Part 1: The Problem with Paper
When our saga begins, the paper is new. It is made into a three-part form: one pink, one canary, and one the palest of blues. No one really knows why it has three parts, but everyone who sees it appreciates its delicate hues.
After a few months in a folder in the manager’s desk drawer, the paper comes out of the dark and is placed on the desk. The manager draws her pen gently across the surface.
Using ink that appears iridescent in the light from a nearby window, the manager checks some boxes and writes a few words. After removing one part, she places the paper in an interoffice envelope bound for her manager on the fourth floor.
The journey of the paper should continue to that level, but by sticking to another envelope and failing to be noticed by a mail sorter wearing headphones, it travels, instead, to the branch office on the west side of town. It sits for a few weeks in the inbox of someone in one of the departments located there.
Once discovered, the paper makes its way to the correct manager, where it eagerly awaits the needed approvals. But in a twist of fate, it drops behind the credenza where it waits … and waits … and waits. Discovered at last, the paper makes its way to its final destination—Human Resources.
As you’ll note in Part 1 of The Paper Trail, time, circumstances, and people being what they are, paper does not always reach its intended destination as quickly as we might like. While you may be taken with the beauty of our little tale, we hope you don’t recognize your organization within its words.
Part 2: The Sad (Expensive) End
A compensation manager reaches for the paper, carefully smoothing it and reviewing the instructions it contains. Unfortunately, some of the words are unclear, and the manager must consult others to try and decipher its meaning. Sadly, none of the team understands and so must contact the original manager.
“Can you tell us what you meant by this notation?,” they ask. “No,” she replies. “The ink has faded on the canary copy, and I can no longer read it. And the employee mentioned on the paper no longer works in my department. I will make some calls to find out where he is now.” But she gets busy, and the paper must wait some more.
While this story illustrates an extreme, it does make the point: Paper often is not efficient. Like most fiction, it does contain an element of truth. Stephen Kennedy, vice president of Corporate Compensation at Union Bank, admits that his organization would at one time have recognized itself in some elements of this story.
“Five years ago, everything we were doing in terms of salary or other changes for employees was done on a triplicate form,” he explains. “The form had been around for so long that people really didn’t know what the third part of it was used for. So if there was a salary increase, or even a change to a last name or an address, the manager had to fill out that form, sign it, and then send it to our HR records area.”
As in our story, sometimes the journey took much more time than it should have. “The input of those forms was a nightmare,” Kennedy continues. “There were mistakes, people didn’t know where to send the form, and anything that [was] rejected out of the system had to come back to our department to fix, balance and make corrections.
“There were a lot of phone calls and faxes back and forth to get the information corrected. It sometimes took hours to make a correction that would not have been necessary with the right technology.
“We had well-paid people sitting there trying to figure out the problem on a paper profile that was rejected. It was expensive, and not a good use of their time.”
Part 3: Technology to the Rescue
What comes to the rescue in our little tale, and for Union Bank, is technology. “Our employee software vendor approached us about using their compensation planning tool, and employee self-service was a part of it. Managers in particular were hungry for this kind of change. The process we had was extremely frustrating for them, and for the employees.
Often, the employees knew what a hassle it was to change their information, so they wouldn’t even bother. We had a lot of outdated information.”
“When you use paper, there is always the infamous ‘black hole.’ The manager fills out the paper and sends it to get the second required signature, but they never have any idea where it actually is. With the automated system, if it sits at the second-level manager’s desk because they haven’t signed off on it yet, at least you know its status and you can track it down.”
Union Bank’s software vendor, Workscape (www.workscape.com), provides a compensation planning tool that has been proven invaluable, Kennedy says. Before, there were times that salary reviews were significantly delayed or even missed entirely, he sheepishly admits.
And even though the bank had merit increase guidelines, it had limitations that could be costly.
“The guidelines might show that an employee was eligible for a 3 percent merit raise. The manager might not even realize that their request for 4 percent was outside the guidelines, and the increase would go through,” says Kennedy.
With an automated system, those kinds of oversights just don’t happen. “Around September or October, the tool gives us the ability to enter potential salary increases for the following quarter,” he says.
“That way you can start to see how your budget looks. Then, as you get into March, unless there are any changes, you can go ahead and flip the switch allowing those ratings and increases to occur.
If a request is made that is outside the guidelines, the system will flag it. The manager would likely come back and ask about it.
“That falls into the category of allowing managers to spend their time managing dollars and not just processing dollars,” he explains.
If you see too much of your own situation within our story and decide to pursue employee self-service, Kennedy would like you to learn from his experience.
The first step, he says, is to really think through your existing practices. Changing to an automated system is more than simply, well, automating what you’re already doing.
“Really start to challenge some of your existing methods and processes,” he says, “because it will be very cumbersome to build a system based on the processes that have existed for many years.
“If you challenge some of those ideas and decide whether you really need to keep doing them, you can simplify the processes even more.”
Another tip: “I think in hindsight we could perhaps have had more involvement with our business units, allowing them to look closely at what we did before moving forward at each step,” Kennedy explains.
“They were involved, but I think I would have them even more involved. You never want to make the mistake that HR knows exactly what the tool should look like.
“It’s better to get the perspectives and opinions of your business units ahead of time than after the fact.”
And be prepared for an extraordinary amount of testing, Kennedy says.
“You have your day jobs to do, but you still need to make sure everything is correct. It is worth the money to hire a third party tester, and we did. They were a great additional set of eyes to look at everything and raise questions. It is really worth the investment.”