Is self-service understood? |
| Monday, 08 March 2010 08:05 |
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All the evidence points to self-service saving time and money yet take-up remains low and the technology is becoming ever more advanced, so why are HR dragging their feet. Difficult as it is to imagine, when Apple launched the iPod - its first foray into the consumer MP3 market nine years ago - bloggers and analysts alike gave it a distinctly lukewarm reception. One analyst said it lacked the 'richness of Sony's (its rival) product offering', while another called it 'iPoop'. But despite not demonstrating anything technologically new (MP3s had been out for years), it defied the critics, and mass adoption (it is close to selling its 250 millionth unit) followed. The seemingly fickle nature of why some technology takes off but others do not (despite being superior) will again be in Apple executives' minds as reaction to its next 'third category' Reception for the iPad was similarly on the cool side when launched in January. But it is precisely this lack of uptake in the face of all the arguments to the contrary that continue to blight the area of employee self-service. For despite the lure of freeing HR time from administration, 50% of organisations have still not introduced any self-service at all, according to Computers in Personnel. But this is only half of it. HRDs could soon have another problem on their hands. Against lower than expected take-up (but possibly to encourage more adoption), self-service providers are pressing ahead and finding new ways of expanding self-service usage (see Aviva case study, below). There is a real threat HRDs are failing to keep up with what employee self-service can do. As much as 2 years ago, some technology suppliers predicted companies would actually lose competitive advantage by not having some form of self-service. Right up to date, James Ronksley, director at NorthgateArinso, admits not a lot has changed since: "We know a lot of organisations are buying self-service technology. But are they using it and really getting the benefit? Probably not." Jonathan White, new business sales manager at Sage, says: "Inevitably some organisations hit a glass ceiling with this technology depending on their size and sector. But a finance company where people have a workstation and computer are bound to make more use of the service than a manufacturer where staff are working manually." New areas into which self-service is moving include training plans and staff surveys, expenses management and even mobile workforce management. As ever, the same issues of internal management buy-in still seem to dominate. The reason the technology is moving on, say providers, is because it needs to. According to recent research, 84% of HR staff questioned said they struggled to answer staff requests promptly because dealing with their telephone calls got in the way of meeting their objectives. It does require some form of HR/line manager buy-in. For the system to work effectively HR staff have to upload information about contracts, absence, company policy and other people-related issues onto the HR platform. In all organisations, HR is under increasing pressure to be efficient and to cut costs. Generally, HR is not doing a good job of keeping up to date with developments; it is tempting for HR to have a frequently asked questions PDF on staff intranets, and they believe this is a self-service system. It is not, staff still have to read through many pages of text before they get the information they need. In the end some will give up and just phone HR. Eight years ago a survey from IBM found almost a quarter of HR departments' time was taken up with admin - including answering staff queries. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest not a lot has changed, but HR practitioners arguably have themselves to blame if they fail to keep up with what self-service can really do for them. Why use self-service? Employee self-service provider Cascade asked firms how they had benefited from having self-service:
How many hours across the HR department on average have you saved per week since implementing employee self-service?
Companies reaping the benefits:
During implementation, Eversheds experienced the normal difficulties when engaging employees and managers to ensure uptake of the solution. Most new users of the self service solution tended to question "Isn't this extra workload for me?" and "We have an admin team to do this!" and "The more we do the less we need HR" which was/is definitely not the case. In order to combat these issues and culture shock, they countered problems through good communication, stakeholder involvement, focus groups and selling the benefits of the system. |
