The HR department consists of only three people, who are responsible for all aspects of Personnel management, including Payroll, for over 650 employees. With these numbers due to grow to over 1,000 in the near future, the volume of pure administration was about to become impossible if the company continued to rely on mainly paper-based systems.
"Also, although we need a complete picture here at head office, it is the store managers who are responsible for hiring local staff and for ensuring that each individual is paid the right amount for the hours actually worked".
"Our old payroll system was seen as both unfriendly and inflexible", says Ferguson, "but we recognised that we needed to do more than simply replace it".
We needed a system that could support our strategic objectives without changing our processes
"We decided we needed some technological help. For instance, reports on absence trends or staff turnover were taking over a week to produce - and then people would want further information which could take forever".
"Also, a fortnightly payroll for a workforce with a high number of casual staff meant the volume of paperwork was reaching an almost impossible situation".
The first thing to do, before looking at any systems, was to identify exactly what were the current and potential obstacles to continued growth. The other key consideration was to determine the information that would assist operational management, as well as allowing the board to monitor progress.
With this high-level focus, it was not too difficult to decide on the main criteria against which to judge potential new systems:
1. Coping with rapidly increased volumes of data, without the need to change procedures.
2. Having a single database, for both personnel and payroll data, located centrally.
3. Enabling managers to record details of starters, leavers and hours worked at their store.
4. Providing a range of reports to the company's management, such as statistics on staff turnover and absences.
Schuh contacted a number of potential suppliers, based on a combination of researching the press and directories and, perhaps most importantly, word of mouth recommendations. About half a dozen were short-listed for a beauty parade, which was when they discovered one other key criterion. Namely, whether the culture of the supplier was similar to their own flexibility, reliability and quality style.
"It was quite noticeable that several suppliers had fixed ideas on what their software would do for us, instead of listening to what we actually wanted. For instance, we wanted the store managers to enter payroll data for their own stores. Most suppliers didn't understand this requirement properly or seemed to be more interested in talking about the technology for its own sake".
"Software for People were different. The combination of HR Classic and HR Intra could be set up to deliver exactly what we wanted - and they obviously believed in the same core values as ourselves".
"This was essential given that we could not let implementation cause a major interruption to our already busy schedules".
This potential issue was dealt with by creating a phased plan for introducing the new systems, in three main stages.
Get your data right before users are even fully trained, and then demonstrate the benefit to them
"The only data that was both reliable and accessible was on our old payroll system, so that formed the basis for downloading to HR Classic. This quickly allowed us to get the HR department trained in using the system to record and manage other information as well, such as absences."
The next stage will be to roll out the Intranet components to the stores, so that the managers take direct responsibility for data on their own staff.
Schuh already had an Intranet established to which all stores have access and which is mainly used as a medium for publishing information from head office.
Confidentiality and accuracy are not being sacrificed to the need for improved efficiency
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