Tally Defense has reduced the size of the HR department without falling behind on HR obligations.
|
|
| Name: |
Tally
Defense Systems |
| Location: |
Mesa,
Arizona |
| Business: |
Developer
of propellant systems |
| Employees: |
300 |
|
s director of human resources for Tally Defense Systems, Marcie Franklin had
many reasons to transition the company to a self-service HR management system.
Reducing the amount of handholding that employees required for every decision or
information change was a primary motivator, she says. Employees would often call
to ask about such mundane issues as when they could get new safety goggles, or
to check how many vacation days they had left. "Even though we sent all this
information out, people would lose it and then call us when they had a need."
That meant her small team spent hours on the phone dealing with non-critical
administrative issues. Franklin also wanted to eliminate unnecessary printing
and labor costs, which would allow her to reduce the number of employees in the
HR department over time. And she wanted to create a more open environment in
which information was readily accessible to employees.
With these goals in mind, the company chose Best Software’s self-service
HRMS in late 2000, putting much of the company’s relevant employee information
online. "Now if employees want to know if it’s time to replace their safety
goggles or to check if their training certification is up-to-date, they can find
that information online," Franklin says. They can also access salary and
vacation history, review benefits information, and get copies of their W2 forms
or verification of employment records--all requests that were previously
filtered through the HR department.
She estimates that since the self-service system was implemented, call volume
has dropped by 75 percent, now taking up less than 5 percent of her staff’s
time and energy. The self-service tool also made it possible to stop printing
and mailing pay stubs unless employees requested them--a job that occupied two
full-time employees for several days a month. That is enabling her to reduce the
size of her department through attrition without falling behind on HR
obligations.
Franklin and her team are thrilled with the self-service tool, although it
was a bit of a hard sell for some employees. "A few people were intimidated by
the new system," she says. "They wanted to know why they couldn’t just
call us instead of having to find the information on their own."
But, she says, winning them over was mostly a matter of education. Now when
employees call with questions, instead of supplying them with the answers, HR
staffers direct them to the Web site and walk them through the process of
finding the information themselves. Franklin estimates that her team has coached
half of the employees one-on-one on using the system, and the rest have figured
it out on their own. "Now they all feel empowered because they don’t have to
wait for us to provide them with the information they need. They just get it
themselves."
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