Leading human resources and payroll software specialist Cascade HR has a surprise in store for visitors to the 2011 CIPD Annual Conference & Exhibition (ACE) in November. The company’s creative in-house developers have been busy working on some exciting new functionality – the first of its kind in the industry – which will be unveiled for the first time at this prestigious event.
Designed to bring an even more personal touch to Cascade’s innovative HR and payroll software, the unique tool – which has been named Mosaic – will provide users with a new way of looking at the data they work with on a daily basis.
Now, instead of displaying information purely in terms of words, names and numbers, Mosaic gives users the option of ‘visualising’ the information via grids and graphs made up of employees’ faces. Users can then further sort, manipulate or query the results, but findings are displayed pictorially rather than simply in data-form.
Sales director Richard Anderson explains the importance of this development: “Our system is renowned for being aesthetically attractive and incredibly easy to use. However we are continuously looking at new ways to improve the user experience.
“Human society has been evolved around our ability to recognise faces at a glance. We recognise faces before we recall names or even remember why we recognise a person. Indeed our ability to instantly recognise and place a face pre-dates language.
“Yet HR and payroll software – the very systems we use to manage people – have failed to take advantage of the oldest skill we have. Focusing more on names and data, these systems have bypassed our innate ability to see a face, recognise it and instantly recall a host of information based on that recognition until now.
“We wanted to bring more emphasis back to the human element of human resources. So we have developed Mosaic, a visualisation tool that holds individual photographs of every member of staff within the system, so that information is instantly recognisable.
“This is of particular importance to line managers who have been empowered – via their HR system – to better look after their own teams. For example not all members of staff will see their manager on a regular basis, perhaps because they’re field-based, work remotely, or they’re even located offshore. Furthermore, when assessing who is absent from work that day for instance, managers can see the actual faces of employees rather than simply viewing a proportionate pie chart or a list of names.
“Mosaic therefore aids familiarity and reminds organisations that their employees are more than a statistic.”
Mosaic has been developed using the new Silverlight technology from Microsoft. The Cascade team will be on hand at ACE to guide delegates through the way that the personable tool works.
Mosaic will be available from November.
