PegaWorld iNspire 2024: Employment Dispute Resolution for the Digital Age

So my name is Quinn. I'm actually the Center of Excellence lead for the Singapore office. Right. So this is a little community where we bring Pega practitioners together, right? Where we actually help to enable each other sharing stories. Right. Even sharing about the new features that Pega is launching. Right. So today with me, um, I'm going to present this agenda where I do a first introduction about, you know, what we're doing over here.

And then we talk about about, you know, the paradigm shift on the employment dispute resolution. Then we go on and talk about, you know, the vision that the agency has right for this, um, new system and then the transformative user journey with us and also the innovation approach for this. And lastly, the impact, um, delivered. All right. Now a bit of introduction about Singapore. Singapore is a small little island, right? Right in the Southeast Asia. It's actually across the Pacific Ocean from here, right? We only have about 5.9 million of population.

About 30% of the workforce is actually foreigners, right? So it is important for us to also cater for this group of people right now. Um, back in 2014, right, our prime minister actually launched a smart initiative, um, uh, program. Right. That's where he's encouraging all Singaporeans, companies and even agencies right, to go into digitization. Right. The mundane is actually to help to improve the life of Singaporeans and also to build a community. Right, and also help with the businesses as well. Right.

With that, right, we we see a shift of the paradigm, right, in terms of the employment dispute resolution. Why? Because in the past, right. The case about, you know, employee being, um, unsaturated. They have to, you know, found all these cases manually. Right. There's a lot of forms to be filled. Right. Sometimes it's, you know, all pens and paper, you know, writing it down.

And then there's a lot of no checks and stuff being in place. So this creates a lot of, um, cumbersome process with the officers. Right. Officers have to keep interviewing, you know, is this the correct information? And there's a lot of, uh, to and fro with them. Right. And of course, the whole, um, mediation process is also very cumbersome. Why? Right.

Because at that time, the officers have to if there's any mediation really required or have to go to state court, they do have to, you know, bring the whole documents to the state court itself. Right. And do the necessary case registration. Right. So this whole process is very tedious. And of course, um, there's an emerging needs as well. Right. Because Singapore workforce is actually more and more digitally adept already. So people are more aware of the rights that they have, right?

And of course, there's also a more complexity in terms of handling employment dispute. Why? Because the workforce has changed, right. We are seeing more and more like Platform workers over there. We call them example grab drivers over here could be Uber drivers, right? They are not really paid by the company, right. But they are self employed by themselves. So in the event they get into any injury, accidents and stuff, what's going to happen. Right.

Who's going to pay them right. Is the is Uber going to pay them. Is going to pay them or not. Right. So there are certain policies and stuff. So they are seeing a lot more such complex cases. Right. And also pregnant lady who are being retrenched right during their pregnancy. What do they do.

Right. Is it fair or not right. So these are all the kind of cases that come along, right, that emerge. And of course, there's also a need for conducive environment for both parties. Both parties over here implies that the employee and employer need to come together in the old times when they come together. I mean, you feel more intimidated as an employee, right? How will you confront your employer that you know you didn't pay me correctly and so on and so forth, right? So there's a need to, you know, find a middle ground, right, that is conducive for both parties to negotiate. Now, of course, there's also a proactive requirement to actually educate the businesses, right, to prevent any employment conflicts.

Right. So this is the emerging needs that we are seeing that's coming forward. Right. So then what's the solution then? Right. In response to this, we are looking at a self-service platform right where the employee itself, they can actually, you know, fill up all these large complaints online right. With the help of AI chatbot. Right. Later you will see, um, the, the, the user journey that we've put in place here.

Right. Because this will actually help them to reduce, uh, typos. Right. So there will be some checks already in place, right? So that when you finish, you know, filling up your form submission. There's no need for the officers to come in and intervene. Right. Next is actually the rule based triaging and facilitation of mediation. Right.

So basically there is infused of official knowledge inside here to guide the the employees and employers to reach a consensus. Right. So that if they can agree and settle it right without going to court. Fantastic. Right. Then we will see a reduction of officer intervention as well. Another solution that was a feature in the system is that there is a asynchronous chat with sentiment analysis. This is powered by Pega Pulse. Yes.

You hear me right. There's a Pega Pulse involved here, right? Where the three parties, employees, employers, and even the officers can actually communicate with one another, right? And why sentiment analysis is added in is actually to help to promote a more conducive environment, um, to filter off all the negative comments that might come, you know, that people might, you know, just insert and chat, right. So this is to filter that out, right? Once they do that, once the system detects that, you know, there's something like this. And of course the last one is actually proactive conflict of this prevention. Right. Basically we are leveraging on CDH.

Right. To actually based on, you know, industry market, what is going on about this company? We proactively identify them, right. And then send some alerts and stuff to encourage them, you know, to to take note of all these little things that they have to be careful of and also encourage them to join the trainings. All right. So this is the solution in general that we have implemented. Now what is the vision for the future right. So this happened five years ago for the agencies right. Where they were brainstorming okay.

So with this whole new paradigm shift, what do we need to do. Right. Do we want to stop that. So they started to do this vision workshop. Right. To do a what if right. They put officers, employees and employers at the heart of the solution. And the question they're asking is, ah, you know, what can I do better? Right?

To help the employees employer to resolve the dispute. Repeatedly. Right. How can I actually, you know, um, allow the customers to or rather, the employees and employers to self-help by talking to an AI chatbot? How can my officer. Right. Be the best officer every time. Right. And how can I even, you know, handle complex cases?

We reduce the difficulty. Right. So that was at the back of the, uh, the head of it. When when the team actually come together five years ago. Right. To discuss about this. Now, that is where they are looking into this journey, right? They brainstorm together, right? They do the necessary, um, checks.

Right. And even do some certain POCs to make sure that all these solutions that are implementing actually really works, right? So what they have done is, you know, from no AI automation where you need to have officers, um, coming in to do this, they actually make it more user friendly portal so that the employees, employers, they can actually go into that form filling first, then after that they do the negotiation between themselves. If no choice, the officer will come in, mediate, mediate. So along the way, they try to inject all this cool technology solution into it, right? And where they are right now is actually at the partial optimization. Right? Basically, they try to automate as much as possible. And that is where today.

Right. What are they looking out for for the North Star, which is to reach the fully autonomous dispute resolution service? I think the last few days we've seen a PegaWorld, right. Dawn actually shared about some of the cool stuff like Pega knowledge, Pega Coach. Right, so on and so forth and all the GenAI I think it's possible. So that's probably the next step that the agency should be looking out for already. Okay, now the journey transformed, right? The user journey with what we have taken. Right?

It all starts started off with the customer. Who is the employee, right? Notice there's an arrow on the top and the bottom right. Usually what happens is the employee will go to this portal. Right. It's an external portal from Pega. Right. It's actually an angular portal where we leverage on API to pull those objects right from Pega into it. Right.

That's where the employees will fill out the necessary information. Right? After that, they if they have if they need some assistance, they don't go straight to the officer. They will actually leverage on the AI chatbot. Right. This AI chatbot is actually, um, uh, empowered by, um, Google chatbot. Right. So then they actually enter all this information. If they really go through the chatbot, what's going to happen is that all this information that they enter the chatbot will all be pre-populated back into the form.

There's no need for the employees to reenter everything, right? All these are pre-populated already, right? Once they are OK, they confirm that they want to lock the case. Then they will go into payment. There's a nominal fees for them to lodge this. Okay. After that, what's going to happen is that there will be automated Pulse notification. The system will send out right to the respective parties, right to inform them about this, uh, cases. That's coming.

Right. So they need to go into this negotiation, right? That's how they are being informed. So during this invocation in negotiation. Right. What's going to happen is that they have a, there's a guide, um, structured response. Right. This is based off the knowledge of the officers. Right.

Remember I said that the five years ago the North Star was already set up, right? The team has already come up with the ideas. They do the POC, they even interview the officers, the mediators. Right. What do you normally talk about? Right. What are the questions that you ask? Right. From there, they come up with a structured, guided way of leading the employees and employers right to come into the settlement.

Right? With that, if they don't, if they don't settle right, then it will go to the court case already. Now, if let's go back to the mediation. Right. So if they they're doing the mediation right, they actually the mediator will be assigned. Right. They will be using a zoom. Right. So we actually integrate with zoom right, where all three parties actually can actually go in together.

Right. Again, remember one of the one of the challenges in the past was that I don't have a conducive environment to talk to my employer to negotiate properly. Right. Because my employers keep glaring at me. So scary. Right. So what happened? Right now we have a virtual way. I don't have to face you face to face.

Right? I can do it behind my computer. Fantastic. I don't even have to care about how you look at. Right? So with that, they managed to actually do a video conferencing where they get to negotiate. What is the terms and conditions, what's what's the payment amount, so on and so forth. Right. After that they will reach a settlement.

Right. And that is where there is a third party, um, integration to our national digital identity. That's where they can catchy sign of digitally, right? And this is endorsed by the government as well. Right. If they can't settle as part of the mediation, what has happened is that there's an automatic integration with the state court right now. State court, of course, they will update some information this and that. Right. So this information will also be passed back into the dispute resolution solution.

All right. Now so after this is done after let's say the settlement is all settled. Right. They need to pay the amount. What's going to happen is that there is a notification sent out to them. There's also a way to track right in the dashboard in Pega. They can actually track, you know, whether if the payment has been made, if there's no payment made right or it's almost due. There will be alerts sent out right to them. Right.

So once the payment is made and stuff, the case will be resolved. Case closed. Everything is all done right. And the notification will be sent out to all parties and inform them. Right. Okay. Now then what is the. In summary, what is the features that we have implemented over here? Right.

Pega being the brain of the whole case management. Right. We are using a lot of out of the box features where we do the case routing, case processing, so forth, so on and so forth inside here. Right. The solution is also enabled by integrating with a lot of various external systems. Right. Um I mentioned about zoom um kiosk. Kiosk is more for, you know, making payment. Right.

Um, Google chatbot right where they actually do, uh, the necessary, um, GenAI chatting and stuff. Right? Signify is actually the digital signature, right where they sign the settlement. Right? They have to click on it later. I have a screen click on that. You can take a look right. CPG is actually the payment gateway. And then of course it's also powered by AWS for some of the features as well.

And Singpass is our national digital identity. Another cool features that I mentioned about which is Pulse certification. Right. Again, certification is just just used by the officers themselves. It's also with third parties as well, which is the employees and employers. There's also insight and dashboard that's been shown so that people know that you know how many cases are still being opened right where they are. Right. And they can track, um, Pega DX API is being leveraged because it's an external portal, right? It's used by employee.

Employer. Right. And the other one is of course, is the E calculators, where it helps to calculate the total amount of the fair amount. Right. Based on the employer x. Okay. So lastly in summary this is how the transformation user journey looks like for them. Now not forgetting our users over here right. Which is the three parties I keep mentioning about the internal officers, the member of the public, which is the employee employer and also the partners that we engage.

So for internal officers, right. Although the screen is really more guided, right. There are still training sessions being been conducted, right? So this one is really based on the personas that they are doing the jobs right. So there will be structured training curriculums for them. Right. Making sure that they are able to do their work. A lot of questions being asked during training is more about the process instead of the features over here, because from shifting from the past, right in the past, the old way of doing things, the new way of doing things, officers need to be equipped, right? They need to know the know how.

The other things to take note of is, is the members of public. There are so many of them. How do we engage them? Right? So what was being done is actually to publish the circulars, the quick reference guide on the public portal and also send, you know, mass emails as well to the employers to educate them that this is coming. Right. They can actually use the new platform to do all this, right? Same goes for the partner to also inform them that this is coming as well, right where there's other agencies. All right.

Now let's take a look. Um, of the screens that we have built in here, right? I'm sorry. The screen, the the the the screens. Sorry. There's, um, the process I'm going to share about is more on the integration in negotiation, the mediation and how to when the generation of the certificate. Now, over here on the left that you are seeing. Right. This is where the first screen where the employees come in.

When they come in, they do have to indicate, you know, what's their dispute type, what's their claim item amount and the claim period. This will then determine later on the subsequent um guided structure, um information that will be shown. Right. The calculators here actually helps to ensure that whatever they put in right will be justified. Based on that on the right that you are looking at is a language accessibility. Remember, just earlier on, I was saying that about 30% of the workforce are foreigners, right? So these are non-speaking, um, non-English speaking, uh, workers. Right. So there's a need to actually, you know, have this translation for them, right?

So that they know how to fill this in. Okay. So moving on to the employer. So once the employee has submitted a case, what's going to happen is that the employer will be invited into the portal right over here. There is a negotiation summary. They can see, you know, what's the status, what's the progress and what's the agreed amount that they have submitted for the claims. Then they can also see the history over here. Now, if they decide that the response to the dispute. Right, all they need to do is actually to click on the response.

And then they will go to the next stage, right? Notice that based on what they have, what the employee has selected, right. The dispute time and the claim type. Right. It will show the structured response already. So back to the employer assuming that, you know, um, they look at this okay. This is the drop down that we showed. Right. They want to decide the counter offer.

And then there will be a drop down list. Right. This will change according to what is being shared, what is being entered in the earlier phase. OK and this information is really based on the knowledge of how a mediator will usually talk to. One more thing to note is that, um, notice at least right is a finite list. Why is it finite? Because this represents 80% of all the cases that was being lodged today, right? So the team has actually come together, you know, take out the 80% of these cases and put them translate into this. All right then over here again there's an inbuilt calculator right.

Based on the counter response right. You can click on the calculator calculator again and put it in sentiment analytics. At the back is where they you know justify you know, why do they think that. You know they only deserve this amount right. Of course no negative remarks. So on and so forth. Right. And then over here as well under the employer view, what you are seeing is um, some prompts, right. That will nudge the employer.

So imagine, you know, there are certain remaining items they can see. Um, these prompts. And then as part let's say, you know, the employers and employees cannot reach to a conclusion, right? So then they will go into this mediation stage. So this is the officer view. This is in the Pega. This is out of the box right. The look and feel is a bit different right. We are using Pulse like I mentioned here.

Right. Where the officers can actually type all this information. Right. You know, so and so and so right. We'll be using this communication. Right. This will be sent to the employees and employers okay. So there's no more time. I mean this actually helps to cut down the time required, right to actually schedule meetings with them.

Right. Manually calling them, you know, finding out from them where they are, are you available. So on and so forth. They're using this chat already. Right. The other features in other employees. If they decided to go into mediation, they would click on a joint and then come into this. Right. And this is where, you know, the employee employee can actually enter, you know, information are what they how they want to negotiate and so on and so forth.

Again, sentiment analysis analytics is applied here. Right. This is also the filter of any negative comments. Right. And back in let's say they can't they can't you know um they can't actually reach a conclusion. This is a mediation screen right from the official view on the top right. Notice there will be a zoom integration here, right where they can actually start a meeting and get to the conference call right then for the employee and employer their view this is where they can see this is an appointment. Right. And then when time's up they can actually, you know, join this meeting and go into that.

Now let's say after the mediation, everything is okay. They have reached a consensus, right? This is where the officer will come into this screen, right? To indicate, you know what, the options and so forth and the total amount settlement. And then they get to actually generate the documents and that's where they get to preview and download as well. Once they click on continue, what is going to happen is that this document will be sent to the portal for for the employee employer. And that's where they can actually open and then use the our national digital identity to actually sign it. All right. Again this is an integration with another agency.

Hence is is enabled because of that. All right. So in general this is how the mediation features are looked like. Okay. Now what is the impact then delivered over here on the left side that you are seeing. These are the impact that's delivered for the officers right from the agency perspective. Right. They are looking at, you know, enhanced efficiency right write a 500% increase in service. Cell service resolution.

And this is made possible by the chatbot. Right. They are also looking at you know, there's a lot of time and cost saving right. Due to you know, everybody is moving towards the portal. There's no need to, you know, get the officers to intervene. Right. Scheduling is automated right now as well. And the other point is, the great thing is that 77% of the cases are settled right out of the 900 cases that has been lodged per month. Right?

700. We are looking at 700. Right. There has already been, you know, successfully, successfully settled before even before mediation. And again, this is possible because of the guided, you know, way of doing things right on the right side, right from the societal perspective. Right? There's an increase in in the social inclusion and the impact. Why? Because there's people we are actually encouraging or even reaching out to non-English speaking workers already write that they can actually come in and then do all this setup, all this online.

Right. And of course, there's a lot of enhanced customer satisfaction. Satisfaction. Right. There are feedback that, you know, the citizens are actually, you know, appreciative of these features, right, that they have today. Right. And especially the conducive environment that the agency has made possible. And lastly, also the broadening of impact to other agencies. Right.

So we are looking at because of the success of this dispute resolution system. Right. More and more other agencies are actually coming on board. Right. They are looking at, you know, how they can actually leverage on this same platform, right. To reach out to help them resolve. Right. Okay. So with that, um, that is the impact that we have delivered, right?

We have together with the agencies. Right. And, um, yeah, I think that's about it that we have. Right. For for this. Now it's the Q&A time. Do you have any questions that you want to want us write about this? Sure. There's a mic over there.

Maybe you want to use it so that the rest of the folks can hear. Okay. It's a very good platform. It's really wonderful. My question is about OK chatbot. And what is the Pulse. OK. Chatbot who are using the Pega? Or we are using Google Chatbot.

Okay. Remember this is when the team actually did this right? Conceptualized all this is five years ago. Five years ago. Chatbot wasn't that fantastic right? So they have done a lot of POCs and they have decided that Google chatbot is actually the better one. Right. That's why they decided on Google chatbot. Yeah.

So for example, let's say because you said that the chatbot is also resolving a lot of cases before it goes to somebody. Correct? Correct. So the chatbot actually gives Answers to the questions and answers about why a dispute might be rejected or something like that. Correct. Correct, correct. So notice that, um, I also mentioned that five years ago, there's a lot of homework being done right at the, at the, at the back end. Right. So the agencies, when they come together, they talk to it, talk to the businesses, try to understand what the cases how do they actually mitigate.

Right. From there they actually put all this right, intelligence knowledge and stuff onto the chatbot as well. That's how they manage to reach into this. Yeah. Because I also saw one of your screenshots about your application when somebody can, uh, let's say dispute a claim or a OK, but then it shows a generated dispute. Correct. Yes. That's right. Is that AI generated or do you have like a catalog?

Okay. That is a rule based right now. So that's why we say that it's not fully automated. We haven't reached the autonomous uh, self automating stage yet. Right. So that is actually the next stage that we are exploring with the client? Yeah. With the agency. Yeah.

My second part of the other question that I have is the about the first message. The first message is for the Pega Platform. I understand that the officers, they can actually see it in the Pega portal, but what about the customers or the employees who actually. Yeah. Same thing. They can see it because there's actually a integration. We're using the API to pull all those information onto the angular. Yeah. Correct.

Correct. Correct. Yes. That's why I said this is an innovative approach, right. It's not something very traditional that we know of. It's not the conventional way. Yeah. Thank you very much. Yep.

Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah yeah I can. This is brilliant. Thank you very much. Automated. Security. But on the back of it is He made a lot of use cases and cases where and in what cases are completely resolved. Stu Smith is the agency is taking it to the next level of working with the employers, correcting the policy and guidance.

Right. Exactly. So that's why we are talking about GenAI, where we are trying to infuse adaptive, um, adaptive AI as well into this because today is still very rule based, right? There's a bit of AI, but it's still not fully there yet. Right. That will be the next step. Yeah. Okay. This is on okay.

This is a very, um, country, uh, regulation related. Right. So, um, this solution is actually on AWS Singapore. Right, because of regulations that the database have to reside in Singapore. Hence, um, it's in AWS. Yeah, it's under AWS. Government commercial. Cloud. Yeah, if that's what we will say.

Yeah. Come again? This one we will discuss with the agencies. Yeah. And then, you know, we see how the, the pros and cons and of course the, the cost of it. Right. If Pega can give a discount, I don't think the agency will say no. Yeah. Right.

I mean, Pega Cloud is fantastic. All the AI is all over there. I think we are quite convinced by the conference, right, for these few days. Right. All right. So sure. So, so you just talked about uh, the on prem versus cloud, but are there any other security concerns because you have there sensitive data on this. Right. But as well as it's exposed externally and some people would like to You know, manipulate that.

Is there anything that you did extra beyond what it comes out of the box with Pega. Right. So I mean, in terms of security, right. The reason why the agency has to do it on the AWS Government commercial cloud is because they can't they already done their homework, the data classification that okay, this is okay to actually go on AWS commercial cloud and not on prem. Right. So this is a bit different. But whether to, you know, to go out to Pega Cloud or not right. There's still some, you know, categorization. They still have to go through the books.

Right. To see whether can they still reclassify to go all the way out. Yeah. But of course we are also working with Pega because Pega is going to have a Pega, or rather the Pega Cloud. Right. The data is going to reside in Singapore. So once this is established, we should be okay. I think we have an agency that is already on Pega Cloud. Yeah.

So so there's been a few CDs or a few vulnerabilities with Pega, and. There's a few coming. Out of vulnerabilities Abilities with Pega. So have people that have exposed Pega externally have had to quickly put patches in. Have you had any, uh, have you been, uh, had exposures because of these vulnerabilities or have you everything's been fine for you for these past few years. Okay. So of course, when there is any vulnerabilities, right, we will get informed because there will be emails sent to us and immediately, for example, a log for J, right. Log for j s. Right.

All this. But the good thing is that I think it's during the development time. Right. So we still have to do the necessary patches and apply it. Yeah. Okay. So um there are measurements put in place right. In the event if there's such a vulnerability that happen we have to unfortunately we just have to quickly do the necessary patching. Yeah.

So it sounds pretty standard. Yeah. Thanks. I think we are ahead of time. I think we can maybe mingle and maybe have a small little chat. Yeah. Thank you everyone.