Tag: hr

In May 2015 South32 demerged from BHP and brought with them some 7,000 employees and contractors including one third of the HR staff. The HR hubs comprise approximately 72 staff located in Australia, Johannesburg and Colombia, who manage around 6000 cases per month via  mail and phone.

Problem

With a new Shared Service centre the challenge for South32 was to not only bring across existing functions but also to integrate the new Shared Service centre functions and services that need to quickly and seamlessly fit into the existing configuration.

Solution

Central to the HR function, both before and after the demerger, has been versaCase’s case management tool used to manage queries and requests from  staff and contractors.

Iris describes her roll in South32 as an “advocate” of the solution, “to support the  operations, to understand the system better and to utilise the system better”. So,  when the software was migrated from BHP, Iris and the HR team didn’t simply  accept the status quo but saw this as an opportunity to make it their own.

“If I take a look at the amount of work that we are holding in the
solution, it’s everything that we do”, says Iris Belliot.

One of the key words during South32’s inception was ‘agility’, underpinned by the desire to make things happen quicker and easier. This was reflected in the  remodelling of their support framework which was aimed at producing self- sufficient teams.

“Taking a look at what we had in BHP and knowing what
we have in South32, helped us to identify improvement
areas and actually turn them into a positive. The reason
why we have been able to improve is because we knew
what the past was and VersaDev gave us the right support
to look at what the future should be.”

South32 now have a system where if they decide to change a process tomorrow, they could more than likely reflect it within the application tomorrow as well. This gives them the ability to be flexible as the business changes.

Outcome

One of the unexpected benefits of this flexibility has been the sharing of skills across teams. In the beginning, teams were dedicated to a particular operation. Now what they are seeing is a cross-skilling between teams which effectively minimises the risk so that the bulk of knowledge does not rest with a small group of people. This in turn, means that they are able to spread the workload to cover the peaks and troughs.

“It has actually opened up a lot of relationships because
I’ve seen people look at the system and go ‘hey wait a
minute, my colleague is under the pump, I should go and
ask if I can help because I can see she has a lot of cases’.
So, it has changed the way that people think and it has
changed the way that people look at their colleagues
because they now can see whether or not they
are very busy and create that sense of community
within the team.”

This approach taken by South32 is now working its way into an enhancement of
the application as a way to ensure that people’s skill set continues to improve over time. When asked to describe the system in one sentence, Iris responds:

“This is the case management tool of the future.”

“The software is able to adapt to a lot of different processes. So, you’re able to set it up either based on operations or you can also set it up based on work and it’s the one source of all the information you need to run the business. So, who is doing the work, why are they doing it, when are they doing it and how fast are they doing it. With that you can actually measure your productivity. So, in order to get to the future, you would definitely need to be able to project and you would need to be able to have that back up information. The versatility of versaCase has shown us that it will be able to lead us into the future successfully.”

BHP as one of the worlds largest mining companies set out to stream line their processes and workflow as well as organise the large amounts of enquiries and cases that get logged with them on a daily basis.

Problem

The Shared Service Centre was tasked to manage employee enquiries and improve service levels. The organisation had a charter of requirements with regards to case classification, standardisation, prioritisation and workflow management. These could not be managed within their ERP.

Solution

Within a few years the solution was integrated with a telephony system, processed all new internal HR work requests, as well as their associated tasks. It provided VP’s with a suite of reports previously unavailable to them. Staff workloads were streamlined via the application of SLA time-frames and case templates to improve delivery and productivity.

Today, the solution delivers a standardised work-space to HR hubs around the globe. Employees now have service access 24×7, and the platform delivers clear business-defined HR processes to facilitate the administration of critical tasks for employees that fall outside core ERP. capabilities.

Outcome

• 2.5m cases managed over 5 years
• 461,642 cases managed in one year
• 38,470 cases on average/month
• 173 users
• 49,185 employees
• 10 Web forms creating 1000 requests on average/month
• 265 Standard Reports

A few examples where HR workflows were streamlined:

Service Level Improvements Via One Click Templates

“Quick Link” Employee requests are used to create cases when they are initiated
via a customer walk-in or telephone call. A template is used to pre-populate the
content of the enquiry. By entering an Employee ID, the case is automatically
linked to the employee record.

The Admin Hub can prioritise cases within the business for processes such as
Payroll Escalation.

HR Central Admin can engage HR Admin Hubs via internally raised cases. The
business have visibility across assets for extended reporting capabilities.

A one click links spawns requests to HR Central Admin from the Admin Hub, Automatically linking the original request as the parent case.

Other standard procedures can be created and associated with “one-click” case creation based on pre-defined business rules and driven by case templates held within the system. These include:

Creating a Letter of Offer. A standard letter is automatically attached to an outgoing email and email pre-populated with standard content.

Employee On-boarding. Managed sequential or parallel workflow is created based on governed process and tasks created and sent via email to
appropriate parties