gaining efficiency through hr technology

7/28/2019 Gaining Efficiency Through HR Technology

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consulting | software|solutionswww.selecthr.co.uk

www.theaccessgroup.com

A directors guideGaining efficiency through HR technologyAn information guide
http://www.selecthr.co.uk/http://www.theaccessgroup.com/http://www.theaccessgroup.com/http://www.selecthr.co.uk/


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Introduction

The evolution of HR

HRs remit has changed a lot sinceyesteryear. While some HR managers

are still expected to hire, fire, even

offer tea and sympathy, most arepredominantly focused on becoming

business partners, pushing strategy,not paper.

As HR has evolved from satellite

function to central hub, HR solutions

have evolved apace. The best HRsoftware no longer operates separately

from the daily running of the businessbut is strategically aligned with it.

Greater visibility

Todays solutions often referred to as

HRIS (Human Resources InformationSystems) are designed to give you

visibility of every area of yourorganisation. Utilising the latest

technology, they provide you with the

accurate and timely information youneed to lower costs and improve

employee return on investment.

And while you may know a fair bitabout HRIS systems, its often a

struggle to command stakeholder

interest. This paper is designed todemonstrate how you can do just that.

About this guide

This guide is split into four key areas:

1. Key functions p1

How todays integrated solutions can

help you better manage key areas of

your organisation. Includes checklists

to help you identify the functions of

your ideal system.

Legislation & compliance p2

Recruitment & selection p2

Learning & development p3

HR reporting p3

Business intelligence p3

Self-service p3

Payroll p4

Document management p4

Health & safety p4

Absence p4

2. Signs youve outgrown your

existing software p2

Identifying the factors p5

Identifying the impact p5

3. How to select a new HR

solution p6

The research process p6

Partnering p6

Choose your project team p6

Choosing the technology p6

Requesting a demo p7

4. Implementation p7

Key stages p7

1. Key functionsLegislation & complianceFrom the introduction of the fit note

to the knock-on tax and salaryeffects of anticipated publicspending cuts, managing compliancein 2010 looks no less complex than inprevious years. Indeed, the risk

associated with managingincreasingly complex legislation is akey concern for many organisations.Most regulations involve significant

reporting requirements mistakescould lead to penalties, fines, and at

worse, lawsuits all of which havetime and cost implications.

The good news is that todays HRsolutions are designed to make keeping

on top of your companys legalobligations as straightforward aspossible. Good vendors will keep youinformed of changes in tax andemployment law so you can determine

what applies to your organisation.

Software releases

More importantly, they will releaseversions of the software that enable

you to easily gather the informationrequired for reporting.

Most systems cover standardprocedures, so finding the functionality

you need shouldnt be too difficult butmake sure that updates are supplied to

you regularly and in a straightforwardformat, for example, downloadable viathe internet or email.

While this list is not exhaustive, thefollowing gives you an idea ofimportant legislation that may berelevant to your organisation:

ISA Registration (IndependentSafeguarding Authority replacesCRM)

Immigration and Asylum Fit Note

Maternity

Paternity

SIR (Further Education sector)

Recruitment & selectionHiring is back on the agenda for mostorganisations. Yet as youve probablyexperienced yourself, the fiercecompetition for places doesnt make

recruiting any easier. Compound thecurrent job market with thecomplexities of the recruitment process typically involving many stakeholdersand far too much paperwork and itsno wonder that recruitment is often themost costly process within HR itself.

Workflow and automationBut it doesnt have to be so. Todays HRsystems optimise the end-to-endrecruitment procedure by automating

the workflow around each stage ofthe process. By decreasing the timetaken to get positions out there, andby making it easier for applicants toapply and recruiters to respond, youget to focus on the key attributes ofthe applicants and which recruitmentmethods yield the best results.

A recruitment solution should fit withyour organisation, whetherresponsibility is largely HR-owned ordevolved to managers. In other words,it should enable all participants tointeract with the software at therelevant stages of the process andthat goes for recruitment agenciesand applicants too.

Online recruitment

Whether using agencies or not, animportant consideration is the abilityto advertise (and accept CVs) online.This not only enables you to attractthe broadest audience, but reduces

admin, cuts paper waste and ensuresyou can provide the fastest possibleresponse to potential talent.


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Good HR software will enable you to:

Create vacancies

Manage the hire process

Enable applicants to apply online

Provide web access for agencies

Monitor success, costs and equal

opportunities

Generate bulk correspondence bypost or email

Advertise/retain details ofspeculative candidates

Learning & developmentEven in a period of economic recovery,there are compelling reasons toprovide quality staff training notleast because your best talent will

steer you through times of difficulty.

If you are unable to provide the levelof training they expect, then theyrelikely to look elsewhere a factsupported by the 2009 NationalManagement Survey which foundthat 46% of staff blame a lack oftraining opportunities as a reason forleaving their organisation.1

Equally, you want to be sure that the

training youre providing youremployees is strategically alignedwith your business objectives. Someorganisations for example providefree training on the basis that themember of staff stays with thecompany for a specified time period.

Managing overlap

The key to managing this effectivelyis choosing a HR system that gives

you visibility of the linked areas oftraining, learning & development

and performance management.

As these areas impact each other, youcan then see where the skills gaps are,closely monitor activities undertakenand maximise your knowledge of youremployees abilities. A good HR systemwill give you detailed analysis of costs,attendance and effectiveness, all ofwhich will help ensure you gainmaximum ROI per employee.

Some of the key learning &development functionality to look forincludes:

Training course administration

Online booking

Ability to cater for CPD membership

Integration with Microsoft Office(for diarising)

Online appraisals (including

competency models) NVQs

Skills search and management

HR reportingAccording to a survey by talentmanagement company Taleo, providingleadership with better managementinformation and reporting is one of thetop three-ranked challenges for HRprofessionals in 2010.2

The first step to efficient, pain-freereporting is having a system thatholds all employee information inone place. This not only savessignificant time pulling informationfrom separate sources but ensuresthe information youre analysing isaccurate. Any system should give youcomplete visibility andstraightforward analysis of all thefollowing:

Personnel details (including

diversity, work permits andemployment checks)

Job and salary history (includingmultiple jobs, salary scales andbands)

Employment details (including exitinterviews and Ts & Cs)

Disciplinary and grievance(including stage tracking anddocuments)

Skills and competencies (linked totraining and appraisals)

Absence and holidays (includingwork patterns, LOS, part-timecalculations)

Health & safety (including accidentreporting and medicals)

Benefits, pension, fleetmanagement, P11D

Salary modelling

Organisational structure (e.g. byemployee, department and division,headcounts and turnover).

Business intelligenceOne of the key drivers behind todaysgeneration of HR software is to delivertimely, accurate information when andwhere its needed. Closely related toreporting but going beyond it,Business intelligence takes manyforms including Excel based add-ins,

user-friendly report writers and mostrecently, web-based dashboards.

Dashboards draw information held inyour wider HR system and presentspecific KPIs such as headcount,turnover, training needs andrecruitment analysis. The ability todrill-down into the source dataensures that decision-makers canquickly spot any issues and get to theroot of any problems quickly.

See what you need toThe power of this type of reportinglies in its configurability and ease ofuse. For example, a good systemwould have the ability to providedifferent dashboard views to you, yourHR team, your staff and management,all presented in graphical formats andupdated in real-time.

The following gives you an idea of thefunctionality to look out for:

User-configurable views Real-time information

Information delivered via a range ofgraphical formats (charts, gauges,listings, rolling presentations etc)

Ability for dashboards toincorporate information fromexternal sources (e.g. RSS feeds)

Self-serviceOver the last few years, demand for

self-service functionality has grownsignificantly understandably, givenits ability to help organisations do farmore with less.

Self-service works primarily by savingtime. It takes information held in yourbusiness system and makes it easilyavailable, both to view or to edit typically via a web browser foranytime access. Useful for both staffand managers, self-service can bedeployed across your organisation and

can be made to fit with your existingways of working, for example, as anextension of your company intranet.


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Manager self-service

Manager self-service cuts down thetime taken to carry out administrationsuch as approving staff holiday,timesheets and training requests. Itcan also show this information viaeasy-grasp formats, enablingmanagers to view KPIs relating to

their departments turnover, sickness,headcount or budget spend.

Self-service for staff

For employees, self-service reducesadministration within the HRdepartment, dispersing tasks outinto the wider organisation. Forexample, this would enable yourstaff to enter their own trainingrequests, self-certification forms andholiday bookings.

With the responsibility for enteringinformation into self-service lying withthe employee and not HR, its easy tosee how self-service can speed theflow of accurate information into thesystem. Whats more, the ability toaccess information thats important tostaff such as payslips, P60s, holiday,training, and appraisals, is a powerfulway to improve communication andempower employees.

Good software providers will provide awide range of self-service specificprocesses. However, some of the mostcommon ones include:

Holiday/planned absence requestsand authorisation

Training requests and authorisation

Online appraisals

Sickness self-certification

Vacancy requests and authorisation

Timesheets

PayrollOne of the key drivers in HR softwareis the ability to share commoninformation with other departments payroll in particular. Aligning thesetwo systems will smooth out spikesof work associated with, for example,the onboarding of new starters andupdates to employee information,reducing duplication and improving

accuracy.

Seamless data transfer

Payroll systems obviously vary but thegood HR providers will enable thisinformation to be transferredseamlessly between the two areas ofthe business. This stands whether thepayroll is held in a separate softwarepackage or via an electronic interface

with a payroll bureau. Integrating witha payroll from the same productfamily as your HR solution has theadvantage of linking dynamically,including for example, a full workflowfor the authorisation and update ofHR information to the payroll.

For advice on selecting a payrollsolution, click here.

Just some of the information youshould be able to share with payrollinclude:

New starter/leaver information

Employee names and addresses

Job/organisation details

Bank and salary details

Document managementFrom training documents to CVs,spreadsheets to correspondence, HR ispacked with documents, paper-based

and otherwise. As your businessgrows, the ability to store thesedocuments centrally is therefore key tothe overall efficiency of your operation.This not only reduces paper and waste,but enables fast retrieval, howevermany employees you have.

Some of the functions to look for

include:

Ability to support all standard file

types (e.g. PDF, Word, Excel and

image files, as well as scanned hardcopy documents)

Ability to locate documents by

individual and content

Search facilities by category, author,

date range

Search CVs by keywords (e.g.

applicants and employees)

Ability to hold non-employee

specific documents (e.g. policies

and job descriptions)

Health & safetyWhether you operate out of an officeor a factory, no business can affordnot to maintain up-to-date healthand safety records. But time-consuming, paper-basedadministration often meansinformation is recorded long after

the event, leading to inaccurate orincomplete records.

A HR solution makes the processmuch simpler by providing you with aweb-based accident book. Via self-service, staff and managers can goonline to enter the informationrequired, capturing all the informationneeded in just a few minutes.

Health & safety reporting

Good systems will enable you to sliceand dice this data any way you require,enabling you to report incidents by, forexample, type, employee, anddepartment as well as providingspecific Health and Safety analysis suchas Riddor reporting. This way, you havethe complete visibility of informationneeded to reduce and manage riskswithin your organisation.

AbsenceReducing the cost of absence isperhaps the key priority for anyorganisation investing in a new HRsolution. But before you can make adent in absence figures, you of courseneed an accurate way to record andmonitor absence-related information.

Key issues

Research by IRS for XpertHR suggeststhat this is problematic for asubstantial amount of companies. Ina recent survey, 36% of respondents

experiencing problems with absencerecords and of those, inadequateabsence information recorded andinaccurate records came in top with74% and 66% of employersencountering problems respectively.3

Absence self-service

The priority of a good HR solutiontherefore is to make collecting thisinformation as easily and cost-effectively as possible. Self-service is

ideal for this.

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Via a web-based interface, thistechnology enables staff to requestabsence of any conceivable type (e.g.holidays, doctors appointments,hospital visits) and for managers toquickly record sickness and otherunplanned absences. Being web-based, staff and managers alike can

access the system easily, at any time,helping speed the flow of informationinto the central system.

Authorisation

All good systems will provide anauthorisation workflow to ensure thatall absence requests are approvedprior to updating your HR solution.Requests should be able to passthrough as many levels as requiredand take a precise route around your

company even if an approver is onholiday themselves! (see below formore about workflow).

Analysing absence

The ability to view this informationvisually (for example, as a calendar) isanother highly useful feature. Seeingat-a-glance who is in the office for thedays and weeks ahead is invaluablewhen planning workloads, and duringthe absence authorisation process.

Ultimately you need this information asa report and a good vendor will be ableto accommodate what you need to seeand how you need to see it. For example,if Bradford Factor analysis is importantto your HR strategy, you should be ableto get this data on-demand, whether viastandard reports or user-friendlyBusiness intelligence tools.

Workflow

As weve seen with self-service, todays

HR software enables us to re-engineerour existing processes and make themwork how we want them to not howtheyve always been. Workflowtechnology plays a key part in this.

For example, using workflow tools,you could create a series of steps toensure company-specific processesalways take place in a certain way.Appraisals, for example, mightinvolve the HR manager, a line

manager and the employee.

Workflow would allow for therequired information to be captured,authorised and followed-upaccording to your organisationsspecific policies and schedule.

Flexibility

Good systems enable you to

incorporate any number of steps andfor processes to take place in parallel.This last point is particularly usefulduring the authorisation process, sinceit will automatically divertresponsibility for approvals to anotherperson in the chain for example, ifthe main approver is on holiday.

When choosing a HR system, ensurethat it gives you the freedom todesign workflows yourself without

the need for additional consultancy.A system based on the WindowsWorkflow Foundation (WWF) is ideal,since it lets you design processesusing Windows familiar and intuitivedrag and drop tools.

2. Signs youve outgrownyour HR software

Identifying the factorsAll organisations, however small, relyon some form of system to manage

their HR operations. And as you mayhave discovered yourself, the timecomes when this existing system nolonger measures up. For somecompanies, its business growth thatdrives the change from a paper-based system to an electronic one.For others, its the lack offunctionality thats the catalystbehind a new modern system.

The previous section should have

given you some ideas about how amodern HR system can help youovercome any challenges that youcurrently face. But to help youfurther, weve summarised a list ofquestions to help you understandwhere your existing software may beholding you back:

How much time is spentmaintaining personnel records,recording timesheets, runningpayroll, appraisals, maintaining a

corporate training curriculum etc?

Can your system deal with flexible

working/part time staff (e.g.

automatically calculating pro-rated

holiday)

Are you relying on

spreadsheets/pulling information

from multiple databases to run the

reports that you need?

Can you easily report on the

information required to fulfill your

legislative requirements?

How much re-keying is being done

to maintain multiple systems (e.g.

HR, payroll, recruitment and

training databases?)

What would the bottom line

benefits be if real-time data was

available throughout your entire

organisation?

Identifying the impactsOnce youve identified that your

existing HR system is no longer fit for

purpose the next step is to work out

the tangible impacts of not changing.

To get you started, here are some you

may want to consider:

Manual recruitment processes tie

up key employees on recruitment

tasks, meaning a loss of efficiency

elsewhere, increased time to hire,

greater internal resource and

limited visibility of recruitment

effectiveness

Poor systems to manage absence

can mean limited visibility on

absence days, leading to higher

number of lost days and no way of

spotting frequent offenders

Insufficient process for employee

training and development may leadto lower productivity, lower output,

loss of skills and knowledge, higher

staff turnover and an increased

requirement for recruitment

Lack of integration between HR

and payroll means time is tied up

in duplicate tasks e.g. processing

employee information such as

personnel updates, new starters

and leavers. Information is never

in sync, leading to inaccurate

reporting

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Personnel information e.g.appraisals, learning anddevelopment documentation isheld separately to personnelrecords, meaning lack of visibility,communications and reportingacross all areas of the organisation

Days (and costs) are consumed in

HR as staff spend their timeperforming mundane, manual taskssuch as entering personal detailsand recording sickness, when theycould be adding value to thebusiness

Too many manual processes,duplication and re-keying of datawhich is costly from a processperspective, causes errors, andmeans there is no single view ofthe truth

Bottlenecks in the HR process causedelays in workflow, e.g. holidayrequests, impacting staffengagement

Risk is increased without an easyway to collect all the relevantinformation required for legislativereporting and compliance

Conduct a cost analysis

Based on the inefficiencies identified

above, you can begin a cost analysis ofcurrent processes. This will help todetermine time intensive activitiesbuilt into the current HR system andweigh these against the bottom-linebenefits of a new system.

While many time-savings are usuallythe easiest (and most compelling)benefits to clarify, your case should alsoinclude an assessment of intangiblebenefits. In fact, most of these may turn

out to convert to the bottom line forexample, an increase in staff retentionthrough the provision of stimulatingand targeted training.

Your cost analysis can also be used tobenchmark the success of your new HRsystem an exercise that youll need toundertake on a regular basis as yoursystem and needs grow and evolve.

3. How to select a new HR

solutionThe research processWith many suppliers offeringseemingly similar functionality, it canbe difficult to know where to start.

To help you in your search, weve comeup with a list of questions to ask. Itshould give you a good idea of whichvendors should be on your shortlist and those that definitely shouldnt!

How long have you been inbusiness? Check that you aredealing with an established vendor

How many HR installs have youcompleted? A greater number ofinstalls means a higher likelihoodof encountering and fixing a broadrange of customer issues

Do you develop your own softwareor resell on behalf of a softwareauthor? The former has theadvantage of a straight through lineto the software developer but checkhow this support will be provided

Do you serve other organisations inmy industry? Any provider worthconsidering will be able to provide arange of customer casestudies/testimonials

Do you have a reference site in mysector? The ability to ask existingclients about their experiences withboth the system and provider mayprove decisive in the final stages ofnegotiation. Some of the questionsto ask include:

Was the implementationcompleted on time and withinbudget?

Would you recommend theproduct?

How was the vendor atexplaining technical issues?

Were you delivered what waspromised?

What do your users like

most/least about the software? What training do you offer?

However well-designed, there willbe an inevitable learning curve asnew users get to grips with thesoftware. Satisfactory answers tothe following will ensure that thisprocess is as pain-free as possible:

Does you offer full producttraining?

Would you be able to provide

training at our site? Can you tailor the training to

meet different end userrequirements? How would yougo about that?

What support methods do youoffer? A hotline is the veryminimum you should expect. Askabout opening hours and responsetimes as well as the ability toprovide remote (internet based)support and on-site consultancy forthose more complex issues.

Whats covered in the cost of myannual licence? How are updatescharged for?

How do I ensure my software stayscompliant? All suppliers shouldcomply with the legislationavailable at the time of release, butits important to check that theseupdates are made regularly, and inan accessible format.

The importance of partneringPartnering with the right vendor is keyto ensuring that your HRimplementation is a success.Understanding the limitations of yourexisting system and quantifyingwhat you want to achieve is a greatstep in the right direction.

A good vendor will not object to beingthoroughly interviewed about howtheir proposed solution can effectivelyreach your companys expectations.

Include HR administrators andmanagers in the process to increasebuy-in and personal responsibility forthe overall decision. This process willmake it easy to see if there are anygaps between the expected benefitsand actual software capabilities.

Choose your project teamInvolving a cross-section of people is keyto the success of your implementation.After all, your aim is to implement asolution that benefits your entirebusiness not just the chosen few! Thismeans involving a mix of primary users- thats you, your HR team (if you haveone), finance and IT, as well as secondaryusers (management and staff).

Your aim is to find willingrepresentatives from each divisionwho will become product champions,playing an active role in shaping thesolution as your organisation evolves.

Choose the technologyChoosing the right platform for your

new solution will depend on many

factors, not least your size, your business

processes, your users and your budget.Access 2010. E&OE. Version 16


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