Affinity Education, a privately held company that provides early childhood education, has met the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine requirements set by the states of Victoria and NSW by utilising the SAP SuccessFactors HR (human resources) tool that allows employees to enter their health and vaccination status.
As a major early education and childcare services provider in Australia, Affinity Education employs more than 3,400 direct staff. It offers a variety of career pathways in over 150 childcare centres, preschools, kindergartens, and outside school hours care (OSCH) locations across the country. Acknowledging the need to help employees comply with legal requirements surrounding the COVID-19 vaccination and to reassure its network of childcare workers, parents, and families, the organisation decided to implement the Health and Vaccine Portlet within the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution.
Introduced in Q4 2020 along with other service offerings in the Back to Work package, the Health and Vaccine Portlet enables employees to share their vaccination information, which can then be combined with other employee and company data to assist in establishing reopening strategies and travel recommendations. For Affinity Education, customising the SAP SuccessFactors HR feature based on the needs of individual employees allowed them to conveniently upload their vaccine certificates to comply with Public Health Orders (PHO).
SAP ANZ President and Managing Director Damien Bueno commented:
“At a human level, providing Affinity Education with a connected HR platform means that we are supporting a safe transition back to individuals’ place of work, and making it as seamless for employees as possible. At the same time, we are helping Affinity Education manage government vaccination requirements, which is especially important in the childcare sector, and critical in building confidence among the communities in which it operates.”
Affinity Education Achieves COVID-19 Vaccination Compliance with SAP SuccessFactors HR Solution
All people working at a school or early education and care facility in NSW must be fully vaccinated by the 8th of November 2021, according to the NSW PHO. This includes any work at an early education and care facility and also covers centre-based childcare facilities, family daycare, and school-based childcare. By utilising the SAP SuccessFactors HR solution, Affinity Education achieved 100% compliance with vaccination requirements in NSW’s ‘LGAs of Concern’ in just a few weeks.
According to the company, the Health and Vaccine Portlet was quickly adopted because most employees used the SAP SuccessFactors mobile app to add their vaccine certificates. Meanwhile, Affinity Education’s staff in Victorian facilities were likewise keen to implement the solution, with 70% of individuals uploading their proof of vaccination within two weeks of the portlet’s launch.
“With fast access to real-time vaccine tracking information, we have peace of mind that we are compliant with legislation and that we are doing all we can to provide our community of educators, workers, parents, and families with as much support as possible during what can be quite a stressful time,” Affinity Education Chief People Officer Linda Carroll stated.
Considering its implementation of human experience management (HXM) solution SAP SuccessFactors in 2013 and the employee self-service (ESS) modules in 2017, SAP described the process of integrating the Health and Vaccine tool as “a seamless next step” for Affinity Education. Expounding on its collaboration with SAP, Carroll noted that the organisation immediately saw the benefits of having an automated system when it shifted its HR system to SAP SuccessFactors a few years ago. She said that the solution allowed employees to spend more time with children.
“As a result, everyone from the CEO to our educators are very comfortable with the SAP SuccessFactors platform, and implementing the vaccination portlet was an easy way to help employees manage their health information,” Carroll further explained.
Aside from leveraging the Health and Vaccine Portlet within the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution, the company intends to integrate the Onboarding and Recruiting modules into its platform to ensure consistency from hiring to onboarding and to help the HR department staff with their tasks.
