Continuous Employee Engagement: A Sneak Peek at What’s New with SuitePeople in the NetSuite 2021 Release 1

Marc Holliday, Sr. Product Marketing Manager

February 8, 2021

Nearly 60% of the workforce is now working remotely at least half of the time, according to a recent Gallup(opens in new tab) survey. Managers and employees are making adjustments to this new work experience. Executives and senior leaders are keeping their eyes on productivity, customer satisfaction and financial results.

Keeping employees engaged and productive from a distance has become key component to achieving solid financial performance, and NetSuite 2021 Release 1 introduces enhancements to SuitePeople Performance Management that make employee engagement easier to understand and measure, while also giving managers new ways to keep employees engaged no matter where the work is performed. The new release adds flexibility for time off requests and processing payroll, and an enhanced onboarding solution brings new employees into the company faster to help them be more productive quicker and feel more welcomed from their first day onward.

Goals and Reviews Help Performance Management

One of the best ways to keep employees engaged is through goal setting and regular, frequent reviews of performance. This not only helps employees understand how they will be evaluated, but it also helps with career development and keeps focus on and connection to the most important work. With this new release, SuitePeople Performance Management(opens in new tab) now includes:

  • Eight new, interactive charts are available with SuiteAnalytics Workbooks that provide human resources (HR) leaders visibility into how groups of employees or particular individuals are performing. You can also create your own performance management workbooks. For example, these new analyses enable HR managers to take action if certain groups or individuals have overdue reviews. Or HR can measure organizational performance by examining overall review rating distributions.
  • A new goals portlet to the Employee Center. With it, goals are more visible to the employee, helping them stay focused and engaged. With the all goals page, users can see current or historical goals for a more complete view of past and present performance. Finally, managers are able to quickly assess how their teams are progressing towards their goals in a single visualization to take action or reprioritize goals.


 

Added Payroll flexibility

No two payrolls look the same. Each month, new scenarios like variable or off-cycle payments impact processing payroll. NetSuite has enhanced SuitePeople Payroll(opens in new tab)  to provide more flexibility and simplicity to the process, increasing accuracy and lowering the cost of processing payroll by adding:

  • A new payroll item group that provides the ability to derive deduction and contribution from the sum of multiple payroll items, eliminating manual calculation for things like retirement plan contributions.
  • A bonus type record to the import assistant, which allows faster processing of variable payments to the entire organization while reducing keystroke errors.
  • Payroll managers can select which earnings, deductions or contributions to include in off-cycle payrolls, which helps to eliminate manual steps and reduce processing time.

Simplifying Time Off requests

Time off requests can seem simple on the surface, but their impact on finances, employees and productivity can be complex and hard to control. NetSuite has added more automation to this SuitePeople HR process to make it easier and more accurate for HR and approvers to keep track of absences with these new enhancements:

  • Some groups of employees or types of time off do not require a formal approval. Authorized users can set these time off requests for automatic approval, also automatically updating individual paid time off balances and notifying the requestor, simplifying the process.
  • Sometimes employees are not able to request time off in advance of a leave—say for an unexpected emergency. In order to keep accurate time off balances and records, HR managers can now request time off on behalf of anyone in the organization. Managers can submit time off requests for their direct reports.

A More Engaging Onboarding Experience

The highest level of employee engagement occurs on their first day. Get it right and the new employee feels a strong connection to the company and will go on to produce quality work and be a longer term member of the workforce. An employee onboarding mistake(opens in new tab) can make the employee feel unwelcomed, less valued, unmotivated and more likely to leave within the first year. To help get the onboarding process off to a positive start, SuitePeople HR has been redesigned so the onboarding experience includes:

  • A customizable and personal message to help welcome new employees to the company and feel connected.
  • A new onboarding portlet for new hires to review, update and complete the tasks in their individual plan to help them onboard faster and be more productive in their role sooner.
  • Onboarding alerts that automatically notify new employees of upcoming or overdue tasks to make sure they get through initial onboarding quickly without missing an assigned task or due date. This allows them to feel an early sense of accomplishment and that they’re part of the team.

With these new SuitePeople enhancements, companies can increase employee engagement, process payroll faster, further automate time off requests to keep balances up to date and improve the onboarding experience for every new hire.

Want to learn more about NetSuite 2021 Release 1?

Any customer that has gone through previous NetSuite refreshes knows that no blog post can do justice to all of the new functions and capabilities in NetSuite 2021 Release 1.

For a more complete picture of what new features are in this release, be sure to read the release notes(opens in new tab). And if you’re new to the release process, learn more about that in SuiteAnswers(opens in new tab).

Most importantly, don’t forget to request access to your Release Preview(opens in new tab) test account. Nothing substitutes for getting to test how all the new features will work with your data, workflows and customizations.

 

The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, timing, and pricing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products may change and remains at the sole discretion of Oracle Corporation.

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