PDS | Business Solutions Driven By HCM Needs | Patricia Palmer
Patricia Palmer
Today every organization is struggling to get back to something close to “normal”. The past couple of years have tested every company regardless of their type of business. While some businesses continued to work in-person as their workers braved the pandemic, they were challenged with their team’s anxieties and concerns. Other organizations adopted a hybrid work schedule where workers split their time in the office and working remotely.
HCM (human capital management) solution providers were challenged to adapt to this new model and find ways to simplify usage of their tools.
PDS develops and supports a fully integrated recruiting, onboarding, human resources, benefits, and payroll system that fulfills the needs of companies with employees in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Patricia Palmer, President, and CEO of PDS, an HCM software company based in the greater Philadelphia suburbs with offices across the U.S. and Canada, shares her thoughts on adapting solutions to today’s challenges.
“For close to 50 years, PDS has been focused on listening to our customers and innovating so that we can deliver appropriate solutions that make their jobs easier”, shares Pat. While HCM products have continued to evolve and adapt to our changing world, PDS recognizes the need to deliver comprehensive solutions that meet the diverse needs of businesses yet remain affordable.
Business Challenges Drive Solutions
Recruiting has never been so challenging. Finding candidates has gotten harder than ever. Recruiting portals like Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter continue to gather applicants, many new to the job market. Finding qualified applicants for all levels of positions has become a race to find and engage applicants before they’re hired by another organization. The pressure to immediately make contact with applicants has become a necessity, and despite normal methods of using email, often text messages have become the preferred way to quickly engage and request phone or video interviews.
PDS delivers a recruiting component that allows organizations to define their messaging and attract talent to view and apply for job openings. Recruiters are provided with tools to clarify the necessary job requirements (e.g., skills, education, licenses, qualifying questions) and rank them to quickly search their applicants and have immediate visibility to qualified applicants. Applicant communications, tracking of interview reviews, tests, and expenses, and the generation of offer letter is simplified using the PDS solution.
To further complicate matters, salary expectations have risen like never before. With companies offering $20 an hour as starting rate, and signing bonuses becoming the norm, competition for available resources has become paramount. Employee referral programs are more important than ever. Staff referrals have always been a positive, reliable method to identify qualified applicants that fit the company culture. The PDS solution provides the means to manage proposed salary details and employee referral opportunities.
With lingering COVID concerns, and continued spikes of exposure, getting employees back to the office has become more difficult despite the passage of time. Engaging with work teams has become more complex with a hybrid workforce of work-at-home and in-office schedules. During the pandemic, many organizations were stretched to the limit and lacked the tools to communicate with their workforce effectively. PDS provides the capability to share information easily with employees and empower them to access their own data and interact with their peers to remain engaged and focused on company objectives. Features such as employee surveys provide the human resource team with the means to gather feedback and assess the morale of their teams on an ongoing basis.
The pandemic also introduced new employee data requirements. For example, PDS expanded its analytic dashboards to include employee contact information to improve staff visibility. For the hybrid workforce environment, with some folks in the office and others working from home, a view of who is in the office by location helps simplify employee concerns. For organizations preparing for the COVID vaccine mandate, PDS offered the means to collect tests and vaccines to monitor compliance more easily.
Delivering solutions to the employee workforce wherever they need it is more important than ever. Today’s mobile workforce demands access to their data from their mobile device. PDS delivers full capabilities of their recruiting, onboarding, HR, benefits, and payroll solutions from user’s mobile devices.
Security vulnerabilities are a top concern of every organization. Having a secure HCM system is critical, as it is used by both internal (employees) and external (applicants) users. PDS offers powerful, role-based security permissions that restrict access to only those who need to know. Adaptive multi-factor authentication integration provides confidence that only authorized users gain access to sensitive HCM data.
Focused on the Future
One of the most significant achievements for the PDS team is putting into place the design, development, and support processes that have allowed PDS to stay relevant in the changing world of HCM and to retain many customers for twenty years and more. Today, PDS continues to expand the product to create comprehensive yet straightforward tools that end-users, managers, and power users can easily interface with and accomplish what they need. PDS works hard to gather feedback from customers and utilize technology to offer engaging solutions that users are anxious to adopt.
Pat looks forward to continuing her engagement with the user community and her vital industry expertise in product design and direction. “We have missed sitting down one-on-one with our customers and learning more about their needs. We look forward to once again engaging in person at our user group conferences,” she says.
PDS continues to strategize and deliver tools that customers identify as their key priorities and to assist organizations with their necessary human resources, benefits, and payroll solutions. “We focus on our customers’ needs and work to quickly adapt and deliver solutions”, shares Pat.
" We focus on our customers’ needs and work to quickly adapt and deliver solutions. "
Patricia Palmer
President & CEO
PDS
