Allianz Australia prepares to mobilise its workforce

Allianz Australia is gearing up to play its part in a global SAP SuccessFactors rollout that will allow for greater workforce mobility across the insurer's global operations.

Chief people and culture officer Vicky Drakousis told Digital Nation that Allianz globally is deploying the talent intelligence hub module of SuccessFactors to create a “digital talent marketplace” searchable by internal recruiters and business teams.

Drakousis said the talent marketplace is set to go live "in the first half of next year."

It is but one system that Allianz Australia has deployed in its people and culture operations in recent times.

The function is in the latter stages of a three-year roadmap that has brought about a large amount of technology change.

Drakousis noted that previous staff surveys had indicated deficiencies in "job process" and a need to transform "manual ways of doing things" in people and culture.

"The end goal [is] a seamless, intuitive employee experience, whether that's through dashboards, recruitment, talent, the way you pay them, or the way they transact with you, whether it's applying for leave, etc," Drakousis said.

"That's ultimately where you [as a people and culture function] want to be."

Unpacking the technology transformation

In addition to participating in the global SuccessFactors-based digital talent marketplace project, Drakousis said that the people and culture function in Australia is benefitting from new systems from ServiceNow, Celonis, Phenom and unspecified robotic process automation software.

It is also preparing to deploy a new payroll system.

Phenom is used to improve interview scheduling. "You can imagine when you've got to match a candidate's diary with a recruiter's diary with a business leader's diary, [it can be challenging]," she said.

Celonis, a data mining tool, is being used "to see where does the [recruitment] process break [down] from a candidate and also from a recruiter perspective."

"So, for example, it can identify that we might take too long to get back to a particular candidate, or that a process is not being adhered to," Drakousis said.

Another aspect of the tech work undertaken by the team includes the introduction of ‘Barry the Bot’ roughly a year ago, which uses robotic process automation (RPA) technology.

According to Drakousis, Barry is responsible for “automating a manual check process" around cost centre changes that result from organisational hierarchy changes.

“If a human does that [checking], it's quite a manual process, prone to a lot of error.”

Drakousis also said that Allianz Australia uses the Degreed platform to provide learning and upskilling opportunities to staff.

Allianz Australia has mandated 40 hours of learning per employee per year: some mandatory, some free choice.

“Most recently, we've mandated a data and an AI module so that people can start to understand what AI is, how it might fit into their job, and how it can improve employee or customer experience."