRIS that was not included originally. In the example for Company A, Joe entered Company A through an acquisition that was not coded as a hire. As a result, it now is apparent that the Headcount Reconciliation metric should be revised to include individuals who joined Company A through an acquisition. After Headcount Balances, What Next? Net Internal Change This Headcount Reconciliation Metric can now be used to better understand net internal change within Company A. In the example below, Company A’s Headcount Reconciliation Metric is broken out by Department. In disaggregated form, it’s easy to see that in December the company had 1 net move into Commercial and 1 net move out of HR. Even more helpful, it’s possible to see that while Headcount balanced at the overall level for November and February, there were actually movements across departments in those months. The fact that those movements netted to zero made them seem to vanish from the reconciliation metric, but One Model still makes it possible to identify this movement. One Model’s List Report Identifies the Individual Change Records Looking again at December, adding the Department field into the List Report reveals a department change for a different worker. In this situation, we see that Chris Jones moved from HR to Commercial in December. Using the Reconciliation Headcount Metric, makes it possible to look at internal movements and understand how the company’s headcount has changed internally over time. Difference between Typical Internal Movement Metrics and the Headcount Reconciliation Net Change While customers can traditionally use events like Transfers, Promotions, Demotions to pinpoint internal movement, these methods can often be deceiving. Very often customers do not have strict business processes about what is being counted in these movements and events in the HRIS are coded as Transfers when they’re technically a data correction. A Promotion may get coded as such when it really is a Transfer or Lateral move because the manager wants to send a positive message to an employee. While the net difference derived from the Headcount Reconciliation Metric doesn’t necessarily resolve all of those issues, it allows the analyst to see the specific internal net change across time. The examples above used months, but the time period could have been any (e.g. year, quarter, week). If you want to know more about One Model or Headcount Reconciliation, we’d be happy to talk to you. Personally, I love talking about people data and how to construct metrics to drive business decisions. Want to learn how your company can benefit from using One Model? Have questions on your team's specific challenges in balancing headcount and internal net movements? Learn more about the benefits of One Model and sign up for a demo.
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Featured
6 min read
Jamie Strnisha
Over the years I have worked with several operational and strategic (analytic) reporting tools. I have found challenges with both types of reporting tools. Most tools I have worked with focus on solving only one of these reporting challenges, either operational or strategic. Fortunately, One Model’s flexibility and openness in the data model allows us to solve both for our customers. The Challenges: One of the biggest challenges in an operational reporting tool is working with hierarchical (i.e. structured) data. It is extremely challenging to build out the structural relationship of data, such as the Region to Country to State to Work Location relationship. Even though the data relationships exist in the base system, it is almost impossible to use those relationships in reporting and visualization. Even if the relationships can be built out, the structure is typically only available as different columns and there is no way to connect the hierarchical relationship for effective visualization. While these relationships are often defined in strategic reporting tools like SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, such tools are limited by the data brought in and structured. If a customer has an operational reporting need, they do not have an easy way to bring that data in and use the pre-built structural relationships that exist in the data. (Side note: One Model alleviates this issue and allows customers to bring in any data or data source relatively easily.) One often significant challenge, especially with SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, is that most of the data is limited to data stored in SAP SuccessFactors. For obvious reasons, this can be frustrating for your team. Perhaps you want to use the data modeled and structured in SAP SuccessFactors to connect with other non-SAP SuccessFactors data sources (e.g. Survey, Facilities, Finance). One Model can make that happen. Overview of SAP SuccessFactors Data Objects Available in the Employee Central API One Model typically sources data from SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central via the OData API. SAP SuccessFactors makes three types of data available in the API: Employee Objects. Personal and employment details for employees, referred to as Person Objects and Employment Objects. Foundation Objects. Organization, pay, and job structure details. Metadata Framework (MDF) Objects. When the standard delivered foundation objects do not meet requirements, existing foundation objects are migrated to the MDF framework (becoming generic objects in the process). New MDF objects are also available. While data from the Employee Objects are critical for reporting, the focus of this blog is the structural relationships defined in the Foundation and Metadata Framework (MDF) Objects, as discussed in more detail below. Foundation and Metadata Framework (MDF) Objects Foundation and Metadata Framework Objects are used to set up data that can be shared across the entire company, such as job codes, departments, or business units. SAP SuccessFactors’ Foundation Objects can be used to populate data at the employee level. For example, if a job code is assigned to an employee, that employee’s record is then populated with all information based on the attributes of the job code. Starting with the November 2014 release, Foundation Objects were migrated to the Metadata Framework (MDF). Source: SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central OData API: Reference Guide Associations in Foundation Objects and Structural Dimensions SAP SuccessFactors uses Associations to define relationships between Foundation Object. One Model can use these defined Associations to build a hierarchical structure. One model will use the data and defined relationships to build a structural dimension, maybe something as simple as: FOGeozone > FOLocationGroup > FOLocation That structural dimension will then allow a user to navigate and filter on the defined relationship. Example: Below is a chart that shows 3 distinct regions (FOGeozone). A user can hover over any of the region labels and find a hyperlink. When the user clicks on the Americas hyperlink, it will drill down to reveal the Countries (FOLocationGroup) below, which in this case includes a breakout of the USA and Canada. Parent-Child Associations in Foundation Objects and Structural Dimensions SAP SuccessFactors also allows for building a Parent-Child Association in the Foundation Object. This relationship can also be translated in One Model. For example, if a larger department is divided into sub-departments, a parent-child association can be created against the department object. One Model can use the relationship defined in the following area FOBusinessUnit > FODivision > FODepartment to define the higher levels of the structure and then use the Parent-Child Relationship within the Department to create desired visualization and filtering experiences for the end user. This behavior can be replicated and created for any of the Foundation Objects where an Association in SAP SuccessFactors has been configured by the customer: Cost Center Department Division Business Unit Legal Entity Legal Entity Local Job Function Pay Group Job Classification Job Classification Local Foundation and Meta Data Framework Object across SAP SuccessFactors and Non-SAP SuccessFactors These structural relationships can be used for reporting across SAP SuccessFactors data, including Recruiting, as well as non-SAP SuccessFactors data. The linking keys will be the IDs used in the Foundation Objects or the employee identifier. If you have questions about how this may work for your organization, we would be happy to chat and share more information. Find success with SuccessFactors. Click here to watch our recorded webinar.
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