Context

Payfit is a cloud-based solution for payroll management that includes features like time and attendance tracking, absence management, and HR process management to effectively handle your workforce.

The Time and Attendance module is a highly requested product. When building the existing module, a lack of a user-centered approach and clear objectives resulted in a product with very low activation. We wanted to enable companies to track time efficiently and according to local and European regulations.

The Time and Attendance product enables the company's employees to track the time they worked, and the managers of those companies compensate them accordingly. It can be also used for project monitoring, and for the companies to comply with local and European regulations.

This project involves comprehensive research, collaboration with users, company managers, and stakeholders, project definition, and solution design and development. The ultimate goal of the project is to redesign the existing module with a user-centric approach to build a usable and sellable product that impacts users' satisfaction, activation, and the company's revenue.

Besides building a sellable product, the second objective of the project was to gain a better understanding of the time domain to define a mid and long-term plan, to hire and build a team around it.

My role

As a lead product designer, I collaborated with the Director of Product and Director of Engineering in defining the scope of the project, and the roadmap of the team. I also organized and led workshops, a design sprint, and activities with users, stakeholders, and other designers to design the final solution. Throughout the process, I kept stakeholders and the leadership team informed of updates and progress.

The challenge

The major challenge was that when the existing Time and Attendance module was shipped, Payfit didn't have a dedicated team working on Time and Attendance. This resulted in a product that lacked a proper understanding of user needs. It wasn't compliant with European and local regulations, and it was built on makeshift solutions.

Consequently, the product wasn't used by users, had no impact on the company's monthly recurring revenue, led to a negative user experience, and generated numerous customer support tickets.

Our ultimate goal was to build a delightful and law-compliant solution, that could be sold as an add-on, contributing to the company's revenue, with a positive NPS result, that would allow employees to track time, and managers to compensate them accordingly.

Goals

The process

Discovery

The discovery phase included activities such as user interviews with customers from the 5 markets where Payfit operates (France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the UK), Product Market Fit surveys triggered straight on the app, an analysis of the existing Customer Support tickets, lean canvas and design value proposition workshops with the team, interviews with internal stakeholders, and legal analysis with the legal representatives of the 3 main markets.

User interviews, legal analysis, and PMF Surveys

Lean canvas, Design Value Proposition

These activities helped us align product ideas and concepts within the team while keeping the needs of the users and the business objectives in mind. Through collaborative brainstorming, we established a shared vision for the product that prioritized the user's perspective before proceeding to the definition and design phases.

More than 1.500 Customer Support tickets in France, 200 in Germany, and 100 in Spain were opened in the last year regarding Time and Attendance by Payfit customers.

Findings and Product Vision

The research findings revealed that employees were not using the existing Time and Attendance feature due to its complicated user interface, a lack of perceived benefits, and the inability to use it on mobile devices for those who don't work in an office setting.

Managers also experienced difficulties, as they had to constantly follow up with employees every month to request the completion of the time and attendance report. The validation and status updates for these reports were also found to be lacking.

Who are we designing for?

Our objective was to provide a straightforward time-tracking solution for employees, enable managers to review and approve their tracked time and allow company administrators to accurately compensate employees based on their tracked hours.

OKRs

Increase revenue generation

• Design a Time and Attendance module that is sellable and that contributes to increasing the company’s revenue

• Contribute to the company's ARR with a total of •••••• € (confidential).

• Active the module as an add-on on 30% of all the eligible companies

Increase user adoption

• Achieve a Net Promoter Score of at least 8 out of 10 on the Time and Attendance module

• Improve User Satisfaction and increase the # of promoters

• Increase the number of active users by 25% within the next 6 months after the release

Design sprint

With specific objectives in mind and based on previous findings, we conducted a design sprint involving the leadership team, product builders from various Payfit operating countries, engineers, designers, and customer support agents.

I led the sessions, providing all necessary context, and facilitating the workshops. This allowed us to bring together the team's resources and potential to reach our goals within a limited timeframe. My objective was to bring together all available information to define the product design, delivering a working prototype in a week's time and maximizing efficiency.

The goal of the week was to quickly validate ideas and assumptions, get feedback from users, prototype different solutions quickly, speed up the product development process, foster collaboration between teams and departments, and reduce time-to-market.

The design sprint consisted of activities such as a recap of the discoveries, expert talks, the creation of How Might We statements, the definition of the ideal customer journey, ideation sessions, wireframes, and the delivery of a working prototype.

Design phase

With the results of the Design Sprint, I worked with the Director of Engineering and the Director of Product on defining the Minimum Sellable version of the product. Again, one of the main objectives was to build a Time and Attendance module that is sellable and that contributes to increasing the company’s revenue.

We defined the scope of the product, set up a calendar, write down user stories, and start working with the team on designing and building Time and Attendance.

User flows

As previously stated, the redesigned module was designed to allow employees to track their time either on a daily basis or at the end of a designated time-tracking period.

An automatic reminder via email and in-app is sent to employees to prompt them to complete the necessary tracking when the time-tracking period is about to end. Upon completion, managers have the ability to review reports or make necessary modifications and approve them when the tracking period is over.

Once approved, the report is considered final and cannot be altered unless admins reverse the approval to allow both parties to make necessary changes. The final step involves admins compensating employees based on their recorded working hours. In addition, it was essential for us to enable administrators to specify the time tracking periods to synchronize them seamlessly with the Payroll feature.

This streamlined process was implemented to eliminate the need for managers to repeatedly follow up with employees for reports or corrections, and to foster a sense of trust between managers and company administrators while ensuring compliance with local and European regulations.

Wireframes

High fidelity design

Employee

Manager's approval screens

UI Details

Go to market strategy

With the Minimum Sellable Version of the product ready, our team worked closely with the marketing and growth team on the go to market strategy, defining clusters, and assisting them building specific landing pages for each niche.

Results

In the first quarter after the release of the Minimum Sellable Product in France, we saw 34% of adoption of the module among all eligible companies, who paid for the module as an add-on for the first time in years, contributing significantly to the company's revenue, with a Customer Effort Score of 9.5. And 20% of product adoption among all eligible employees. We consider these very promising indicators.

Next steps

With the Minimum Sellable Product already in production, we defined the roadmap for the upcoming months. Our goal of increasing user satisfaction led us to identify missing features, such as the ability for employees and managers to leave comments when tracking time, a calendar view, improved accessibility, integrations with third-party products, and import/export options.

Additionally, the team continued to focus on other opportunities identified during the research phase, such as project monitoring and shift planning.

We maintained our commitment to growing the Time team by setting up a hiring strategy and shaping the future of Payfit's Time-related products.