These days we have less and less human contact.  We shop at a supermarket with self-checkout lanes, we pay bills on-line, we order food from a drive-thru, and get cash from an ATM.  It’s no wonder that with all of these high-tech options that customers look for high-touch service people. 

When we have a problem we can become frustrated very quickly when we try to find a “real person” to assist us.  We’ve all gotten lost in the maze of an automated attendant answering system with an endless list of “press 1 for ….., but no option that is actually what we’re looking for and certainly no option to speak to an actual person.  Or we’ve initially been pleased when a web-site offers “live chat”, only to learn that no one is available to chat with us for hours.  These are both excellent technologies, but must be used with caution. 

At Achievant, we have real people who answer our telephones.  Clients can always obtain customer service assistance from a live person almost immediately if they need help using our HRIS software.  We recognize that people don’t want to communicate with an “organization” or a “computer”.  They want to talk to a real, live, responsive, responsible person who will assist them and resolve their problem satisfactorily.   

What kind of access and response time have you received from your vendor?

Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to talk to a potential client.  Invariably I am asked what differentiates us from other HRIS technology providers.  My response always includes the words “customer service” and “partner”.  So today I am beginning a series on Customer Service Assassins.  I will discuss some of the things that will “kill” customer service and customer relations.   

I manage the Services area at Achievant, which is a huge responsibility and one I don’t take lightly since I am the person who has the most contact with our clients.  I know that to our customers, I am the company.  Their feelings about our company will relate directly to their experience with me.  I believe that in any company, the sales force can be limited or enhanced by the efforts of Services group.  You can have a great technology product, but no one will want it if they check references and hear horror stories about poor customer service. 

Usually when a vendor client relationship goes awry it doesn’t happen all at once, it usually happens over time, little by little - one defining moment at a time. Don't be a victim to these subtle assassins.  As a new client you get pretty good customer service, but over time you see that change.  Some of the tell-tale signs are –

• it takes longer and longer for your calls to be returned, if they are returned at all
• you’re on your fourth service rep in one year
• you know more about the product than your service rep
• you don’t know who your service rep is and you haven’t heard from then yet this year

Some of the assassins I’ll discuss are Technology, Miscommunication, Responsiveness and Service Recovery.   

Like most retailers the Atlanta based home supplies chain, Home Depot, is facing tremendous pressure to be more efficient, increase sales/revenue….basically do more with less.  To that end, they are reorganizing the human resources function—a move that will result in cutting its 2,200-person HR staff in the field by about 50 percent.

Today there is an HR manager in every store, but in the future, there will be 230 district HR teams that will oversee six to ten stores each.  Each team will consist of an HR district manager and three HR managers who report to that person.  Each store will continue to have an administrative HR employee on site who will oversee schedules of the associates. Home Depot is also creating a 200 person service center to handle HR calls from employees and managers.  The new structure is expected to be in place by May.

Home Depot plans to use the savings resulting from this restructuring to add three sales associates to the floor of each of its stores by year-end.  Analysts are already applauding the move by Home Depot believing that they were overstaffed with the current structure. 

I think that it will take some time before we know if this restructuring really saves them money.  Without the right support and training for the store managers, Home Depot may find itself redirecting its HR workforce “savings” into a litigation fund.  Store managers will need to be willing and prepared to “step up” to activities currently handled by their on-site HR such as employee relations, wage and hour, and harassment issues. 

We’ve seen that other big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart have learned the hard way that it can be very costly to the organization when there aren’t enough HR reps in the field.   So with Home Depot, we will wait and see. 

More and more companies are hiring a CBO (that’s Chief Blogging Officer for those of you who missed that latest acronym). 

At Achievant we don’t have a CBO but rather our entire senior team shares the responsibility to blog.  We each focus our blog on our areas of expertise.  Mine typically focuses on HR topics, system capabilities and our HR consulting services.  Others on our team focus on technology (http://blog.achievant.com/blog/hris-software-technology) and sales. 

The number of companies which are blogging is growing rapidly.  Today, more than 11 percent of Fortune 500 companies have corporate blogs according to SocialText, this is up from 4 percent in 2005.  At first it was more of a fad and everyone was jumping on the bandwagon saying ‘this is really cool, we should do it too’ without approaching it thoughtfully with a plan.  It is really like any other marketing strategy and now finally companies are evaluating blogs as tools. 

For us, our blogs are to:

1. Communicate with potential clients about the technology and services we offer
2. Provide existing client yet another connection with us
3. Convey to potential employees the culture of the organization. 
4. Share the brand experience of working with our company

I like that we don’t have a corporate blog, but rather individual contributors, as it would be difficult for any one person to completely convey what it is like to do business with us.  However, I can certainly see the need for the position as it is really hard work to blog regularly (although it is a great creative outlet).  

We regularly track statics of visitors (new and returning), page views, and RSS feeds using Compendium Blogware (http://www.compendiumblogware.com).  If you don’t already, I encourage you to subscribe to my blog via a RSS feed. 

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a way for content publishers to make news, blogs, and other content available to subscribers.  You can add your favorite RSS Feeds (such as my blog) as subscriptions in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.  The benefit of RSS is that it aggregates of all content from multiple Web sources in one place. You no longer have to visit different Web sites for news, weather, blogs, and other information. With RSS, summaries of content are delivered to you, and then you decide which specific articles you want to read by clicking a link. 

You can add an RSS Feed through the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Account Settings dialog box as outlined below:

1.     On the Tools menu, click Account Settings.

2.     On the RSS Feeds tab, click New.

3.     In the New RSS Feed dialog box, type or press CTRL+V to paste the URL of the RSS Feed. For mine,  http://blog.achievant.com/blog/hris-software-services.  

4.     Click Add.

5.     Click OK.

Yes, of course a blogger benefits when you subscribe to their blog.  But even better, you benefit. “Home” delivery (for free) of blogs is perhaps the greatest bargain on the Internet. You can get my blog by email every day setting up the RSS feed.  

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you probably think that either I never returned from Spring Break (a great idea, although I’d run out of money very quickly) or that I’ve reached the pinnacle of ultimate laziness judging by the number of posts I’ve written lately. 

Rest assured that neither is true.  I did return from Spring Break (and it was great, thanks for asking) but I’ve have been swamped with work, which is always a positive thing in a start up organization.  I have just launched the Project Kickoff for another company using our HRIS system, have another client set to Go Live in a couple of weeks, I’m doing a 360 degree feedback engagement for a small employer and we’re overhauling the Learning Management module for our next big system enhancement launch. 

So, I have not been blogging much, but I have not been sitting idle either.  Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about some of the upcoming enhancements to Learning Management/Employee Training. 

One of the most important components here is training on how to do a performance evaluation.  Tomorrow, I’ll explain what that should look like.

There seem to be no end of cautionary tales in the media these days.  Hackers steal over four million credit card numbers,  more hackers steal students’ personal information,  electronics come straight from the factory already infected ,  your swipe card for door access at work and other places can be easily hacked , and even your pacemaker (if you have one) isn’t safe.

It’s like a hail storm of bad technology news.  I might move to a deserted island somewhere and give up all my modern conveniences in order to escape to digital mongrel hordes that are after my data.

So what do you do?  You take all the precautions you can.  You make sure your anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware and anti-spam software are all up-to-date.  You make sure your OS is up-to-date.  You are careful about what links you click, what emails you open, what programs you install.  You make sure your spouse, kids, mom, dad, cousin and aunt are all aware of the same precautions and are taking them.

Sounds tedious.  Sounds time consuming.  Sounds like a pain in the rumpus.  It is. But you’re not done yet.  You need to make sure that all the people who have your data do the same: the grocery store, the bank, your online retailers, your doctor, your accountant, your HRIS vendor and pretty much everyone else you do business with.

If you outsource an HRIS needs (like time and attendance, learning management, payroll integration, etc) you need to make sure that vendor is doing all they should.  They don’t just have your data… they have the data of every employee in your company and quite possible the data of their dependents, beneficiaries and a whole host of other innocent people.

A company should spend at least 10% of its IT budget on security.  All of the things I suggested you do above are the bare minimum they should be doing.  Ask to see their security policies, their intrusion response documents, their SAS 70.  Ask to see everything.  Then ask them how they know all of these policies are being followed.

For me, I believe actions are better than words.  Any good company has their employees sign acceptable use policies, claim they use “best practices” around digital security.  I like to prove that.  How?  You can:

1.       Hire someone to perform a physical penetration.  In the past I have (about every six months) had someone walk into the office, pretend to be a computer technician, a new IT employee, whatever and then work to gain access to computers, networks and other data stores.  It’s a great way to keep people on the alert.

2.       Pay a company to perform a penetration test against your network (or, if you have staff with the right skills perform it yourself).  Do it once a quarter.  Things change and you need to make sure you haven’t accidently opened a whole in your digital fortress.

3.       Send out monthly security newsletters… it helps keep security on everyone’s mind.

4.       Subscribe to security alerts from your anti-virus, anti-spyware and other security software vendors.  They generally do a great job of getting in front of new attacks and keeping you aware of the latest schemes.

There will always be new and improved security threats.  There’s not much you can do about that.  What you can do is be aware, be ready and be on guard for what may be coming your way.

This morning one of my coworkers asked if I’d take a look at his computer.  When I asked what was wrong he mentioned it might have gotten wet.  Really?  How did that happen?  Apparently the 2^nd best place behind the fridge to keep a bottle of water is your laptop case (in the same compartment as your laptop itself).  Who knew?  If you don’t tighten the cap to the water bottle bad things can happen.  Like your laptop can get flooded with 16 oz of water and stop working.

Fortunately for my associate most of the water just puddled in the bottom of the bag and his laptop is fine.

Giving your laptop a sip of water when it’s thirsty isn’t covered in our Acceptable Use Policy or our Incident Response Policy or any of the other myriad of forms one has to govern the use of company technology resources.

One of the problems I have faced in the past (aside from sometimes novel uses of one’s computer) is keeping employees aware of those policies.  Generally the read and sign them on their first day and never see them again.

At Achievant we have a feature in our application (which we use internally) that posts news and documents on our HRIS’ home page so that a user logging in gets a brief news update.  Using these creatively we can remind folks of the content of our policies and keep some of the more important ones (like security awareness) forefront in the minds.  It’s a feature that has less star power than time and attendance or learning management, but is one that adds considerable benefit when used effectively.

I hate inaccuracies.  I don’t mean your run of the mill, oops I made a factual error inaccuracies.  I mean the silly, any thinking person should know better inaccuracies.  To protect the (mostly) innocent I won’t mention the name or relationship of this person, but in my digital life I have an individual (and I know we all have one) who endlessly forwards me every email warning ever.  All of them are untrue.  In the last month I have received ridiculous emails about every Presidential Candidate, computer viruses, the latest gang initiation death threat and everything else you can imagine.

Oddly, I find some of these same messages plaguing my inbox at work.  Good meaning, but perhaps ill-informed coworkers, colleagues or professional acquaintances forward on a variety of spam that should never make it anywhere except someone’s Deleted folder.

As the head of IT I face a bit of a challenge with these emails: I don’t want anyone to think that I do not appreciate their attempts at security and I don’t want a well intentioned person to raise a false alarm that creates even more work for me (or a political headache).

Let me give you some examples:

1.       A colleague once forwarded me an email that said “Ed, this looks like a virus.  What should I do?”  He CCed his boss and the technical support distribution list.  Well, for starters, don’t email it to me.  If you think an email has a dangerous attachment or link in it, don’t send it to someone.  Call and ask. The email was actually a notification from the email server that the original email attachment had been deleted because it contained a virus.  Had this person simply read the first sentence in the email there would have been no cause for concern.  Of course he told a few people that he had a virus, who told a few more people and pretty soon the entire company was fraught with worry.

2.       A colleague once convinced the CEO of the company for which I worked that we would lose some of our contracts should the client ever learn that we received so much spam.   The account on which she was getting spam was our marketing account which was on about a billion websites and had its spam filter settings set very loosely so that we did not miss a viable opportunity due to it ending up caught in the spam filter.  I ended up coming in from my vacation to deal with the fallout from this one person urban legend.

3.       A colleague once sent the entire company an email (which was actually a hoax circulating on the Internet) warning them that they needed to shut their computers off on a specific day because a massive virus was supposed to hit.  Before I could control the tsunami of proactiveness that followed action plans had been formed, productive work had stopped.

So, how do I control the flow of information to make sure it is valid and accurate?  First of all I make sure we have spam, spyware, malware and anti-virus software installed everywhere.  Then I make sure the policies for these tools are well defined, well communicated and that people know what to expect from these types of software.

Next, I make sure that there is one definitive source for communication of all cyber related threats.  This way people will know not to respond to the occasional false alarm from the general population.  I also make sure the inverse is true and that there is a definitive contact for any cyber related concerns.  If someone knows who to contact it helps control the flow of information.

How can an HRIS system help?  The Achievant platform allows for two forms of companywide communication: there is a home page that acts much like an intranet and there is a messaging component.  Use of either of these can alert staff to virus outbreaks, security updates, etc.  At Achievant we use this messaging to great effect, keeping the staff aware of any news alerts that are important enough to warrant immediate distribution to either the whole company or a select group.

Today I am back on the HR 2.0 topic.  It seems like every blog, news article or factoid I read these days is all about social this or wiki that and the word “mashup” seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue.  Actually ‘social” and “wiki” are already kind of dated and mashup is (IMHO) a newer, slightly evolved, version of the same.

So, reading about things like Yahoo! Buzz and MyPunchBowl’s own Buzz I began to wonder what an HR mashup would be?  What would it do?  How would it make our lives better?

I see two possible HR mashups: one for the HR professional and one for the HRIS user.

First, let’s define what a mashup is: a mashup is essentially the aggregation of data from diverse sources into one place.  A hip techno geek might want to wax poetic about the separation of data and presentation, but in my mind that’s over complicating something that is basically simple.  In the modern age you can get instant access to pretty much any piece of information you want and from pretty much any source you prefer.  Bring all those pieces of information from all those various sources into one place and present it in a meaningful way and you have yourself a mashup.

If you look at either Yahoo! Buzz or MyPunchBowl’s Buzz you’ll see what is essentially a mashup (more so for Yahoo! Buzz) that adds a social twist by allowing users to rate the content within the mashup.  Visit Digg and you can see more of the same.  The proliferation of this kind of site must mean there is (at least a perceived) need for it.  I think it also means that the need has not been met.

So, back to the HR Mashup…

What if you, as an HR professional, had a mashup at your disposal that brought together all of the HRIS, HR automation, time and attendance, etc information of meaning to you and then let other HR professionals give it a virtual thumbs up or thumbs down so that the cream rose to the top and the chaff fell away?  Would it help you keep up with current HR issues, changes in HR law and see HR trends emerge?

What if you, as an HRIS user, had a mashup at your disposal that brought together all of the time and attendance, learning management, performance management, applicant tracking, etc data you might want?  You could see that suddenly everyone is taking the day after Thanksgiving off or that everyone in your job family has signed up for a new course or certification or that everyone with your experience is applying for this new job?  It seems like it might be a nice way to stay on top of changes and events within the workplace for which you might use your own company’s HRIS tool.

A mashup is kind of a mob mentality, but one that would use a collective to push important current and emerging topics to the forefront.  It’s really a two heads are better than one kind of thing: if every other HR professional is finding topic C to be particularly salient maybe you will too?  Or maybe you can keep your marketability high by seeing the trend that everyone competing for that job you want 9or have) is adding to their skill set by getting certification Y.

I read an interesting article in Workforce Magazine this week that indicated that most succession planning aims to replace senior management and ignores middle management.   

According to a report by Ernst & Young, as a large segment of the workforce nears retirement, large U.S. companies are woefully “unprepared for the looming brain drain” that will result. Based on responses of human resources executives at Fortune 1,000 companies, it found that most companies are not actually focusing on employee development. 

One in four companies (25%) say their middle management ranks will be most affected as these “boomer” employees exit the workforce. Even so, three-quarters (75%) of those with formal succession strategies in place focus exclusively on replacements for top senior executives, rather than identifying would-be middle managers.

This lack of deliberate succession planning results in higher costs: 52 percent of those surveyed say costs of recruitment have increased, while 43 percent have seen an increase in their training and development needs. The report warns that many companies will be exposed to “economic and productivity challenges” within five years unless they implement strategic succession plans.

Does your organization have a succession plan for all levels?

Does your organization have a performance management solution? Or are you just “doing reviews”?

For many companies, this time of the year is often touted as “the review season”.  The previous year’s financials have been determined and goals for the next year are set.  Managers are juggling their priorities – trying to balance their “real work” with HR pushing them to do performance reviews.  The happiest time of the year – or not, depending upon whether or not like Santa Claus, you have kept a careful list of who has been naughty and who has been nice all year long.

As a human resources manager, you and I both understand the importance of having a strong performance management process in place. Such a process helps align individual goals with overall corporate objectives, reinforces desired behaviors and creates a more engaged workforce. 

But if your company is like many that I speak with, your current performance management system consists of a word processing document that is manually collected by HR.  This no longer needs to be the case.  More and more small and mid-sized businesses are turning to HR technologies to improve their performance management processes. The availability of affordable, web-based solutions automating the performance management process is no longer just for very large employers. 
 
At the senior staff meeting here at Achievant, one of the tasks we are working on is creating our own Performance Appraisal form to use in the Achievant platform for our organization.  And if you think it’s difficult to obtain consensus of an appraisal form in your organization, try getting 5 “HR types” to agree on one to use.  But, we all agree on how important it is. 

Studies show that employees value clear, consistent feedback and acknowledgement as much as they do the money.  For those companies who have invested in a performance management solution, the review season isn’t so bad and provides a number of benefits, including:

1. Recognizes your best performers

• Actual progress against performance goals is tracked so you can identify who is delivering…and who’s not
• Reinforces continued positive behavior and set expectations for non-performers. 

2. Provides clarity for employees

• Set goals, establish timelines, track progress, and identify obstacles to communicate what's expected of them
• Give employees a clear understanding of their individual goals and how they fit into the bigger corporate picture
• Provide the link between overall business objectives and employees' day-to-day actions

3. Protect yourself legally

• Provides documentation  to support employment actions such as termination, demotion, or lack of compensation adjustment

4. Stabilizes your workforce

• Reduces employee turnover and attrition

What’s the best way to monitor time and attendance?  Is it the honor system?  A swipe card system? Or, should we just trust that everyone’s working a full day?  What factor does trust play in your decision?  The answer clearly lies in the organization, role and position.  These are all good questions.  Regardless, each and every organization needs to make a conscious decision on how they are going to monitor time & attendance.

Not coincidentally, there are just as many vendors out there that can help you monitor your organizations time & attendance policy.  How do you make a choice?  Who’s the best?  What’s right for your organization?  Achievant is in the time and attendance business and I can offer a few things for you to consider.

1)  The overarching goal should be to accurately capture your employee’s time on the job – both hourly and salary.  In a perfect world time data gets sent to multiple systems including those that perform payroll and time off accruals.  Don’t over think the solution hoping to catch someone cheating you out of 15 minutes a day.  It’s much more important to have a seamless and integrated flow of data among the HR applications you’ve deployed.

2)  Your time and attendance needs to be flexible enough to meet the needs of your desk and floor staff.   One size definitely does not fit all.  Swipe and punch systems are the only real alternative for manufacturing/distribution/warehouse floor.  The desk environment can work well with pc based clock in and out.  However, both have a need to track and monitor your time off plans with an associated approval process.

3)  How does your time and attendance decision integrate into your human capital management (HCM) needs?  Most small and mid-sized companies are well served by deploying an integrated HCM platform and not best of breed solutions for applicant tracking, time and attendance, HRIS, learning management, performance management and benefits management.

All of this may seem obvious but when looking at time and attendance applications many organizations can get tunnel focused on finding the “best of breed” system and lose sight of how this application fits into the overall architecture of the HR infrastructure.  Take a step back to get a better view into your time and attendance decision.

We’ve all heard of the companies on the leading edge that offer work perks most of us can only dream of.  Things like a concierge, dry cleaning pickup and delivery, prepared meals you can take home for dinner, etc. I admit I have worked places with one or two unusual benefits such as adoption assistance, an interest free loan to purchase a computer, or a discount on a mortgage.

More and more companies are taking a chance on innovative benefits such as sabbaticals in an attempt to attract and retain their best employees.  Though a generous one-size-fits-all package of health insurance, vacations and a 401(k) plan used to do the trick, prospective employees today are looking for perks that help them address work-life balance.

Some of these benefits such as paid sabbaticals, on-site child-care centers and long-term care, can come with a high price tag for employers. Others, such as concierge services and takeout meals, cost far less and have the added bonus for employers of keeping workers at their desks longer.

What seems to be clear is that benefits -- other than health-care coverage -- are getting richer. Here are a few which are gaining in popularity. 

Sabbaticals

To keep employees committed or keep them from burning out, more companies are offering several-month unpaid sabbaticals or shorter paid charitable stints.

Set your own hours

Companies seem to be moving away from the 9-to-5 mentality.  For example, about 70% of employees at the corporate headquarters for Best Buy set their own schedules, working just enough hours at whatever location they like to meet certain agreed-upon performance objectives.  The program was developed after benefit managers kept hearing employees ask, "Can't you just trust me to do what I need to do to get the job done?” Though its people may not get much face time, productivity among these teams has jumped 33%, according to one report.

Companies are finding that employees are more productive when they're allowed to choose where and when they work.

On-site child care

Interestingly, only 4% of the companies recently surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management offer child care at work. Probably because it's expensive, takes up a lot of company space and time, and can present liability problems.  Still, for those who have it available, it gives parents more time to spend with their children during lunch hours, plus a quicker commute because they don't have to make a separate trip to drop off the kids.

Help caring for aging parents

At many companies, elder-care benefits are limited to referral services that help employees track down facilities or caregivers. But for others, like Prudential, provide its employees with 80 hours a year of subsidized backup care for their aging parents. Officials say this move is helping to prevent absenteeism and boost productivity among its workers who are often sandwiched between caring for their children and their parents.

Mortgage assistance

This benefit could be one of the most financially meaningful for an employee's future. Real estate companies, banks and many universities offer mortgage assistance to employees with reduced interest rates, discounted appraisal fees and help with other processing costs.   Eligible employees at Fannie Mae can also obtain a loan to use toward their down payment and closing costs.  As employment continues, a larger share of the loan principal is forgiven, according to company information.

Additional vacation time

The average number of vacation days is slowly edging up, rising from 10.9 annually in 2000 to 11.7 in 2006, according to Hewitt Associates. With health-care costs rising, many companies see increased vacation time as a good way to offset more-constrained medical coverage.   Other companies allow employees to purchase additional vacation or are setting up Paid Time Office banks that put vacation power in the hands of workers. Employees are free to use the time for sick time, vacation days or holidays without explanation. This minimizes the “gee it’s a beautiful day out and I think I must be coming down with something” lies.  Typically the number varies with job classification and years of service. If workers stay healthy, they wind up with more time to bask in the sun.

What's typical?

These benefits may not be realistic for most companies, but there are many benefits that prospective employees should reasonably expect to receive from a new employer. The following company benefits are offered by more than half of the 916 U.S. companies surveyed by Hewitt Associates. See how your company stacks up:

• Immediate eligibility for a health-care plan.
• A 401(k) plan in which the typical match is 50 cents for each $1 an employee contributes, up to a certain percentage of pay.
• Retirement eligibility at age 65 and health-care coverage to retirees.
• Access to a dental plan with 100% of exams covered and 80% coverage for dental work.
• Access to a vision plan separate from medical or dental coverage.
• A group life insurance plan that pays a year of salary or wages as a death benefit.
• Long-term-disability benefits with pay replacement of 60%.
• On average, 11.7 days of vacation after one year of service and 15.4 after five years of service.
• Eight to 12 paid holidays a year.
• Dependent-care spending accounts and access to a health savings account.
• Educational reimbursement up to a median of $5,000.

As I meet with CEOs and discuss topics like Time & Attendance systems, they tend to not be involved with HR systems issues.  It just has not been a radar screen issue for them.  It should be!  The more I pursue Time & Attendance or the topic of systems with HR leadership teams I observe a frequent bias towards status quo.  Often, comfort with a particular Time & Attendance system is the determining factor for how to configure HR automation within the respective HR department.  Too often, payroll wants their preferred time & attendance system, performance management is a separate system, training wants their learning management system, and HRIS records may well be on yet another.  This “best in class” approach creates immense redundancy, software application complexities, and user confusion.  Singular integrated Human Capital Management Systems (HCMS) create efficiencies, drive automation, facilitate communication, enhance access, and are more widely accepted do to more frequent user access and consistency.   HR directors should be the efficiency role models within their organizations.   As an internal provider to every employee, the image presented by HR significantly impacts each employee’s perception of their organization.  The use of a fully integrated HCMS system…which includes Time & Attendance, performance management, application management, comp management, benefits management, learning management, HRIS, and more…will improve efficiency within HR through the elimination of disparate systems and the inevitable redundancy they create.  Organization wide use of an integrated HCMS will improve access for employees, improve the effectiveness of management, and create consistency in HR processes.

Over the last several weeks I have been talking with a number of HR managers about how they are currently handling time and attendance tracking within their organization.  I am amazed that so many are still using paper timesheets and tracking off-time on paper calendars.  Although there are many benefits to automating this HR process, I think the top 4 are:

1. Reducing employee calls – By utilizing an automated system, employees can self-serve for all those attendance questions (i.e., how much vacation time do I have, do your records match mine, and have I used my float holidays yet?) freeing you up for more strategic issues.
   
2. Reducing calculation errors – When left to manual calculations, timesheets are doomed to have math errors.  And, although they are supposed to be checking, rarely do supervisors re-check the math. This results in overpayments and underpayments of hours.  You can be pretty certain you will hear about the underpayments, but you are probably not going to recoup the overpayments.
   
3. Consistent application of hours rules – An HRIS system ensures that hour rules are applied consistently throughout the organization.  Policies for hours that count toward overtime, usage of sick/vacation time and holidays can be tricky for supervisors.
   
4. Documentation – Workflows providing electronic approval of off-time requests also provide documentation of when the request was made, type of time being used, who approved it and when it was approved. 
   
   If you are still handling time and attendance via paper, consider an automated HRIS system like Achievant.

Yesterday almost everyone in our office received one of the IRS tax refund scam emails that have been going around.   No one fell for it, but I can see how someone could.  Computer related fraud is becoming more and more common. 

During the sales cycle we are often asked how employees might defraud our application and cheat the company.  There isn’t a cornucopia full of opportunities for fraud in HRIS, but there are few and one spot in particular is time and attendance.  Stealing time from an employer is probably as old of a trick as employment itself.  Fudge 15 minutes here, a half hour there and pretty soon the company is paying you for 40 hours of work when you’ve only worked 30.

We allow for two basic types of (regular) time entry in our application: by the honor system and by time punch.  Which a client uses is usually a nod to the corporate culture of that client.  We’ve had client adamant about never using the honor system and we’ve had clients just as adamant about always using the honor system.

Here is how we work to prevent fraudulent time and attendance entries the application:

1.       Time punches: if used by a client our time punch system requires the employee to authenticate via username and password and then punch a virtual time clock.  The time for the punch is controlled by our servers.   By requiring authentication we’re making it more likely that the employee is punching their own "time card”.  By controlling the timestamp on our servers, we prevent anyone from cheating the system by fudging the time on the client PC.

2.       Rounding:  We round the punch or honor system entry by whatever rule the client has.  We all know people who work this angle.  If someone knows that until seven minutes past the hour the punch will always round back to the hour they wait until 6:59 past the hour to punch in, stealing almost seven minutes.  We track the rounding and measure whose favor the rounding is in and can report on these on an employee by employee basis.  Over time if an employee is being honest with their punches that give and take should average out to about zero: sometimes it will be in the company’s favor and sometimes it will be in the employees favor.

3.       Work Flow: For all of our time and attendance functions there is an associated work flow.  The workflow is defined by the client and can be (and should be) used as a check and balance.  If a manager is required to review and sign-off on an employee’s time and attendance then it is much more likely someone will be honest in their timekeeping and that any fraudulent behavior will be caught upon review.

Our controls for off-time work pretty much the same way. You have to go through very similar process esin order to take time off.  We track your requests for off time, put them through workflows, get them approved and report on them.

Not many employees cheat at the time and attendance game, but it’s important to be able to know if someone is stealing time.  Labor is a huge cost for any company.  If you were being shorted half your widgets on every shipment you’d want to know and would want to take preventative measures to prevent it.  The same is true for hours worked.  Every hour falsely worked is money taken from the bottom line, lost productivity and a theft from the company.

Now that I have been blogging a while I have gotten a number of questions about what blogs I read.  So, even thought it isn’t related to time and attendance, HR automation software, performance management or any of the other HR topics I frequently cover I thought I’d list my top five favorites for anyone else who was interested:

1.       TechCrunch:  to me TechCrunch is kind of the insider Technology blog.  It covers all that’s new on the Net.  TechCrunch is more about the business of the Net than just the gee whiz gadget stuff you might find elsewhere.

2.       Red Herring: This is probably the most serious blog I read.  While the others certainly have real content Red Herring is more like news that any other blog.  Red Herring is a technology magazine dedicated to emergent technologies.  They are serious journalists and making it into Red Herring is a little like being in Time or Newsweek.

3.       CNET: CNET has a bevy of blogs.  I like the Beyond Binary blog and the Crave blog.  If you can’t find a technology related blog to read here you have no technology soul.

4.       Digg: a great way to stay on what’s hot at the moment.  Dig is essentially news bits (and other bits, too) rated by readers.  Either Digg It or don’t.  Get enough Diggs and you wind up on the Digg front page.  You may see the Digg icon on blogs, videos, news stories and a myriad of other things as you