By Lisa Disselkamp
A new year, a fresh start. As you look back on 2009, is it a year you would repeat? January is a good time to make assessments. This year we have not only the passing of a year, but the dawn of a new decade. How far have you come in the past ten years? Where will you be in ten years from now?
Evolution – that’s the key. Everything changes over time but that’s not the same as evolving. You’re ten years older, your wardrobe has (hopefully) changed, your job may have changed, your systems have upgraded a few versions, and the competition for business is tougher. Everything is different, but is it getting any better? Development, growth, progress, adaptation, achievement – those are the elements of an evolution. One year, five years, ten years have passed, things appear differently…. but are they?
For anyone involved with technology and time and labor management specifically, the assessment requires an honest examination of how we use the technology. What approach do we take? Where are workforce management processes positioned within the organization? What can the system really do for the employer? What’s the intent – what are we trying to achieve and are we being successful?
Take this opportunity – in the privacy of your own office, within the confines of this electronic venue – to undertake a self-assessment and to be brutally honest with yourself about your organization, your technology, your processes and most especially your outcomes. No one will hear you. No one will see your responses. It may be gratifying, it may be reassuring; you may not be doing badly. However, an honest assessment could reveal some serious shortcomings, a stagnant decade, or a situation where things “look” different but the reality is that the same old outcomes are just wrapped in a newer model.
One of the easiest areas of assessment actually happens to be around eliminating paper. I say easy because it’s tangible – you can count the number of pieces of paper, the reports and forms. However, many organizations successfully eliminate paper timecards only to replace them with more paper reports for signature, exceptions and adjustments. The goal isn’t “replace paper timecards” with another paper form. It is ELIMINATE paper. The desired outcome is reduction not substitution. Change is replacing one thing for another; evolution equals eradication, improvement.
Has your time and attendance system brought about evolution and benefit, or merely changed you’re the way you do business? Can your current systems and processes move your organization forward? The assessment isn’t always so easy.
Assessing your evolution: Recall your studies back in high school or college and Psychology 101. Do you remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Employers have a similar structure of basic needs. Reference the pyramid below.
At the lowest level, organizations demand tools for survival—information, efficiency, and accuracy (physiological – people need to do things correctly, employees have to be paid). Next come compliance and security (safety – the business needs to stay out of trouble), followed by collaboration and better communication (belonging/social needs –people need to understand what is expected) and empowerment (esteem – self-fulfillment –employers and employees want to feel understood and valued). Finally, very mature organizations begin to call for higher-level tools to improve performance and achieve excellence (self-actualization –organizations want to understand and measure how they are doing, where they can improve) and to realize their full potential for success.
Time and attendance tools can be overlaid on this pyramid. An organization’s evolution and use of technology line up nicely with their tendency to adopt technology to meet those needs when there is a clear correlation.
Organizations tend to move up the hierarchy – progressing further along the maturity curve – when they have successfully met their needs at each level AND when they see the impact – the outcomes. Business leaders are more likely to invest in more of the product when they believe the system will deliver meaningful, tangible benefits.
Benefits: How Time & Labor Mgmt Systems meet the organization’s needs
Can you place yourself on the pyramid? Are you highly evolved or struggling to survive? Have you been stuck on a rung of the ladder for the past year or decade? Are you evolving and maturing in your use of technology?
This is where the self-assessment has to distinguish between superficial change and bonafide evolution. Has your time and attendance system truly moved your organization forward? Your organization is unique: the rules are different, the business operates to meet its very own set of product and market issues, etc. You have a distinctive set of employees to manage. Internal and external entities impose regulations, bargaining agreements, industry standards, and financial and resource constraints on the company. Is your system flexible enough to meet your needs? Is it configurable and robust enough? Can it handle the complexities, the volume of activity, and the integration of key data – all within your special information technology environment?
Can you, do you, design the system around “an intent”? Be it operational, strategic or financial. If you’re evolving each year you are making strides to align your time and labor management systems with your business goals. Cutting costs? What are your specific financial targets within time and attendance to reduce labor spending? What parts of the system are you turning on or tweaking to harvest savings? Going after increased customer satisfaction? Are you matching production or service demands to staffing? If quality drives your ratings are you using time and attendance to produce employee scorecards? Did you suffer through lawsuits levied by disgruntled employees? How is your system going to be positioned to prevent such costly problems? High turnover in a competitive labor market? How is time and attendance being used to attract and retain talent and help the company become an “employer of choice”?
When you assess the past what happened each time a new system or upgrade was installed? Was the discovery process a “verbatim” survey of existing requirements? Or was the implementation constructed around a new vision for time and labor management technology? Was the approach just to replace the old with the new, or to drive towards specific targets for improvement? What was the definition for success for time and attendance? Was it measurable? Was it something more than “on time and on budget” or even some narrowly defined, payroll specific goal such as “fewer errors and manual checks”? Did you take on transformation or simply transition to the latest out of the box version?
Any self-assessment has to be put into context. Transformation is tough and timing is everything. Perhaps 2009 wasn’t the year for radical evolution or even a modest investment. That’s why examining the decade helps to put it into perspective. An organization can be allowed a brief “time out” from the demands of change, particularly under difficult economic conditions. However, an outfit that shows few signs of maturing over time or lacks a vision of true progress in the future is going to find itself at a competitive disadvantage.
I must confess I see pockets of marvelous invention and advancement in the industry. Some organizations truly “get it” marching vigorously towards a new age of influence and importance as their time and attendance products and systems become a vital part of their success. I also see a dramatic change in attitude among employers who are eager to understand and address their opportunities for improvement – particularly when real dollar savings can be demonstrated.
For 2010 set two goals – figure out where you are and where you want to be a year from now. It could be to completely eliminate paper timecards, save on your labor spending, or increase productivity. It could be that you need to find a vendor and product and begin your journey with automated time and attendance technology. It’s somewhere on the pyramid and in 2010 things should be looking up.
About the Author -
Lisa Disselkamp is a leader and visionary in the workforce technology industry helping employers increase productivity and profits through their strategic use of workforce management technology. She is a business leader, author, consultant, and popular speaker. Her latest book, No Boundaries: How to Use Time and Labor Management Technology to Win the Race for Profits and Productivity, emphasizes how your company can improve productivity and profits through workforce management systems.
