HSBC: Implementation and delivery of Employee Central Payroll in 5 countries

The challenge

HSBC is one of the largest banking and financial services organizations in the world. It has operations in 64 countries and territories and employs more than 235,000 employees working from 7,500 offices and service centers.

Additionally, these employees support over 40 million customers that range from individual savers and investors to some of the world’s biggest companies and governments. HSBC needed a way to deliver SuccessFactors EC Payroll for HSBC’s largest payrolls and future-proof its HR and payroll infrastructure in anticipation of increased remote work.

HSBC’s HR and payroll transformation story

Six years ago, HSBC embarked on the most complex global HR and payroll transformation ever undertaken. The objective was to simplify the global IT estate, transform payroll operations and provide an optimized employee experience for HSBC staff.

By August 2018, the international bank had gone live with the main services in its modernized HR suite. These included SAP SuccessFactors, Service Now and Oracle OBIEE analytics. As the result, all employees and contractors across 65 countries now had unified access to the company HR platform. Everyone could now log into a modern SaaS-based HR experience, one that will continually evolve as new innovations and technologies become available.

Within months of go-live, annual performance management and compensation modules were added globally and subsequently. Remote mobile access was also added, along with further new capabilities to accommodate for those employees working from home or off-site.

Payroll integration for 138,000 employees in multiple countries

With the HR infrastructure in place, HSBC commenced its payroll modernization project. The decision was made to roll out SAP Employee Central Payroll in phases to replace its legacy PeopleSoft platform. With the large number of countries to be integrated and the process being complex, it required a partner with a unique set of skills, a local and global capacity for a lengthy project, and a deep background knowledge of cloud technology and payroll integration. HSBC ultimately chose Alight Solutions as its payroll integration partner to design and build the new payroll system.

Highly complex data transfer

Data migration was a major requirement of HSBC’s payroll transformation project. Due to the complexity of moving this volume of highly confidential and essential employee data, dedicated project team was required.

The scope of work also included a total data cleanse, reformat and update. The result means that a reliable data source is fed into payroll replication activity to ensure accurate payroll runs. It also means that very accurate data can be analyzed and used for management reporting.

Project execution and future work

The integration of HSBC’s U.K. payroll was completed in April 2019, and Hong Kong followed suit in September 2019. Work on China, U.S. and Mexico is currently underway; additional countries will be added in the future.