A new online personnel system at Greene King has made employees happier and healthier – the company is saving thousands of pounds a day in sick leave alone. Hilary Ford discusses the benefits of e-HR
HR Software Show 2002 - show guide, 26 Jun 2002
Brewery company Greene King has grown hugely over the past five years, with mergers and acquisitions pushing its staffing levels from 1,500 employees to more than 10,000.
But while business has been booming, Greene King has also been throwing money down the drain. Sickness leave alone was costing the company £3 million a year. HR and line managers were spending too much time on administrative tasks and the personnel processes varied enormously from one location to another.
Now, after implementing a self-service e-HR system, not only are the employees happier with the way things are done, but the company is saving thousands of pounds a day in sick leave alone.
“The reaction to implementing the system has been so positive right across the business, and even our line managers, who are renowned for being a tad cynical, have been really positive about the benefits of it,” says corporate HR manager Sharon Bailey.
“It has been fabulous for us – it has meant that we have implemented the right system for the right reasons. Rather than just save time and money it will actually help the managers. Everybody wins.”
The decision to adopt e-HR technology was taken after Greene King had made a number of acquisitions that increased the size of the business enormously and, consequently, the workload of the HR department.
There were a number of issues that needed to be addressed and a decision to be made about whether to take on more HR staff or invest in a technological solution.
Employee records were far from standardised throughout the business and in some cases did not exist at all, Bailey says.
There was also a need to meet the stipulations of the Data Protection Act 1998 by allowing employees access to their records. The business was drowning in a sea of paperwork, with documents often going missing.
And line managers, who at Greene King are responsible for filling in their staff’s records, didn’t always fully complete forms or record holiday leave and sickness absence correctly.
“The biggest problem for us was concerning sickness because it wasn’t being recorded and it wasn’t being managed properly. Because the process wasn’t there people took it for granted that they could take time off sick and no one would ever question it. We realised that people were abusing the system,” Bailey says.
“We worked out that we would save £1 million a year by improving the process, which would more than pay for the system. Although it is early days, line managers are reporting a significant drop in sick leave because people know that sickness levels are being measured. That in itself is worth its weight in gold.”
The system comprises several modules, including recruitment, training and development and personnel systems, and a web portal kit supplied by Snowdrop Systems.
This system incorporates security features to avoid tampering and the “intelligence” to know the authorisation procedures for different processes.
Senior sales executive Richard Twelvetrees says there was the potential to roll it out to the brewery’s pubs, enabling pub managers to use the system for their staff.
But in a period of economic uncertainty, and with some HR professionals feeling somewhat nervous about their current positions, is it the right time to invest in e-HR systems?
Predictably, perhaps, Twelvetrees thinks it is. “It is not about making people redundant or restructuring, it is about giving people time to do other things. It is an opportunity to get HR doing more strategic work such as employee development and succession planning.”
Fortunately for Twelvetrees, the industry experts agree. Chris Sanders, lead consultant for Mercer Human Resource Consulting, says that 70 per cent of a traditional HR department’s work is spent on information processing and administrative tasks.
“The aim of any e-HR project would be to reduce that and to move the focus towards proving value-added services and aligning the HR function with the business,” he says.
According to Sanders, a business case for e-HR should be built around four areas: processes, customer input, cost review and best practices. “The primary factor is to understand what you do at the moment and to quantify it using activity and cost analysis,” Sanders says.
At the Roffey Park Institute, Claire McCartney has been putting together a report on e-business that includes an examination of e-HR. One company in the telecommunications sector had introduced a new HR system that had “dramatically reshaped their HR structure”, McCartney says.
This gave its HR department two distinct elements: specialists who were responsible for various areas such as policy, training and recruitment; and business partners who dealt directly with the business and operational issues. Back office processes were outsourced.
“This has enabled them to align themselves more closely with the business and become more involved with the more important decisions,” McCartney says.
The company lists its success indicators as:
• an upskilled workforce – HR staff can increase their knowledge and skills because they are not tied up with administration;
• enabling the organisation to attract and retain good talent;
• elimination of transactional workloads;
• allowing the HR department to contribute value-added services;
• more appreciation of HR issues throughout the business;
• providing HR with greater flexibility;
• greater policy and procedure consistency;
• reduction of costs.
“We are suggesting that if HR can play an internal consultancy role it would definitely benefit the business,” McCartney says.
Measured response By dramatically reducing the time and money spent on managing human capital, the latest HR software systems are freeing up more time for strategic thinking
