New Look on how tech and AI is changing the HR game

After receiving end-of-life notifications for its payroll, HR and time & attendance tools, British fashion retailer New Look’s HR team had to rethink its HR tech approach.

The £845 million-revenue retailer started by conducting an “extensive review of the problems” with its existing HR systems.

In an exclusive interview, New Look’s Head of People Services Lisa Nash tells UNLEASH that the old tools were “clunky”, and the “integration was not as slick as it could be”.

Therefore, when deciding on the types of new, modern technologies it wanted for its 10,000-strong workforce, Nash shares that New Look wanted payroll, HR and time and & attendance to be in one solution.

“We knew it would unlock a lot of problems, generate efficiencies and reduce complexity”, notes Nash.

The next step was to find a provider that could provide all three elements, and after a tendering process, New Look settling on Dayforce (formerly known as Ceridian).

Dayforce went live in early August, and Nash, the HR team, store managers and employees are all excited about the launch.

She tells UNLEASH: “I worked with our legacy system for ten years, so I am really excited to see what Dayforce is going to give people.

If we think about our different populations, we’ve got warehouse colleagues packing an online order, we’ve got sales advisors in our stores, and we’ve got our CFO in head office, we’re all going to interact with Dayforce in different ways, but it will unify us.”

The HR tech business case at New Look

Nash admits that historically HR tech has been slightly overlooked – is it revenue generating? – but these end-of-life notifications were a “catalyst” to make a change; it meant “we had a make a decision one way or another”.

So, the HR team looked at all the options available – including outsourcing everything and going to the Retail Tech Show in London in 2023 to look at all the products on the market.

“Due to the complexity of our workforce, outsourcing wouldn’t have been cost effective for us”.

At the trade show “we could see that in time & attendance, a lot of providers had broadly come to the same standard”, but it was about the smoothness of the integration with payroll, according to Nash.

To make the business case around a new tool, “we had to go the board several times to talk about it”, and to put a few providers forward, including Dayforce.

In these conversations, Nash and the HR team leveraged Dayforce’s stats that show a return on investment from use of the tools in similar frontline businesses, particularly around improving efficiencies, as well as did their own independent research.

“Dayforce had an open-door policy. They were happy for us to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly”, including from existing customers.

“They have really established customer forums where we can get together and share best practice and champion ways in which the product could be improved”, explains Nash.

She continues that Dayforce has “been really generous with their time and knowledge of multiple rollouts with other retailers and what has worked well”.

Lisa Nash, Head of People Services, New Look.

When thinking about the benefits for employees, Nash says that New Look focused on the people experience, and the ease of use when choosing Dayforce.

It is just one app – there is just one login.

There’s no issue of popping out of one interface, into another, with lots of different logins, “which was important to us”.

The impact of the single login for store managers “can’t be underestimated”, according to Nash.

It gives them the “gift of time”; “it makes it easier for them to do what they need to do”, whether that’s onboarding new hires or shift scheduling to meet demand and maximize service.

The same can be said for ordinary employees – Nash tells UNLEASH that due to a real focus on comms, upskilling and engagement around the new tool, whenever she pops into a store, employees will tell her: “We don’t have to clock in anymore, we can use the app, it’s going to be amazing”.

The HR team has focused on talking about the key benefits for them – “the stuff they care about at the end of the day is pay and time off” and how the technology “will make their lives easier”, Nash adds.

She gives shout outs to New Look’s internal talent development team and their “phenomenal job” on the upskilling of managers and employees.

“We’ve been thinking about how to do things differently”, whether that’s QR codes in New Look stores or warehouses to help access Dayforce, roadshows to talk about the app, face to face learning sessions, or online how-to videos.

The talent development team have also partnered with internal comms and people experience to configure the solution, keep the issues with the old solution front and center, and making sure that Dayforce is truly fixing the problems.

Inside New Look’s employee value proposition

Retailers and frontline employees are generally facing a tricky labor market – recruitment and retention continue to be huge challenges – so UNLEASH was keen to find out how New Look stands out from the crowd, and what role technology like Dayforce plays there.

For Nash, what makes New Look special (and she’s worked there for a decade) is “the people”.

Our people are so passionate, they absolutely embrace everything, they love to have fun [and] they work really hard” and how New Look responds is with innovation, but also “making sure that we’re listening to what’s important to our people, and then building newness within that”.

One example of this is New Look’s recent decision to improve its family leave provisions.

“Our people have been telling us for years that our maternity leave is not up to par or in line with their expectations, and people were leaving because of that”, so, for Nash, it is great that the retailer has been able to make a difference here.

New Look is also re-evaluating its employee value proposition (EVP), making it clear what it means to work for New Look now, and into the future.

This work will be eased by the implementation of Dayforce, which means “we’ve got that one platform where we can communicate with all our staff”, plus the retailer is planning to adopt one of Dayforce’s more innovative solutions, Dayforce Wallet.

Dayforce Wallet is the HR tech giant’s on-demand pay product, which enables employees to access earnt pay ahead of payday.

“Dayforce Wallet for us is game-changing in terms of giving employees access to already earned net pay,” Nash tells UNLEASH.

“What’s great is there is no charge for people to get their own money; it’s really seamless, and there’s no cash flow implication on you as an employer.”

Nash continues: “Our teams are really excited” as “it puts them in control of their finances a bit more”.

“It can be a bit embarrassing if you’re short on money, and they might not want to speak up, whereas now they can access interest-free money they’ve already earned if they’ve got an unexpected bill.

“It is really important for us that we’re able to provide something that [our] people actually really want.”

Research data confirms this sentiment. For example, a recent Dayforce survey of 7,000 individuals globally found that there are huge benefits from on-demand pay (not just for employees, but also for managers).

For managers, on-demand pay would motivate them to pick up shifts (51%), would prove that their employer cares about financial wellbeing (41%) and could increase their motivation to work harder (40%).

However, Nash is clear that New Look is making use of the guardrails around the use of Dayforce Wallet; “from a financial wellbeing point of view, we can make sure that nobody’s ever left with zero at the end of their pay and that it covers off statutory deductions”.

The future of HR tech at New Look

New Look knew going into the Dayforce project that data was going to be “the biggest thorn in our side” – “as you can imagine, with almost 10,000 people, we’ve got a lot of data; it’s moving and changing daily”, Nash shares.

So, looking ahead, post the launch of the new HR tool, data and analytics remains top of mind for Nash and the team.

Dayforce will help New Look spend less time and “effort getting information out”, and instead focus more on “actually what it is telling us”. This is partly because of Dayforce’s integration with Microsoft Power BI.

Another big focus for New Look’s HR now and into the future is AI. “We’re absolutely of the view that it’s human in the loop, you can’t just let AI do everything for you,” Nash tells UNLEASH.

But the retailer is “absolutely embracing it” – “the leadership team are incredibly excited about what the future could look like with AI, and how can we make jobs more interesting”.

New Look is actually one of the “companies that was testing Microsoft Copilot”, and Nash shares that AI was central to why the retailer chose Dayforce.

The tool has “AI built into it, it has that screening already and they’re going to be releasing their own version of Copilot in a closed environment that protects people data – that’s one of our biggest responsibilities”.

“Knowing that we’ll be able to utilize some of that AI technology without compromising data from a GDPR perspective, that’s really exciting” and where AI will “start to be game-changing for us in our team”, shares Nash.

Watch this space as New Look implements Dayforce for its 10,000 employees.

The next step is to figure out time & attendance for distribution centers (only the retail tool had an end-of-life notification), but “the plan is to bring that on-stream with Dayforce as well”.