Human Resource Professionals Uncover Time-Savings Using HRIS

The Personnel News

By Jerry Fireman

In talking to human resources professionals about why they decided to computerize, time savings is the most common reason I hear. Yet, large time savings are far from automatic when computerizing the human resources function. The amount of time saved depends largely upon the user's ability to fully utilize the software's capabilities. That is why training is always important with any new application. Here are several examples of companies that have developed innovative ways to replace human effort with software and reaped the reward in dramatic time savings.

Maintaining records for the New Yorker Magazine's complicated vacation plan used to be a tedious manual task because the plan didn't follow the unalterable format of the DOS-based human resources database the magazine previously used. After the magazine switched to !Trak-It HR (!Trak-It Solutions, Sunnyvale, California), they were able to take advantage of the program's relational structure and flexibility to handle all of the required calculations for vacation accrual automatically.

According to Dane Pawloff, Associate Systems Manager, !Trak-It HR's relational structure makes it possible to automatically handle complicated scenarios such as vacation plans. Lookup tables that describe each scenario were created. The mass update feature of the program is used to automatically read the employee's hire date. The user then consults the lookup table to find the appropriate plan and uses it to calculate the proper amount of vacation to be accrued and updates the relevant field. The result is dramatic time savings compared to the previous method of manual calculating vacation accruals.

The Great Southern Printing and Manufacturing Company has been aggressive in recruiting and hiring minorities but still found it had to spend considerable amounts of time in meeting the extensive equal opportunity reporting requirements of the Federal Communications Commission. These forms make it necessary to correlate a complex set of job classifications with head-counts in different departments. The head-count information is in the company's mainframe-based payroll application but did not directly correlate to job description information. The job classification information was kept only manually which had to be updated every time a report was filed.

Marlene B. Young, Human Resources Director, now uses !Trak-It HR to produce all required affirmative action forms in a matter of minutes. !Trak-It HR stores the job description code and job category for each employee and prints out the required information on demand with latest salary and job changes taken into account. !Trak-It HR automatically prints out the most popular affirmative action reports such as EEO-1, EEO-4 and Vets-100 in a matter of a few minutes. I-9 citizenship verification tracking is also included. The report required by the FCC for cable television companies, form 395A, is not one of the more than 100 standard forms included with the program but Young was able to easily produce the required information using the program's custom report generator.

At the time Tracy Puritz, Human Resources Manager, joined McDonough, Holland & Allen, Sacramento's largest law firm, its human resources record keeping was a combination of manual and basic word processing techniques. Whenever a comprehensive analysis was required either Carol Kozak, Personnel Services Coordinator, or Puritz would gather the data by sorting through binders, files or reports. These analyses ranged from something as complex as compiling affirmative action compliance reports, required for contracts with various government agencies, to answering a routine question on medical benefits costs. So much time was spend gathering information manually that management often elected not to request useful data.

The !Trak-It HR employee information system now generates these reports in a matter of minutes. They range from miscellaneous items such as birthdays and address lists to statistical reports regarding compensation, budget figures and affirmative action reports. Puritz also can produce detailed reports on the average compensation and percentage compensation increase of each level of employees, including benefit costs. This information is useful in comparing the company's compensation levels with salary surveys in the legal field, as well as for budgetary purposes.

When Mark Fryer accepted the position of Director of Human Resources with Furst-McNess Company, an agricultural feed supplier, the human resources staff consisted of five people working with a paper-based manual record-keeping system. There was obviously considerable room for improvement through computerization but Fryer never would have guessed at the time the extent of the savings he would be able to achieve. The department already had a computer in place so he started with an Excel spreadsheet based system, along with a Filemaker software package, and moved two years later to the !Trak-It HR employee information system.

This system has saved Furst-McNess a tremendous amount of time in a lot of little ways. For example, the time required to complete the EEO-1 affirmative action report, which the company files once a year, has been reduced from 8 hours to less than an hour. It's difficult to keep track of all these little savings except for the fact that they show up dramatically on the bottom line. The HR system in part has reduced staffing of the HR department from five people to three people through attrition, even though the company's head count has increased by 25% through a major acquisition. At the same time, the level of service offered by the HR department to its customers -- the employees and management of the company -- has been substantially improved.

As these examples illustrate, it's possible to automate many routine human resources tasks and thus make it possible for the department to accomplish more with less resources. These examples illustrate the importance of selecting a software package that is flexible enough to manage your full range of tasks yet simple enough to minimize training requirements. The New Yorker Magazine, The Great Southern Printing and Manufacturing Company and McDonough, Holland and Allen all have found !Trak-It HR to be a valuable time-saving tool.

!Trak-It HR is available in a Windows edition with many new features and an even friendlier new interface that includes "George", your HR Assistant.

About the author: Jerry Fireman is a writer based in Birmingham, Michigan that specializes in human resource related topics. His work has appeared in Personnel Journal, Human Resources Executive, Benefits and Compensation Solutions, PayTech, DPMA News and Managing Office Technology.