The drive for faster, leaner and more productive organisations helps to keep businesses on top of the competition; Sally Mason, HR Director, Reward, Compass Group UK explains how implementing a highly effective HR system significantly improved vital processes and made a profound difference to business effectiveness.
As the leading foodservice organisation in the UK & Ireland, Compass Group employs 110,000 staff and provides catering and support services at 8,500 locations including blue chip company head offices; commercial premises; hospitals; motorway service stations and airports; sports stadia; oil rigs; education and military establishments and department stores.
The roll out of a new computerised system designed for our unit managers (NEXUS) provided us with the chance to really focus on our labour productivity.
Our HR teams seized this opportunity to drive forward one of our key business objectives. Our project was called “Making Informed Decisions.” The aim was to identify and deliver labour metrics using technology to increase access to management information and improve decision-making. Our audience included unit managers and their line managers, our area managers.
By using a combination of Nexus and our Data Warehouse, we are able to capture and provide a range of metrics on a weekly basis. Importantly, it was vital that both groups were able to access the same figures at the same time and take immediate action if required. There was a real danger that our area managers would be overwhelmed with information so it was important that the system gave exception based reports, showed trends and results that could be ranked and filtered. Above all it was very important that it was simple and easy to use with both tables and graphs.
There are five measures, ranging from labour turnover to labour costs as a percentage of sales. In addition we show performance against budget, details of absence and additional hours, all costed, as well as actual hours. Information is split into two categories: productive, for example basic hours, overtime and agency labour or non-productive, including sickness, holidays and bonuses, which allows for further refinement in the metrics. Our managers tell us that these are the facts they need to keep on top of their businesses, controlling costs and driving profit.
We rolled out the metrics as part of the implementation of the new systems. The basics were included in the bespoke training devised by our Learning and Development team and communicated as part of our Business Benefit Delivery plans.
Our local HR teams then took over the responsibility of identifying what was key for their businesses, working with the Operating teams to support the Unit Managers. Any feedback is channelled through our HR User Group to continue improving the systems and information available.
It was not just about systems, which are only the tools, not an end in themselves.
Prior to implementation, we went through a rigorous business readiness programme. This involved assessing financial understanding and skills as well as basic computer literacy. All our activity fits within a wider change management plan, changing culture as well as processes.
We faced a number of challenges. Each of our businesses operates in a different sector so we had to make sure we had met core and individual business requirements. It was vital to engage all levels of the organisation, all at different stages on the journey. There was a tendency to get lost in trying to reconcile information from different sources rather than act quickly on results.
It is still early days but we are beginning to see the shift from recording data to using management information. Labour metrics are discussed at Board level and the HR teams are seen to be making a real contribution to business results. The last word goes to our users who are seeing ‘immediate benefits in labour management, controlling overtime and absence, resulting in a reduction in labour to sales ratios.’
Sally Mason will be speaking at the CIPD’s HR Software Show on Wednesday 22 June 2005 at 15.40 for more information see: www.cipd.co.uk
