One of the unexpected outcomes of a crisis like COVID19 was the spurt in virtual employee onboarding. Something that might have come across experimental and niche prior to March has now emerged as the need of the hour. This unexpected windfall cemented Kiran Menon's belief that as businesses hurtle towards digitisation, why should HR be left behind? 

Asia's business automation is expected to grow 3x this year, and India's will grow 2x. This growth is exacerbated by the COVID19 crisis, which has forced several companies to work remotely

Menon is the cofounder of HR automation platform Tydy. Along with Nikhil Gurjer, CTO & Gaurabh Mathure, CPO, Menon started Tydy with the aim of automating standard human resource processes and developing a world-class product for enterprises to manage workflow processes smoothly. More than 50% of time spent by HR teams is on manual tasks and seeking relevant information. This includes verifying data fields, follow-up meetings with managers, using MS Excel to track employee data, soliciting feedback, creating IDs and process formalities among others.  

How It Works 

Tydy brings the power of intelligent automation to people processes and the employee experience. Tydy uses data and intelligence to hyper-personalize the onboarding experience based on location, department, role, work level and much more. "Giving such a personalized experience means people do not waste time trying to find what is needed of them and instead just expects Tydy to act as their concierge to only surface what is important at that point in time," he explains. In addition, Tydy also uses data to analyze and determine completion rates of activities and tasks. This enables the product to deliver early-warning signals on people who are potentially dropping off and maybe in danger of quitting. This is invaluable for HR teams who can then use this data to reach out and understand problems or guide people in the right direction. 

With automation and data capture at its core, process management is unilaterally managed by the Tydy platform. A digital form collects all the requisite information, with in built in validations to ensure data integrity. In addition, the platform enables data transfer such as HRMS, payroll information to other systems, allowing smooth interoperability.

Tydy starts the moment an offer is accepted. An invitation to start onboarding is sent out even before Day 1. This is a strategic differentiator for all clients as it helps build their employer brand and start compliance processes in parallel - without waiting for Day 1. During this preboarding phase - Tydy captures data from an employee through a Smart Form that has intelligent validations based on the onboarding location. Tydy also understands the need from a background verification perspective and asks the new hire to upload the relevant documents. All of this is being driven by data that is coming from enterprise systems and the new hire themselves. In addition to this - Tydy also starts communicating with the new hire and educating them on the company, it's values, the opportunities of growth and builds out a journey for each individual. To complete the flow, Tydy's Data Orchestration engine kicks in and sends relevant data to internal systems like HRMS, Payroll, Learning, IT Helpdesk and even external vendors like Background Verification vendors, logistics and facilities and more. Tydy starts automatically engaging with the candidate immediately after offer acceptance and guides the new hire to become a fully productive employee in the shortest time possible. 

The company's platform is hosted on the same reliable & scalable infrastructure that is used to power giants like Amazon. The cloud operates 44 Availability Zones within 16 geographic regions around the world, and is expanding constantly. Some of the available features include data encryption at rest, data encryption in transit, single sign-on support, global server setup for data security, in-app access management, maintenance of access logs and automated data redundancy & data backup. 

Tydy's Code Less Automation 

Generally, for large-scale projects and their consequent execution, ensuring a quick release cycle, developing an adequate test environment and writing test scripts is a time and resource intensive process. In order to alleviate these costs, codeless automation is gaining popularity with startups. Tydy is also deploying codeless automation. Digitization of data makes it easy to deliver automated onboarding campaigns, notifications to key contacts, data sync to other systems, deliver flowers at the new hire's doorstep. 

To understand more about codeless automation, refer to this blog 

COVID19 An Unexpected Windfall For Tydy 

In the last three months, Tydy has seen an increase in the enquiries coming their way. "Automation and digitization is the need of the hour - but everyone is looking for a solution that does and provides a beautiful end-user experience as well," explains Menon. People processes have come to the forefront of investment and budget decisions. Global enterprises and scaling startups have reached out to Tydy for solutions on how to adapt quickly to this "new normal". "We are seeing faster deal closure times and we are also seeing the need for some custom solutions to help deal with staggered scheduling and IT Asset Allocation. However, a key point to note is that most of our enquiries have been coming from Asia, and I feel that this is a true reflection of how Asian economies are poised to take over the growth agenda from the West."

Successful Projects & Outcomes 

One of Tydy's most successful projects was with Unilever. They were able to save 18,000+ man hours and reduce attrition by 65% through automation. Launching a platform like this was a first of its kind step for Unilever. The company reported to witnessing engagement levels of over 85%. Another happy customer is L&T, which reported a 10x reduction in time spent during onboarding - from 2.5 hours to 15 minutes. In addition, nearly 200% of costs were saved per hire through process automation. Pharma major Sanofi has 30 teams globally using Tydy to onboard employees.

"With some of the most well known brands as customers and thousands of users across the globe, our next step is to build out our presence in South East Asia and grow the business in this region. We are firm believers in the potential of the Asian markets and we will continue to invest in this region. Along with this - we are continuing to invest in building the most sophisticated Employee Experience Engine that starts at onboarding and guides the employees through to becoming a model ambassador alumnus. You will see more product releases that showcase our use of data to drive intelligence in our platform and build the best Employee eXperience (EX) engine globally," adds Menon.