ROUNDTABLE FORUM FOR SENIOR HR PROFESSIONALS

Using Technology as an HR Resource

Notes from the April 5 meeting with Marie Clements of UNUMProvident and Tamara Spoerri from Bowdoin College.

1. In your opinion, where, in general is your organization on this issue?

Marie Clements--our entire annual enrollment is done using technology. Some of the things that can be done on our intranet site include enrollment, change of address information, contact information, paycheck information, and information about salary. There is a companion piece for managers where they can select certain key information as well as put in key information. For instance, if someone were going to be leaving the organization, the manager would input this information, which would generate a notice to shut down their security clearances, set up an exit interview and a host of other workflow items that need to be done.

Also, all of our policies and procedures and all of our benefit information are on line.

Tamara Spoerri—We had People Soft at Fleet. Individuals had to spend very little time to get all the information they wanted. At Bowdoin we are at the bottom of the barrel in technology. When I first got there it took me two weeks to get a report. At Fleet the HR technology was great. We had so many people and were so spread out that getting information via on-line was essential. Employees had People Soft at their fingertips so HR was able to respond to their questions immediately. The People Soft tool had to be customized to make it what we needed.

We have been able to get web based at Bowdoin now with both employee and manager self-service capability. Culturally there is resistance to using the system from department secretaries, especially to do with our extensive recruiting. We even had to fight our own staff about using.

Marie—We also had some resistance from our recruiters but we had to convince them that the system would give them more time for upper level tasks.

What kind of feedback from employees do you get?

Marie—Good. They can also always call a 0500 number and ask the question if they cannot find the information on line. They can also ask questions about how to use the system. Employees can also post for another job on line. There is also a portal for their performance plan and the progress on the plan can be put in. There is also a self-assessment piece. The 360-degree review is integrated with the performance plan.

There is also a salary management tool whereby increases can be put in and tied to reviews and managers can do the modeling and then send to the next level to okay and then the information goes to payroll.

There is also a tool set very valuable for senior managers which tracks turnover statistics and then they can drill down and look at increases, promotions and there is actual vs. budget figures. We just rolled this out into VP level and above and then each manager.

2. Has it become impersonal because of all of the technology?

Marie—We have a large population and thus have to be highly focused. Like many companies, HR generalists were spread out all over the place when we were smaller. When we merged we broke HR into 3 major categories. The first group is strategic—these jobs are just for strategic work, to build an HR plan and to act as an integrating force. The second group is employee relations, which I am responsible for. There is staff all over the country. This is a very high touch group. The third group is where the basic HR functions are done. This is a very high employee self serve part of HR. This is where the HR call center and on line data is housed. It is the least value added portion.

Our headcount has decreased since 12-31-99. Because of the process realignment we have reduced HR from 2% to 1% of the employee population. We have demonstrated savings but still provide high touch service.

3. What has been the greatest contributions technology has made for human resources?

Marie--Technology has been invaluable in allowing us to do more with fewer people and focus our efforts more effectively. In employee relations, for example, all the information about any event in the employee’s records can be looked at on line. Management can then be told every quarter what the major issues are. This helps with management workload, helps track trends, reveals educational needs, and suggests policy changes that are needed. This information allows staff to back each other up because each incident is tracked. It also helps us to determine whether or not to rehire former employees.

Tamara—We do not know if managers are interviewing someone we hired previously and then let go. We have hired many who were paid to go away in the past.

Marie—Other functions we can do is to analyze people’s performance and develop profiles of people who were successful in certain jobs and then those who failed. We can build our competency profiles from this. We have started this process with the most critical roles in key areas of the company.

4. What about high tech that doesn’t work?

Marie—sometimes employees get frustrated if they cannot find what they want.

Tamara—Some people misinterpret the data. There are those who will not use the technology. We do have a lot of people who are not used to technology—the janitors, housekeeping and food service, for example.

Marie—We have outsourced most of those jobs so most of our people are familiar with technology.

5. When you were implementing your HR technology system what pre implementation steps did you do and what would you recommend?

Tamara—We talked about it all over campus. All of our timecards are manually input and part of change is making this an online system. So we are getting supervisors and managers talking about it and being involved. On our campus we have to talk to people for a long time. Change does not come easy.

Marie—We got employees involved in every step of the process. For example we had focus groups to look at sample screens. We made announcements throughout the process. When it was rolled out we had training sessions and also on-line help and demonstrations. We made sure that we had thought through all levels of potential problems. For example, the salary increase system knows how many levels of jobs there are and when an individuals is given an increase, the system will self monitor the percent and amount within certain percentages.

Tamara—Our system can communicate with specific employees about critical issues such as changing their tax deductions back to avoid paying high payroll taxes.

Marie—The whole process can be overwhelming—I would advise take it slowly and breaking the work into chunks. Do it in parts and let employees know each time a change is coming. Do the most critical pieces first. It would be very difficult to implement the whole system at the same time.

Tamara—I would recommend doing a little at a time. We did time and attendance first. We have a system that tracks foreign students tax filings. This really saved a lot of time and it was really liked by everyone

6. If you had a chance to counsel young HR professionals on this trend what would you say?

Tamara—I believe HR has to use technology to be able to do strategic work and get out of the transactional.

Marie—I would tell them to prioritize what they do and look for the greatest value. We added a new system to bring new employees into the company, for example. It was a very complicated process before and very frustrating to managers. Now a new employee will have a desk, a phone, systems access, etc. the day they begin work, all done by the manager from their desktop with prompts from the system.

Tamara—The only reason we were able to get the system is because of financial risk management. I do not think it will be seen as a priority in the foreseeable future.

I see the future of technology in HR as using web more. I do not think potential systems will be expensive and that there will be more web based programming.

Marie—I see lots of online learning. We were doing traditional classroom until 3 years ago but now we use very limited classroom and only after individuals have had some online training on their own. We come to the classroom to apply the learning.