The ClearTalents at Work application is undergoing a significant upgrade during September 2024. These changes have been made based on feedback and requests from users over the last few years. This article explains the main changes and what impact they will have on different types of users. For more specific detail for each type of user, click on the pages for employees, managers and organisation admins.

• Each adjustment is now treated independently with specific statuses and activity
• Improved status options and flow
• Reduced workload for managers when an individual updates their profile
• Improved user interface design
• Streamlined login processes
• Additional configuration options
• Improved reporting data
• Designed for language selection

Tracking individual adjustments

The biggest change to the ClearTalents at Work application is that each individual impact or adjustment identified by an individual is now treated independently. Previously, status changes, comments and other activity items related to a complete profile which could make it difficult to show that only one adjustment remained outstanding for example.

The individual will still create a new or update an existing profile in the same way and on submission, their manager (assuming they share it with them) will be notified. However, when they or their manager view the profile, they will now see individual adjustments in a table format with a status and other data relating specifically to each adjustment.

Improved status options and flow for adjustments

We have made some changes to the process flow for adjustments compared with the way the flow previously worked for profiles.

New statuses

There are two additional statuses:

• an individual can mark an adjustment as “No longer required”. They can do this in one of two ways; edit their profile and deselect the adjustment or view the adjustment and click on the “No longer required” button.
• a manager can identify that an adjustment should be “declined”. In this case, when they select “declined” in the change status dialog, they will be asked to enter a reason why they think the adjustment should be declined. This will be forwarded to the appropriate members of the HR team who will evaluate the request and either approve it or deny the request. In the latter case, they will need to provide an explanation of why the request to decline was not approved.

Process flow changes

There is a new column “Agreed adjustment” displayed for each adjustment. Initially, this column displays the text “not yet agreed”. When a manager (or organisation admin) changes the status to “Adjustment in progress” or “Adjustment complete”, they will be required to add a category for the adjustment such as “Hardware”, “Software”, Training” etc. They will also be required to enter a short description of the solution they have agreed with the individual. This description will then be displayed in the “Agreed adjustment” column.

Reduced workload for managers

Two of the consistent pieces of feedback from managers are that it was sometimes difficult to see the updates that an individual has made to their profiles and also challenging to identify comments and updates that relate to specific adjustments. By moving to a model of treating each adjustment separately, if an individual updates or adds adjustments to their profile, only those adjustments will have a status set to “no action taken” when the manager views the profile. Nothing related to any of the unchanged adjustments will be changed so it is very easy for the manager to focus on only the adjustments that still need to be reviewed and actioned.

Improved user interface design

One of the objectives for this update is to improve the user interface and bring it into line with current websites. We are using the available screen space in the browser more effectively with more whitespace in appropriate areas. We believe that this makes the new interface more modern and the user experience design makes it easier for users to identify the things they need to do. We will continue to improve the interface design based on feedback from users.

Streamlined login process

When a user goes to the home page, they will see a single login box for them to enter their email address. If their account is associated with an organisation that uses Single Sign On (SSO), they will automatically be rerouted through SSO process to login. If not, they will be prompted for a password. In the past, this had been a cause for confusion and generated a number of support calls.

Additional configuration options

Improved reporting data

Designed for language selection

The application has been redesigned with support for different languages in mind. We will be able to make new interface languages available and these will be aligned with the user’s preferred browser display language when a translation is available.

Foundation for future enhancements

The new architectural design and tracking of individual adjustments will provide the opportunity to continue to reduce workload for different stakeholder groups and improve the value derived by organisations. For example, in the previous model, it was not possible for an administrator to view only the adjustments across profiles which were still outstanding. Although the view will not be available until 6-8 weeks after the initial release, organisation admins will be able to see only adjustments that are still outstanding vs. looking through individual profiles which may have all but one adjustment implemented.