Category: Archive

With 5,000 employees and more than 400 locations in the United States and Canada, bringing employees together for training simply wasn’t practical for Olsten Health Services. In addition, onsite classes were expensive and were poorly attended because of scheduling difficulties and other commitments. People weren’t getting trained and, to exacerbate the issue, Olsten’s top-down training method wasn’t working either. Unfortunately the senior managers who attended the sessions found it difficult to recreate the training program at the local level, and consequently staff development was impaired.

In early 1999, parent company Olsten Corp. decided employees were ready to take responsibility for their own training. This decision cleared the path for the implementation of a library-based training program through American Media Inc.

“Accessibility was the big motivator,” says Claire Griswold, project manager. With this library system, everyone — not just high-level directors — could receive training, Griswold elaborates. Employees controlled when and where their own training occurred — a must in the travel-intensive home-health-care business.

Flexibility is key to training.
Such flexibility was possible because American Media’s library focuses on soft skills like leadership, communications and customer service rather than technical skills, and also because the library includes books, tapes, compact discs and video presentations. Therefore, Olsten Health Services and its employees have the flexibility to choose the format that best suits their needs and schedules, either for individual study or for in-service programs. With American Media’s online ordering system, employees may buy or rent the programs they choose, and Olsten Health Services will be billed.

Programs are shipped within three days of ordering, providing a timeliness that was impossible with classroom-based training. New training materials become available monthly, providing up-to-date information on a wider range of subjects than Olsten could offer alone. And, because so many of the training materials are easily updated, they can include relevant information from recent research, court cases or other news. Because books tend to be purchased rather than rented, some sites are developing their own in-house libraries to maximize their training dollars, says Griswold.

American Media materials are easy to access.
Olsten employees access the library with a user password. Then, based on their job level and training competency, a site-wide search is conducted for the best training products to meet their needs. In addition, employees may search for material by keywords or by subject categories in the online catalog that American Media developed specifically for Olsten. If they can’t find quite what they need, employees may phone the American Media account manager for recommendations. “They’re very responsive,” says Griswold.

Olsten tested American Media’s training program in a pilot project that began in May 1999. In July it launched the program throughout the corporation. During the first four months, Olsten’s 5,000 employees ordered 1,000 books, more than 500 videos and 50 CDs, Griswold reports. “The response has been very positive,” she says, based on those records and anecdotal information. It’s too early to begin to measure program effectiveness, but plans are being made to conduct pre- and post-testing and to track the volume and type of material requested.

Two years into an unsuccessful human resources management and payroll system installation, air movement and controls manufacturer Greenheck switched gears.

It fired the company that was charge of the system, and began looking for a new firm that would offer a robust, modern payroll/human resources management system.

Greenheck went full speed ahead with a test drive.
Employees who were attending a trade show noticed Ultimate Software and “came back pretty excited,” according to Don Brekke, vice president of information technology at Schofield, Wisconsin-based Greenheck.

However, Brekke requested proposals from several companies, with the stipulation that Greenheck be allowed to test-drive the system on its own server for one week. Few would permit a test-drive, so the field narrowed quickly. Ultimate Software’s willingness to permit a week-long test-drive really set the company apart from the competition and showed the strength of its belief in its UltiPro software, Brekke says.

Then, rather than evaluate systems based on features, “We used a scenario-based approach. We took a hard business problem, documented it, constructed test data around it and gave it to the vendors so they could show us how their systems would solve the problem. When the test-drive actually occurred, Ultimate Software’s system was up and running within 45 minutes. We were satisfied we had the right application.”

They made the right decision — implementation of UltiPro.
Implementation of UltiPro began in mid-December 1998 and was completed by the following July. “It could have been up sooner,” says Brekke, “but we ran three separate testing scenarios to ensure data integrity and that we were using the system properly. There were very few bugs.” In fact, Brekke says, “This is one of the smoothest implementations and one of the ‘most right’ decisions I’ve ever made.”

It was a good financial decision, too. Ultimate Software’s UltiPro HRMS/ Payroll system was installed on time and priced under budget. As a result, IT staff can concentrate on core competencies rather than on support and service issues. Payback is expected in less than 18 months.

Who knew a single application could offer so much?
The UltiPro HRMS/ Payroll system supports direct deposit, connectivity to outside services for FLEX and 401(k) administration, and tracks family leave, recruitment information and training. UltiPro is bundled with Cognos tools for reporting, resulting in very flexible report generation. Now that Greenheck uses UltiPro, both payroll and HR departments can access the same, uniform set of data and can update that data throughout documents — just by using one software application.

“Ultimate Software had a true client/server application, the UltiPro HRMS/Payroll system, that used the Delphi language and NT sequel server technology — and we’re an NT sequel server shop,” he says.

Additionally, “It had a robust graphical user interface and its advertised claim, ‘two clicks to anywhere,’ was true. But, having been burned once, we remained skeptical,” says Brekke.

Brekke, however, wasn’t finished with his investigation. He paid a visit to Florida to inspect firsthand Ultimate Software’s support center. They were using a lot of the right tools, and they knew how to properly solve problems and record incidents. “We were supported out of the Schaumburg, Illinois, office and had a team assigned to us during implementation, but we haven’t had to use technical support very much.”

High-tech employees increasingly stay with a company only a year or two before moving on to greener pastures. It’s a trend that has cost the high-tech industry a lot in terms of training time, lost opportunity and actual dollars — generally 1.5 to 3 times the employee’s annual salary, depending upon the position. Not surprisingly, enterprise software firm Oracle Corporation decided to minimize the chances that its own highly skilled employees would join the throngs of job-hopping individuals.

However, managers can’t take pre-emptive actions to retain key employees unless they can determine who is most likely to leave and can identify the early warning signs. Clearly, Oracle needed a training program to help managers identify factors contributing to employee attrition, identify individuals’ likelihood of leaving and develop an action plan to retain those individuals. Rather than develop a retention training program internally, in late 1998 Oracle implemented the program “Retaining Top Talent,” developed by Integral Training Systems, a Behavioral Technology Partner.

Identify why employees leave and why they stay.
“Retaining Top Talent” is a strategic-planning workshop that includes retention skills assessment. Managers complete the assessment along with their direct reports to gain feedback on management behavior as they relate to training employees. The management assessment “identifies early warning signs,” explains Don Kraft, senior consultant in the management development department.

Retaining Top Talent’s purpose isn’t just to identify why people leave, but also to identify why people stay. “We had conversations with senior managers about what’s happening in their groups, and included HR experts, data from similar groups and from the computer industry,” Kraft says. He incorporated that information into the existing program for a high degree of customization. “Retaining Top Talent isn’t an off-the-shelf program,” Kraft says. They also provided information in terms used at Oracle, so managers would feel it was relevant to attend.

Oracle has learned valuable lessons about retention.
Customization is the keyword throughout the Integral Training Systems program. “The course revolves around the action plan,” Kraft says, that is tailored to Oracle’s high-tech environment and to each individual who may be at risk of leaving. In a workshop, managers identify their top three employees and their risk of leaving, based on such things as job security, working conditions, benefits, salary and the extent to which they believe those factors motivate specific individuals. Later, managers talk with the employees themselves to ensure their own perceptions are accurate.

“When they identify key employees’ risks of leaving, a lot of managers are surprised,” he adds. Next, managers examine themselves, based on 72 managerial behaviors that are related to retention, identified by Integral Training Systems. The course also examines how attrition affects the team, the business, the stock price and other aspects of Oracle.

Oracle’s measurement and reinforcement phase is just beginning, but anecdotal reports indicate the Integral Training Systems program appears to be successful. In surveys immediately after the workshops, managers rated the course contents an outstanding 4.5 on a 1 to 5 scale, says Kraft. Attendees estimated they knew 47 percent more about retention strategies after the workshop than they knew before.

Computing has come a long way since the disk operating system called DOS was developed. So when Appleton Papers began investigating new human resources management and payroll systems to replace its DOS system in late 1998, a Windows-style user interface was high on its list, along with Y2K compliance, fully-integrated HR and payroll data and optional outsourcing for payroll processing.

“Our old system lacked robust database management, so it was very limiting,” explains Diane Collins, an Appleton systems analyst. Appleton project manager Dina Nelson adds, “(The system) wasn’t Y2K compliant, so we needed a new system now.”

For Appleton, the solution was crystal clear.
Their choice, The Solution Series/ST® version 4.0 by Cyborg Systems, naturally is Y2K compliant, but also offers a host of other features to help Appleton improve and expand its HR and payroll capabilities. It features an open architecture, so it can connect with any open systems database, a sophisticated training component and an employee self-service feature.

Cyborg’s software is packed full of features.
“We had a very aggressive implementation schedule,” says Kerry Arent, employee services director. “We ran the first payroll on the new system October 8 before all the modules were up and running.”

Currently, modules are being added and customization work is underway to that will increase the capabilities of The Solution Series/ST. The newest release of the Cognos report generator also will be added when it becomes available. “The functionality is so powerful. There’s so much we haven’t used yet,” declares Nelson.

Cyborg ran Appleton’s payroll processing through its processing services division, “tying into our system so our records always are current,” Nelson explains. “Before, we’d upload our files, a service would run the payroll, and we’d download their data. Therefore, the systems often were out of sync.” With Cyborg, Collins emphasizes, “The payroll processing services division has been excellent.”

Training and documentation help keep the process in check.
The success of that first run can be attributed to Cyborg’s thorough training and documentation, as well as to the system itself.

Implementation staff participated in two to six weeks of training, depending on their departments, and had extensive backup in the form of thorough, one-stop documentation manuals that combine the system and training information. Because those documents are available both online and on CD, users can perform quick searches to locate specific information, says Nelson. That capability will be as helpful when HR functions are installed as it was for implementing payroll.

Once HR functions are completed, Appleton is contemplating implementation of The ESS Solution™ to allow employees to access and change their data themselves, bypassing human resources. This would be done via an intranet or the Internet. “Giving employees direct access to the system to maintain their data, rather than hand in forms with changes, will be quicker and more accurate,” Arent says. Another benefit of self-service is around-the-clock access to HR for basic administrative services.

“The implementation has been fairly smooth,” says Nelson. “To the average person, there’s been no effect. For example, out of 4,200 employees, only 10 needed corrections to their payroll files.” Such accuracy is the primary success criteria, but attention also will be paid to user feedback, ease of use and the ability to generate complex reports. Results, so far, are excellent.

As a public school district, Minnetonka, Minnesota, has a reputation for excellence. With 950 employees and 7,700 students, this K-12 district in suburban Minneapolis was cosmopolitan enough to understand that it couldn’t rest on its laurels if it was to continue to excel.

“We were concerned that maintaining the status quo wouldn’t allow us to meet our potential or to meet the needs of the students of the future,” explains Dr. Dan Jett, Minnetonka’s district superintendent. Meeting those needs required planning and, according to Jett, “The best time to plan strategically is when you’re doing well.”

Human Synergistics helps identify cultural factors.
Jett enlisted the help of the Schiller Center in Alexandria, Virginia, to coordinate strategic planning for the school district. This action was done with the belief that someone outside the organization would bring fresh ideas and a broader range of skills to the process.

“It quickly became clear that their organizational culture was one of the (key) issues,” adds Dr. Sherry Schiller, president of the Schiller Center. She recommended surveying the school district personnel using Human Synergistics International’s Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI) and Organizational Effectiveness Inventory (OEI).

These two tools identify an organization’s cultural style and the factors that are shaping that culture, as well as why the culture is either constructive or defensive, how effectiveness is affected and how the culture can be improved to increase efficiency. The OCI and OEI surveys are available in paper and Web-based formats. The results are then compiled to reflect organizational-level feedback and presented in a computer-generated report. “These are very usable, research-based tools that are effective in a variety of industries,” says Schiller.

An objective perspective keeps goals in focus.
Human Synergistics’ tools were helpful because they were objective. According to the inventory, “Our culture was traditional, with many perfectionists,” says Jett. The culture also suffered from weak relationships.

Schiller presented the OCI and OEI results to all of the district employees and placed a copy of the results at each of the 11 sites for anyone to peruse. “Dr. Schiller was challenged on the interpretation of the data,” Jett explains, “mainly because the data came from a business environment and people didn’t believe it applied to schools, even though they could identify with the results.”

A little cultural change takes a lot of time and effort.
After the Human Synergistics assessments, each school and the district itself developed blueprints for change that focused on building trust, meeting individual learning needs and creating a culture of continuous improvement.

The findings resulted in a lot of meetings, but “The meetings turned the tide,” says Schiller. “Usually leaders say they want change but never give employees the time to create change.” At the Minnetonka School District, “We closed school half a day on multiple occasions — and took some criticism for it,” Jett confesses. However, you can’t create positive change in just a few minutes here or there.

As a result, the culture is shifting toward a more open, innovative and less bureaucratic climate. Metrics documenting the extent of the change will be available in 2000, after the first formal assessment. “People are using the language of those goals in a lot of things they do,” Jett says. In the process of this cultural shift, they’re building less adversarial, more cooperative relationships. He continues: “They’re making a conscious effort to promote constructive behavior.”

When employees relocate for work, they often need to find a new home fast. In Las Vegas, Viva.com and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce have teamed up to make the transition pain free.

With Viva.com, renters save time and energy. Instead of searching through classified ads or driving around the city looking for “for rent” signs, renters can come to www.viva.com and request exactly what they want-for free. Their requests are sent to matching properties, which respond with live rental offers. These rental offers include information about an actual available unit, such as rent and amenities, as well as photos and maps. Renters can then communicate over the Internet with properties they are interested in, and schedule appointments with properties they would like to visit.

The Internet is perfect for renters moving to a new city, especially when someone is relocating for work,” says Scott Ingraham, CEO of Viva.com. “Starting a new job is always stressful, and we’re glad we can help them make a smooth transition.” Allan Hunter, Viva.com’s president, says that one of the Web site’s most useful features is the virtual property tour. “It’s really incredible technology,” says Hunter. “Renters can navigate through a 360-degree image of a property or unit, and really get a feel for what the property is like, all from their computer screens.”

When Viva.com launched its service in Las Vegas in March, the Chamber of Commerce was one of the first places it went to reach the community. “There are a lot of places consumers could go for Las Vegas information, but the Chamber of Commerce comes to mind first. We’re a natural market for it,” says Mike Varney, vice president of marketing for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. Viva became one of the most prominent apartment services on the chamber’s Web site, and included its promotional material in the chamber’s relocation packet.

Viva.com worked well for Tracey Teehan, a renter who recently relocated from California to Las Vegas. “I just told Viva what I was looking for and within days I had rental offers from 25 different apartment complexes. I would recommend Viva to anyone.” Felicia Griffin, who recently relocated to Denver for her company, also found her apartment quickly with Viva.com. “It was a quick move deadline, so I had to find a new home fast. Viva assisted with that by providing housing leads according to our needs very quickly,” she says, adding that she passed Viva.com’s name on to her human resources director.

In addition to Las Vegas, Viva.com serves Phoenix, Tucson, Denver, and Atlanta, as well as most of Texas and Florida, and expects to be nationwide sometime in 2001. “Whenever we launch in a new city, the chamber is one of the first places we go,” says Ingraham. “No one knows a city as well as the chamber, and we’re proud to be working with them in all our markets.”

When intelligent companies seek the best of the crop of qualified job candidates, they’re not looking for a whirlwind romance. Once candidates are found, even if they don’t take the first job offered, the companies don’t want to lose them. They want to build an ongoing relationship with them.

That’s what Keane, Inc. wanted. The Boston-based provider of business consulting, application development and management, and e-commerce solutions for Fortune 500 companies knew that in order to attract the best and the brightest, they had to maintain relationships with applicants beyond the traditional recruitment and interview process.

“Things are changing rapidly in our business,” says Grant Sidney, recruiting analyst. “There’s more competition for less people and we saw the need to shift our recruiting tactics. Traditionally, recruiting has been a reactive situation, responding to today’s job requirements and filling them as they came up. We’re looking to a more proactive style of recruiting, more along the lines of e-commerce ideas as opposed to traditional HR functionality.

“We wanted to focus more on continuous sourcing, building long-term relationships with our candidates, building our talent pool so we have a really strong pipeline of both active people — people we can put in jobs immediately — and passive people who we may not hire today. But we can keep our company brand in front of them and put them into jobs a year or five years from now.”

Hire.com, the leading talent acquisition and retention application service provider, installed a Web-based HR application that allowed candidates interested in working for Keane — now or in the future — to profile and update their personal information, “which makes it really easy for a candidate to apply for a specific job or simply say they’re looking and remain anonymous,” says Sidney. “That allows us, using Hire.com’s technology, to know their broad areas of interest, personally and professionally, and get their e-mail addresses so we can begin a marketing campaign to them.”

The Hire.com technology, says Sidney, also eases the recruiters’ burden at Keane by taking care of much of the nuts and bolts of the recruitment process through automation, leaving recruiters free to concentrate on the all-important relationship-building aspect of their jobs.

As for the Hire.com personnel, Sidney says “they’ve been great. It’s incredible. They understand recruiting and our situation inherently and everyone who works for them shares the same feeling that recruiting needs to change and that they’ve got the answer. They’ve been totally committed to our success.”

Currently, Keane is in the first phase of implementation of Hire.com’s solution and is using it to recruit sales, recruiting, and management candidates. The candidates register on Keane’s Web site using Hire.com’s technology and provide information about their area of expertise, as well as their level of experience and their career paths — and can even include information about birthdays and personal interests.

“It’s an unfolding process,” says Sidney, “and it’s pretty exciting.”

Three years ago a group of leader managers in one of IBM’s circuit board manufacturing sites decided to change some of the fundamental ways in which they worked with management and employees. Essentially, they shift from a traditional “go do it” method of directing people to a coaching, facilitating style.

It wasn’t easy at first for the managers at Endicott Manufacturing, part of the Microelectronics Division at IBM’s manufacturing site in New York. But they had the guidance and tools Human Synergistics International, which specializes in organizational training and development.

Today, the panel facility is profitable and considered a good environment in which to work, says Wade Phelan, Endicott’s manufacturing operations manager. In fact, he an his colleagues are again turning to Human Synergistics to expand the coaching style of management into the divisions’ manufacturing population, which numbers 1,500 employees.

“We’ve gone from not being very positively perceived internally to now being considered the benchmark in what we do. We have gone from not making money to making a significant amount of money,” Phelan says. “I talk to folks all the time. We talk about the old ways. There’s nobody that wants to go back.”

Phelan speaks frankly about he challenges that led his group to seek out the problem-solving solutions of Human Synergistics. They were having a difficult time meeting production goals, and employees were working in a highly stressed environment. Managers thought first to change their operations and looked to consultants who could reshape manufacturing process or reduce cycle times.

They came upon Clarke Consulting, which did indeed have some solutions for the nuts-and-bolts end of manufacturing. But Clarke Consulting pointed out that Endicott’s manufacturing problem was also a human resources problem and introduced the group to the tools of Human Synergistics.

“If you don’t work on your culture, fixing your process isn’t going to do any good,” is what they were told, Phelan recalls. What began then was a comprehensive series of surveys, including the Organizational Culture Inventory, which measures the shared values guiding how members of an organization interact and work. This survey revealed that employees in the division were operating in “aggressive/defensive” and “passive/defensive” instead of “constructive” modes.”

Surveys of management and employees followed. The feedback reports were sometimes humbling, but always insightful, Phelan says. The Endicott group quickly realized that there was more to the successful manufacturing of circuit boards than just technology. Managers needed to learn how to guide, encourage, coach, and facilitate. Instruction and training followed.

Phelan says it has become the manufacturing area’s work style. And it is valued not just for the better quality of life it brings to the workplace, but for the results on the bottom line.

With a traditional directional style of management, managers may get back exactly what they asked for, and no more, Phelan says. Such a style may seem productive, but in fact it short-changes the company of that above-and-beyond sort of passion that can have lasting benefits.

M

emorial Health System of Springfield, Illinois, was facing a shortage of new blood, and not just the kind that comes in chilled plastic containers. The diverse and wide-ranging integrated health system needed new people, the best it could find, to staff the 562-bed Memorial Medical Center as well as the system’s broad range of specialty services, from regional cancer and burn centers to sports medicine and home care.

“There were several human resources issues we had to deal with,” said R. Keith Allen, Memorial’s vice president of human resources. “First, the labor shortage in health care is acute and we needed a medium that would give us a longer shelf life than the traditional newspaper advertising and job fairs. We also needed something that could be easily accessed and that applicants could come back to time and time again.”

The solution: a comprehensive system-wide Web site, including a specific recruitment area of the site devoted to job postings and hiring. And when Memorial Health System was ready to take the plunge into cyberspace, one HR Web site provider stood out from the rest: JobOptions.com.

The Memorial Health System HR team learned of JobOptions through their advertising vendor, said Allen. “They said, “If you’re going to do Internet, we’ve got the company for you.” he said.

The Internet presence was a natural idea, said Allen, “because the organization has gone to e-commerce as one of its major strategies. And because the recruitment issue is one of our top priorities, it just made good sense.”

With its customized Private Label product, JobOptions tailored Memorial’s recruitment site to serve the many physical locations that are part of the Memorial Health System organization, providing a central resource for both job seekers and job posters while reducing paperwork. Now candidates go to one place to search jobs by custom category, learn about Memorial locations, research available employee benefits, and explore resources about Springfield.

“The implementation was very easy,” said Sally Hamilton, Memorial Health System’s human resources manager. “As far as being about to serve that site and edit or post new positions on it, it’s very user friendly.”

And, said Allen, JobOptions Private Label provides far more bang for the buck. “We paid $32,000 to bring the site up, and that’s equal to only about three months of print advertising in this market.”

The collaboration with JobOptions was “very successful,” said Allen. “They provided a regional account manager that we can contact at any time, they return calls and e-mails within the hour if you have questions, and they provide ongoing on-site training. They’ve been very responsive.”

JobOptions Private Label is designed to make a company’s Web site its most effective recruiting tool. By mid-October, the Memorial Health System site had received more than 3,000 hits from potential employees, “and the type of jobs that are hit most often are the shortage jobs,” said Allen.

“It was a very seamless process. And JobOptions brought a lot of credibility and energy to the task. To me, if you don’t have (a Web presence) as part of your total recruitment strategy, you’re missing something, and definitely missing a portion of your audience.”