HR Week wrap up

Yesterday I spent several hours of my day at The Westin in Sydney at HR Week, we started late due to Sydney's rail network (again).

The Boral presentation had a couple of learning points for me. The first was that they did not implement call logging and call centre type technology on their phones. Maybe it is just me but this should be a MUST HAVE piece of infrastructure when deploying a service centre in a large organisation. A positive learning, that they have found more success in hiring call centre people and then training them in HR/Payroll than the other way around. However the biggest surprise was their approach to Employee Self Service. It was seen as a secondary aspect and almost 4 years after the project began, 2 years from the first payroll going live employees still can only apply for leave online. While this is a significant step in payroll reduction there are far more benefits that can be realised. To their credit they are looking at the roll out as a secondary project, and depending on the culture of the organisation this might be the right way.

This is very much unlike EmployeeConnect's approach (yes this is a small sales pitch, but I promise it is only small) and my personal belief of Employee Centric HRIS. Focusing on the end objective up front reduces the overall cost of implementation, in contrast to running two seperate projects focused on two different customers and objectives.

---