HR managers
- One login instead of eight
- Navigation that prevents misclicks
- Automatic calculations
Work / Keystone Bank HRMS
Keystone Bank HRMS
Keystone Bank ran HR on eight separate systems. I was a product designer on the team that replaced them with one platform for 2,000+ employees, shipped in three milestones over nine months.
- Role
- Product designer at Prunedge
- Type
- Enterprise web app
- Team
- 3 designers, later 2
- Status
- Live, all 3 milestones
The problem
Payroll, recruitment, leave, promotions and employee data each lived in a different system, with its own interface and login. An HR manager handling leave, redeployment and recruitment switched between three platforms every day.
Paid leave shows the cost. Employees requested it in one system, payroll was calculated by hand in another, and HR checked public holidays in a third. The result was delays, errors and a poor experience for staff.
The question we worked from: how might we design one HR system that replaces eight, and still works for system admins, HR managers and 2,000+ employees?
Discovery
We audited all eight legacy systems and met HR managers across payroll, recruitment, leave and talent, plus system admins, the bank's project team and employee representatives.
Three findings shaped the design. Staff clicked the wrong module because old menus showed names with no description. KPIs were weighted in real life but not in the system. Leave and payroll were disconnected, so every paid leave meant a manual calculation.
One hard constraint: the bank's existing user management system (AUMS) held all employee data and roles. We integrated with it instead of rebuilding it, and it decided which modules each person could see.
What I owned
We split delivery into three milestones by user type. When one designer left midway, I absorbed their modules and took over the design system.
Milestone 1
Foundation
Permission management and payroll management, both fully mine. Configuration and audit trail with the team.
Milestone 2
Employee experience
Employee dashboard, onboarding, leave management and all 7 self-service modules.
Milestone 3
Talent and growth
KPIs, appraisals and succession planning. A mobile app was designed, then paused for budget.
Key decisions
Four of the choices that did the most work.
Cards that explain themselves
- Problem
- Old menus were lists of vague module names, so HR managers kept opening the wrong one.
- What I did
- Every module became a card with an icon, a clear title and one line on what it does.
- Result
- Stakeholders took to it straight away, and it removed the guessing.
Leave that talks to payroll
- Problem
- Requests, payroll and public holidays lived in three systems that HR cross-checked by hand.
- What I did
- One leave system: HR sets holidays for the year, and paid or unpaid leave types feed payroll automatically.
- Result
- No manual calculation, and employees see their leave status in real time.
Weighted KPIs
- Problem
- Real KPIs carried weights, some 40% of a review and some 10%. The old system ignored this, so appraisals ran on spreadsheets.
- What I did
- Made weight a required field when creating a KPI, next to name, description, job function and role.
- Result
- Performance scores can now be calculated automatically.
Permissions admins can manage
- Problem
- Admins needed fine control over access, plus segregation of duties, without drowning in checkboxes.
- What I did
- Mapped every permission with stakeholders and grouped them into features and permissions, and segregation of duties.
- Result
- Powerful enough for security, simple enough to run day to day.
A design system first
With this much scope and time pressure, we set up colours, type, components, icons and grids before the modules. It let us design straight in high fidelity, and it kept things consistent when the team shrank from three designers to two.
Developers joined our internal reviews to flag constraints early. Every decision then went through our chief product officer and the bank's team before handoff.
Keystone HRMS / Design system
What changed
All three milestones launched and are in use by staff across the country.
Employees
- Self-service for routine HR
- Faster leave with payroll built in
- A clear view of their own data
System admins
- Manageable permission controls
- Central configuration
- Audit trails for compliance
Results
8 to 1
Systems consolidated into one platform
2,000+
Employees on the system
20+
Modules across 3 milestones in 9 months
“They have been loving the new system.”
What I'd do differently
Test with real users
Time pushed us to validate with stakeholders. I would watch HR managers and employees use it to catch issues earlier.
Write down the why
I would document why each iteration changed, for future work and for defending decisions.
Next project
Korensi
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Korensi / Cover
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