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Press Release Contents
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.
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