beqom PaySuite 27.3 - Feature release notes

This article details the latest improvements introduced in version 27.3 of the beqom PaySuite application, their benefits for our end-users, and their principles of use.

Compensation Management

Live hierarchy option for compensation round access

Compensation manager access to a round has always been resolved from a hierarchy snapshot frozen at the round's cut-off date. When a reporting line changed with the round still open, whether through a promotion, a reassignment, or a new joiner or leaver, the change was not reflected: a manager's access, their place in the round list, and the workers visible to them in the Planner kept showing the organization as of the cut-off date.

In version 27.3 of the application, rounds can be configured to resolve that access from the live organization structure instead. In the Define hierarchy step of the configuration wizard under Workbench > Compensation Management > Compensation Rounds, Configuration users, Compensation Admins, and Global Compensation Admins choose a Hierarchy source: Round key dates, the existing frozen-snapshot behavior, or Live hierarchy, which keeps access current as the organization changes for as long as the round stays open, without being limited by the round's freeze date. Selecting either option updates the hierarchy preview immediately, before saving, and a badge on the preview states which source is applied, with a date shown for Round key dates. The same badge appears on a published round's read-only hierarchy view. The setting can be changed while a round is in the Draft status, and afterward through a pending draft.

This choice only affects the compensation manager direct and indirect actors. It changes which rounds show in a manager's round list and which workers are displayed for them in Planner > Compensation. It also determines the available View as options, including the indirect actor's minimum-worker gating condition. It has no effect on HRBP access, which already resolves against the live organization regardless of this setting, and it leaves a round's population, proposals, and calculations untouched. A worker who moves out of a manager's live-hierarchy scope simply becomes invisible to that manager, while all of the worker's data in the round remains exactly as it was.

For rounds that are open for weeks, access can now track organizational changes automatically, rather than needing a manual correction once it falls out of date.

Hierarchy source in the Define hierarchy step

Performance Management

Talent Review, a standalone talent calibration process

Deciding who to develop, promote, or retain has usually meant exporting performance data into spreadsheets and holding calibration meetings outside the platform, where the results are hard to trace and easy to lose. Talent Review brings that work into PaySuite as a process in its own right, separate from Review, Goals, Feedback, and Career Development. Workers are assessed on performance and potential, and the system places each worker in a 9-box grid automatically. Line managers rate their direct reports first, a Talent HRBP calibrates afterwards, and the template owner closes the process so that final ratings are locked and available for reporting and compensation decisions. Original review ratings are never overwritten, and a cycle advances on submissions rather than on dates, so it closes when the work is done rather than when a deadline passes.

This is an note/information message.

Talent Review appears in Workbench, under Platform Setup > Feature Enablement. It is off by default and can be switched on or off by the beqom team. Holders of the Read-only and Configuration roles can see the setting without changing it. There are no sub settings yet, so the entry is shown as plain text rather than as a link.

To enable the feature, please contact your beqom representative.

Building a talent review template

Organizations rarely use the same vocabulary for the same talent segments, so a fixed grid tends to be rejected before it is used. A new professional role, Talent Review, allows users to create, publish and edit calibration templates through a guided wizard:

• The details step takes a name of up to 100 characters and a description of up to 500 characters, both mandatory, and one or more owners, with the creator added automatically and co-owners drawn from the creator's own scope. Every piece of template text can be translated, and the default language has to be complete before the wizard moves on or the template is published.

• The population step defines who is reviewed and is limited to the creator's own scope.

• The grid step opens on a default Talent Matrix, with Performance and Potential on the two axes, three levels on each, and nine named cells such as Star, High Performer, Core Contributor and At Risk. Axis names, level labels, cell headers, cell labels, and colors can all be changed from a side panel, and the preview follows each edit. The grid is fixed at three levels by three for this release, and a second optional grid was considered but is not included.

• The questionnaire step adds custom questions answered by line managers, using free text, radio buttons, or checkboxes, with a mandatory flag where an answer is required, and carries the publish action. Work is saved when moving between steps and when Save and exit is used, drafts stay invisible to participants, and a validation banner appears when a mandatory field is still missing.

Template building

Managing templates through the cycle

A new Talent Review Templates page gives the wider view, with summary widgets for the total number of templates and how many are in draft and in progress, above a table showing the name, the published date, the owner, the number of workers, and the status. Publishing moves a template from "Draft" to "In progress" once the mandatory fields, the population, the grid, the questionnaire, and the default language translations are complete, and enrolls only workers who have a manager and who fall within the creator's scope. A draft can be reopened and edited at any point without validation, and stays in draft until it is published. A template that is already in progress can also be revised: the name, the description, the owners, the translations, the axis and cell labels, and the questionnaire can all be updated, and the population can be extended. Nothing already entered is disturbed, since existing participants and their progress are always preserved. The structure of the grid cannot be changed once published, and questions already published cannot be deleted or have their answer type changed. Changes take effect only after republish is confirmed.

The manager experience

Rating a team one worker at a time is slow, and a grid that only refreshes on demand is of little use during a discussion. A Talent Review tab appears in Planner as soon as a published review includes at least one of a manager's direct reports, listing every review that concerns the team. Opening one shows a live 9-box grid above a table of direct reports, with columns for the status, the performance and potential ratings, the current box, and the state of the questionnaire.

Ratings are set from dropdowns and saved as they are chosen, with no manual save step, and each worker moves on the grid immediately. Selecting a worker name opens a drawer holding the same ratings alongside the questionnaire, where Save and exit stores the answers and the ratings together. A manager can submit a single worker from the drawer, or select several in the table and submit them at once, with a selection that holds across pages.

Submission is tolerant of gaps: the workers who are complete are submitted, the rest are skipped, and a banner names each worker who could not be submitted on the page in view and gives the reason, while the rows concerned are highlighted so they are easy to find and finish. A submitted rating becomes read-only for the manager, and the worker stays visible in both the table and the grid.

Manager experience

The Talent HRBP experience

Calibration across teams needs a perspective wider than a single reporting line. A new Talent HRBP role opens a Talent Review tab in Planner covering the reviews that contain at least one worker within the holder's scope, and draft templates never appear there.

A user who is both a line manager and a Talent HRBP is given a switch between the two views, each with its own list and its own guidance.

Split access for a manager and HRBP

The calibration page shows the 9-box grid above a table listing the worker, the manager status, the manager rating, the manager, the HR rating, and the difference between the two ratings. The HR rating is set in the table and saved as soon as it is chosen, and it then governs placement on the grid. Where a manager has submitted, that rating is shown in grey as a starting point and becomes an HR rating only once it is deliberately selected, whether the value is kept or changed.

Manager drafts are never visible, and only what a manager has submitted is shown. A drawer offers the same view with the manager rating and questionnaire answers read-only, and there the HR rating is stored on Save and exit rather than as it is chosen.

HR submission covers every eligible worker in scope in a single action, questionnaire answers are not required for it, workers without any rating are skipped and can be submitted later, and where two HR business partners share visibility of a worker, the first submission settles that rating.

Closing a cycle and locking the results

While a review is in progress, nothing is final. Managers can rate, save, and submit at any time, HR business partners can calibrate and submit independently of where managers have reached, and the template owner can still adjust the template and republish. Closing ends that. The owner closes a review from the template list, after a confirmation that states plainly that the action cannot be undone, and the system then calculates one final rating for every worker. The review becomes read-only for everyone, a Closed badge marks it in the list and on the page, and nothing further can be edited, submitted, or republished. Nothing is lost either: a manager who never submitted can still see their unsubmitted draft, and the owner can still read the configuration as it stood.

Manager view after closing

Roles at a glance

Status reference

In summary

Talent Review moves calibration out of spreadsheets and into the platform, with a full record of who rated what and when. The grid, the rating scales, and the questions are configured in the words each organization already uses, in as many languages as it needs. Managers work through their teams quickly, HR business partners calibrate across them with both judgments in view, and the difference between the two is visible rather than argued over. Closing a cycle produces one final rating for every worker, locked and ready for reporting, succession planning, and compensation decisions.

Pay Transparency

Global audit trail for pay information requests

In previous versions of PaySuite, an audit trail for a pay information request existed only at the level of a single request, so reviewing activity across many requests required opening each one in turn.

To consolidate that activity into a single, searchable view, we have introduced an Audit trail tab, alongside the existing Requests and Bulk actions tabs in Planner > Pay Information. Entries can be filtered by the person who performed the action, the worker involved, the action type, a request ID, or a date range, and then sorted, with results paginated at 25 entries per page by default. Clicking a request ID opens the request itself, and a dedicated detail drawer for update actions provides greater visibility into what was changed. The view applies the same permissions already used elsewhere in Pay Transparency, so a user continues to see only the workers within their scope.

Investigations that once meant checking requests individually can now be carried out from a single screen, with no change to access controls.

New Audit trail tab in Pay Information

Demo

New notification types

Notifications for Communication Managers at document review

Previously, Communication Managers could learn that a document had reached the Document review workflow step in a communication round only by checking the round directly.

A new notification, Document ready for communication manager review, set in Platform Setup > Email Notifications > Documents, is triggered the moment a document reaches that step in an eligible communication round. It is delivered both in-app and by email. It reaches both the primary and the secondary Communication Manager assigned to the round. Clicking the notification opens Planner > Documents > Communication rounds with the relevant filters already applied, so the documents requiring attention appear immediately.

This reduces the manual coordination previously needed between contributors and Communication Managers. As a result, documents move through review without unnecessary delay.

Document ready for communication manager review toggle

Notifications for failed automated executions

Until now, a failed automated document generation or close and release action went unnoticed unless someone was actively reviewing the Automated Action Monitoring page or its execution logs.

With this release, a new notification type, Automated action failures, is available under Platform Setup > Email Notifications > Documents. Administrators choose who receives it, independent of that person's own Pay Transparency role, and set a delivery schedule of daily, weekly, or monthly, with the delivery time defined in UTC. Both the subject and body of a notification can be edited and translated. Notifications separate document generation failures from close and release failures and state how many of each occurred, so recipients can immediately see where attention is needed. Additionally, each notification links directly to the Workbench > Pay Transparency > Automated Action Monitoring page with the matching error filters already applied, skipping the need to rebuild that filtering by hand.

Rather than being tied to a specific role, monitoring responsibility can now be assigned to whichever person or team an organization designates, and failures are surfaced on a schedule instead of depending on someone remembering to check.

Automated action failure notification configured

Demo