Метаполіс: цифрове робоче місце для ефективної роботи

Creating digital work environments for efficient work and increasing business operational efficiency – is currently one of the most relevant technological trends. They enable employees to be more productive by providing convenient IT tools and a better user experience, and organizations – more flexible Creation of Metapolis – digital workplace for the Metinvest Group is one of the strategic projects implemented by Metinvest Digital.

What is a digital workplace?

Digital workplace – is a combination of technological solutions in a single centralized omnichannel platform, thanks to which employees can access corporate data, communicate and interact with each other in cross-functional teams, manage tasks and document flow, fill in information and work with corporate systems without being tied to the workplace’ and time.

Digital workplace – global trends

According to analytics research, the global digital jobs market is expected to grow from USD 22.7 billion in 2020 to USD 72.2 billion in 2026 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.3% during the forecast period. One key driver of this will be increasing employee demand for tools that will enable a flexible work-life balance. In turn, companies are implementing workplace digitization solutions to meet employee demand and improve their work efficiency with digital tools.

From idea to implementation: how the digital workplace project appeared at Metinvest Group

Any digital product appears when there is a business need for it. Implementation of the Metapolis digital workplace at the Metinvest company – it is not only a desire to keep up with world trends, but also in the given circumstances for Ukraine and our employees – a valuable development that allows systematizing and simplifying the processes of each member of the Metinvest team. Metinvest is the largest mining and metallurgical group of companies in Ukraine. Accordingly, it has a large number of labor occupations that are not covered by digital enterprise tools. One of the priority tasks of Metapolis – to unite all employees of the Group, including production professions, in a single digital platform.

At the beginning of the project development, all business needs were collected and analyzed. The architecture of the solution is then built in such a way that it is flexible enough to be filled and extended in the future with additional functions. Metapolis was created in the form of a three-level business platform, where at the top level the solution combines interface applications (web, mobile, chat bots); average level – business logic, that is, the construction of all business processes of the Group; and already at the lower level – all available accounting systems. Thanks to this, any company process can be automated in it.

Also, before the start of the project, the most priority processes for automation were determined – those that will be able to quickly provide a business result. The first phase of implementation covered more than 30 functions out of 300 planned for implementation. Each of the functions previously passed three filters: the first – economic effect for business; the second – benefits for the user, for example, employees of work specialties; the third – compliance with strategic business objectives. Active work on the project began in 2020.

Functionality of the Metapolis digital workplace

Metapolis– a single interactive digital environment with employee access to the company's business systems, corporate knowledge, news and internal services of Metinvest. In simple terms, it is an assistant in your pocket that will help you draw up or sign documents, get information about wages, make a work schedule, check material values (personal protective equipment), inform about company and enterprise news and much more.

The task of Metapolis – connect more than 300 business systems of the company in a single interface and create a single entry point for the employee. But it is worth noting that the digital workplace – information system and does not set itself the goal of replacing functional tools with which employees work every day (such as SAP systems, Microsoft 365, etc.).

Artem Shchap, Head of New Product Development at Metinvest Digital:

- The key task of the product we are developing– help the Group's employees: simplify the work processes they work with every day and create a single window of access to corporate systems and information. At the end of 2021, Metinvest Digital launched Metapolis at the first two enterprises of the Metinvest Group – Ingulets GZK and Metinvest Business Service. In April 2022, 4 more enterprises joined it: Central GZK, Northern GZK, Metinvest-SMC and Kamet-stal. Later, Metinvest Holding and Metinvest Digital were added. So far, we have implemented solutions at the Group's Ukrainian enterprises and are working on scaling plans for Metinvest's foreign companies as well.

Now the product is implemented in basic functionality, which covers personal information of employees, and also provides access to it through a single service window.

Today, the functionality of Metapolis has the following capabilities:

• Access to personal account. In this section, the user can get detailed information about his finances. Thanks to the convenient interface, you can see all the information about payments, accruals, retention. Also, in this section, you can get a calculation sheet for detailing the salary received and print it if necessary. By the way, statistics show that this is one of the most popular sections of Metapolis. Users especially like to visit it after receiving a salary.

• In the "Finance" section you can go to the "Salaries and benefits" tab, which shows the current salary of a Metapolis user, the history of all salary changes with the reason.

• In the personal account, there is a "Schedule" section, where the employee can view his work schedule, see the number of working days and working hours in the current period.

• On the "Absence" tab you can see the days of your absence at the workplace separately, and in the "Vacation Schedule" – a complete picture of planned vacations for the coming year and available vacation limits.

• Managers in Metapolis have a ``Team'' section where they can get the work schedules of their subordinates. Thanks to a convenient dashboard, you can see schedules of planned vacations of employees and synchronize the work of the department, which is especially convenient for managers with a large team. And vacation registration can be done through a mobile application, which significantly speeds up this process.

• Team performance report (for managers), report card for employees.

• Material assets: list of personal protective equipment (PPE) and their description. Globally – this is the control of the protection of employees during work, so it is important that workers do not forget to replace personal protective equipment in time. They will receive a reminder notification when it is time to replace the list of necessary tools. By the way, the manager of such an employee also receives this information. This allows you to check whether the subordinate has replaced personal protective equipment.

• A notification center that allows you to customize your incoming information. • Information support: Top-25 main news, segmented for each enterprise separately. The employee can receive notifications about key events in the company and at his enterprise, about current production indicators. This section also ensures that employees are informed about the situation in the company, strategy, goals and development directions.

• The possibility to use the mobile application not only for the administrative and managerial staff of the mentioned enterprises, but also for employees with working professions who do not have access to corporate computers. The omnichannel product is ensured by mobile applications on the Android and iOS platforms, and a chatbot, which we plan to launch in February 2023. Thus, not only administrative staff, but also specialists of working professions will be able to connect to the digital workplace and use its functions.

Key benefits of Metapolis

The digital workplace is quite easy for our employees to use. We have created a simplified authorization system. Now you can log in using SMS Sign-in.

And every time there are updates that concern an employee, they are automatically displayed on their profile. This is a convenient service that can be easily supplemented with business processes. In addition, it significantly saves the time that was previously spent on solving various issues.

Of course, this is primarily convenient for manufacturing enterprises. This relieves the workload of raters and shop managers. Such a digital workplace helps to build communication with absolutely every employee using a modern method of approach, and not with the help of newspapers or information stands, as it was before.

The nearest plans for the future development of Metapolis

We have already implemented part of the work on the application. But the Metapolis team continues to work on expanding the functionality of the product, so additional options will appear soon, such as:

• EDS – signature of documents with an electronic digital signature (for enterprises that use internal electronic document management). Soon there will be no need for long procedures to agree and sign documents, it will be possible to send or approve the received document using the system. Remote signing of documents is now an urgent need, as all employees are in different locations and document exchange has become a difficult task.

• Expansion of the "Personal account" section with the possibility of changing data: personal information, contacts, organizational structure, addresses, family, documents, education, skills, certificates, awards and incentives.

• For managers, the functionality will be supplemented with more detailed data about subordinates: structure, seniority, employment book, references and documents.

• Work schedule: in addition to the general work schedule calendar, it will be possible to add a request for absence, change the schedule, and coordinate them electronically directly from the mobile application.

• The functionality of feedback from employees, conducting surveys, implementing compliance procedures, training, according to roles, etc.

Today, Metapolis is used by more than 10,000 employees. We will expand its capabilities so that employees can save time on routine tasks and devote their attention to more important work processes.