FLINDERS UNIVERSITY HR Process Improvement Paul Moran Tuesday 19 May 2015.

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

HR Process Improvement

Paul Moran Tuesday 19 May 2015

Agenda• Background

• Casual Academic Payments

– Process Review

• Casual Engagement

– Process Review

• Technology Solution

– Casual Engagement

– Payment Process

• Integration

• What’s next?

Support Services Survey• Survey of FTE & cost on support

services– Eg. HR, Finance, IT, Facilities Management

etc– Scaled data compared with others

• FTE to deliver services• Proportions of Seniority• Levels of Specialisation…….

……………..room for improvement

What did this mean?• High FTE to deliver Services

– Limited use of technology

• Low proportion of Seniority– Ie. As workload increased we recruited more doers– Didn’t review process– Didn’t invest in technology solutions

• Low level of specialisation– Ie. Lots of ‘jack of all trades’ in every area– Training & support is hard– Limited process expertise

Voice of the Customer

• Faculty Workshops conducted

• Highlighted four key areas to focus on:– Streamlining and automating forms

– Enhancing use of technology

– Improving our website

– Streamlining our governance, delegations and policy

frameworks

Business Process ImprovementGuiding Principles

• Give time back to Academic and Professional Staff for higher value adding activities

• Simplify business processes and reduce cycle times

• Remove unnecessary layers of delegation

• Use technology to lower delivery costs and improve quality of support services

• Make it easier to access and use these services

Casual Academic Teacher PaymentsPrevious Approach

• Semester teaching schedules created in Excel and approved by Dean

• Payments were based on Casual entering timesheet in WSS– Weekly timesheets– Significant time supporting entry– Errors made – had to start again (old timesheets)– Budget management tool for casuals

• Timesheets approved by admin staff– Checks on every timesheet against schedules– Differences had to be followed up

Number of Casual Timesheets

Casual Academic Teacher PaymentsNew Approach

• Payments made based on pre-approved estimated teaching schedule– Casual staff paid on time; timesheet coding errors

eliminated; improved budget management• Variations to estimated teaching schedule managed

separately– Casual Academic teacher reminded to submit

variations each pay-cycle – Supervisors approve variations (not admin staff)

• Variance reports introduced to strengthen monitoring controls

Benefits

• Timesheets are still compared to schedule (no change), but this now happens automatically.

• Erroneous timesheets are greatly lowered.

• Reports reduce likelihood of over-payments, and make budget tracking easy.

• Calls to payroll are greatly reduced because casuals don’t need to submit timesheets.

• All timesheets paid immediately after working, making budget tracking easy.

• Consistent approach across University.

Casual EngagementPrevious Approach

• Casual Academic fills out a new paper form for each engagement inc. Personal details

• Administrator fills in their parts with each new engagement

• New Job on HR for each as often….– Different Supervisor/Approver (for timesheets)– Different Account No.

• …….some long standing casuals had > 100!!• Tax Declarations required with each engagement…

rather than if they hadn’t worked > 12 months

Casual EngagementNew Approach

• Casual Academic only fills out Casual Academic Employment Form once

• Casual Academic reviewed once a year: those likely to work the next year are retained on HR system (previously forms were sent out and required to be completed each year)

• One job on HR per school, workflow managed within Appian• Account No.’s by topic in Appian, Account override against timesheet in

HR• Tax declarations only filled out if haven’t worked at Flinders for more

than 12 months• Pre-populate information and use workflow that enables status to be

tracked.

Why Appian?

• Needed a system to facilitate the new processes

• Market scan– Appian was the standout

• Restricted tender– Appian was the standout!!

Why Appian?

• Supports complex workflow and connectivity/systems integration (including single sign-on)

• Less “development heavy” than other solutions - process components are reusable eg. Account Code Validation

• Relatively quick development and deployment cycle• User-friendly native mobile applications for remote and

mobile users• Delivers real-time analytics and dashboard reporting to

support monitoring and tracking of business processes• Australian cloud or on-premises offering

Key functionality advantages of Appian:

Appian Overview

HR Integration

• Out of HR• Relatively straight forward

– Daily snapshots of data each & Appian queries this

– Appian calls a web service to query Alesco directly in real-time.

HR Integration

• Into HR….• Timesheet API works well• Engagements:

– Significant ‘transformation’ of data by Payroll operators

– API has to be told everything• Doesn’t use Alesco rules eg. Position Data

– Will focus on renewals/extensions

What’s Next?

• Employment Variations– Inc. Fraction change/Supervisor

change/Account change

• HR Delegations• Integration• Higher Duties• Contract Extensions