Mary Sue Rogers, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, will be giving a seminar on Employee self-service – redressing the balance between employee and employer at at Softworld. TrainingZone spoke to her about what her seminar will cover, and about the implications of establishing B2E systems.
Mary Sue Rogers I will be looking at what B2E systems are, why you might want to use them, and how they can transform employee involvement. This will include how to start small but leave room for expansion, of the business and of the B2E services. And I will be providing examples of clear ROI from these services, for instance companies where many employees do variable overtime. A B2E solution will cut down all of those phone calls to check and change records, and save the considerable time and costs involved in dealing with them. E-recruitment is another area where a B2E solution can deal with flebile needs and security issues together. And I will be taking delegates through a real example of a successful B2E website.
TrainingZone How can HR sell these changes to staff?
Mary Sue Rogers You need to emphasise that you are giving them something they can and will want to use, something they will value, then they will take part and you can get the synergy going. As with technoology generally, it helps to train a few people to train the rest. For instance, in one case we found that the most popular part of the site was where employees could change the beneficiary of their life-insurance. Many of them had worked there for years and hadn’t thought about it for a long time. When the system went live, this turned out to be the most heavily-used item, at first, and it really woke people up to having a greater involvement.
It’s important to keep the content changing, so that people will see it as ongoing, and will keep coming back.
TrainingZone Where can these systems develop to in the future?
Mary Sue Rogers The applications will continue to develop. We will be looking at systems that keep more people involved, for instance retirees, and ex-employees who you hope might come back to work there at some time. Travel planning is also an example, for companies where there is a lot of employee travel, you can look to get more involved in planning this through a B2E system. There are many options for collaborative working through these facilities as well, for instance for a company with regular contractors, you can save the duplication and the inefficient communication by establishing some better channels.
TrainingZone And how do you see this impacting on HR?
Mary Sue Rogers There will be cost benefits, and a change in role, as HR will have much less paperwork and far fewer phone calls to deal with. But beyond different things will be required of HR people. At the moment HR requires people who can deal with the administration, but in the future it will have a greater need for people who can get more involved in the other parts of the organisation, people who are good at being partners.
Semminar: day two, 10.00 – 11.00
Employee self-service – redressing the balance between employee and employer with Mary Sue Rogers
– How much information should be provided online?
– Saving time and money – taking HR into a strategic role
– Changing perceptions; incentivising your staff
– Integrating ESS and HR systems
Full seminar programme.
