Despite bumps in the road, organizations embracing e-HR and self-serve will win the race
Reports about the benefits of Web-based e-HR self-service may have been ahead of their time but e-HR is here to stay, says Angela Goodchild, Toronto-based director of business development for administration solutions with consulting firm Towers Perrin.
Late in 2001, the company released its second e-Track survey of more than 200 companies in the Canada and the United States, in which 80 per cent of respondents agreed that Web-based self-service has the potential to reduce administration costs, but only 40 per cent believed that it was achieving that result.
“The savings can be realized if you cut down the number of channels of communication that are being used, but in Canada what we’re finding is that it’s difficult to go 100 per cent to the Web or electronic formats,” says Goodchild. Companies are in transition, and for now they have added an additional channel without eliminating print-based services, she says.
The delivery of flexible benefits enrolment and Web-based transactions is in transition, partly because companies often have pockets of employees who still don’t have Internet or intranet access. “In that situation, you can’t cut your costs completely” because paper forms are still available as an option.
“I firmly believe that e-HR is here to stay, and it’s going to grow and become even bigger than it is now. Not all of the high expectations were initially met, but I believe companies are looking to this as a way in which to effectively get information to employees, and get employees to interact with their HR program.”
Pension regulations and legislation still require the use of paper formats for certain information such as annual statements, as well as statements to plan members of benefits upon termination and retirement, but industry organizations such as the Canadian Association of Pension Supervisory Authorities (CAPSA) are lobbying for the electronic delivery of information. The regulatory requirements just need to catch up to the technology.
“It’s not going to take long,” says Goodchild. “I think in a couple of years we’re going to see people doing everything electronically in the cycle of their benefits. As they enroll, go through life changes, change jobs within a company and leave or retire, all of those things will happen through Web-based transactions.”
In the meantime, what is happening is that employers that make the leap from just providing content to enabling Web-based transactions for employees find that it increases utilization. “There’s a reason to come to the site, which can then be used to broadcast information on a more current and topical basis. The plan sponsor is more successful in pushing information to employees, and employees get more information and become more informed plan members.”
Over the past two years, “for our clients who have rolled out flexible benefits plans, every one of them has opted to roll out Web enrolment,” says Goodchild. They may also offer paper-based enrolment, “but not one of them has elected not to do Web enrolment, which tells me that plan sponsors are very much buying into the idea.”
While there are hopes of achieving a certain level of initial cost savings, “it’s also a service issue,” because they want to communicate effectively with employees.
One of Towers Perrin’s largest clients is Canada Post. Once Web-based self-service was introduced, employees became heavy users of the pension self-service Web site. Canada Post allows employees to buy back years of service, and Goodchild says employees are taking advantage of the ability to run different scenarios. “They’re actively engaged in making decisions about their retirement and how to use their pension to meet that goal.”
While costs savings and return on investment are difficult to estimate, running scenarios “can be quite expensive if employees go to a live person and calculations are run in the traditional fashion by a pension administrator.”
Goodchild says that one provision helpful to companies moving to Web-based transactions is the use of a temporary call centre for hotline support, at least during the first year of the transition. “That adds to the cost, but it’s a temporary, first-year cost,” and increases the comfort level of employees.
The move to Web-based transactions is a natural evolution in the utilization of the technology, says Goodchild. When the Internet became widely available, and HR intranets were first used to convey information, a lot of people put information on the Web, “but it wasn’t necessarily done well, because people didn’t realize that you need to have a strategy to make information available in a user-friendly way.”
Many organizations just dumped text onto a site, and information became difficult to find. “What we’ve seen in the past couple of years is that companies are going through ‘Web rehab.’” They step back, take an inventory of all their corporate Web sites, go through a site mapping process, and look for better ways to do things. In conjunction with that, as companies upgrade HRIS systems, they get transactional abilities.
However, companies are also concerned about expense, and recognize the costs of maintenance and development, so they are more prepared to consider outsourcing, says Goodchild.
There has been recent pressure on HR departments to become more of a business partner in their organization, says Goodchild. “In the past two years, we’ve seen a lot of changes in the business environment, including the dotcom crash and the downturn in the economy,” and companies want HR to provide services including e-HR that allow them to attract and retain the right people, and help the organization achieve maximum operational effectiveness.
“What we see is that the tactical, operational side of some HR functions have been outsourced,” freeing HR staff to focus on the more strategic issues and make sure that the HR goals are aligned with the business goals.
Late in 2001, the company released its second e-Track survey of more than 200 companies in the Canada and the United States, in which 80 per cent of respondents agreed that Web-based self-service has the potential to reduce administration costs, but only 40 per cent believed that it was achieving that result.
“The savings can be realized if you cut down the number of channels of communication that are being used, but in Canada what we’re finding is that it’s difficult to go 100 per cent to the Web or electronic formats,” says Goodchild. Companies are in transition, and for now they have added an additional channel without eliminating print-based services, she says.
The delivery of flexible benefits enrolment and Web-based transactions is in transition, partly because companies often have pockets of employees who still don’t have Internet or intranet access. “In that situation, you can’t cut your costs completely” because paper forms are still available as an option.
“I firmly believe that e-HR is here to stay, and it’s going to grow and become even bigger than it is now. Not all of the high expectations were initially met, but I believe companies are looking to this as a way in which to effectively get information to employees, and get employees to interact with their HR program.”
Pension regulations and legislation still require the use of paper formats for certain information such as annual statements, as well as statements to plan members of benefits upon termination and retirement, but industry organizations such as the Canadian Association of Pension Supervisory Authorities (CAPSA) are lobbying for the electronic delivery of information. The regulatory requirements just need to catch up to the technology.
“It’s not going to take long,” says Goodchild. “I think in a couple of years we’re going to see people doing everything electronically in the cycle of their benefits. As they enroll, go through life changes, change jobs within a company and leave or retire, all of those things will happen through Web-based transactions.”
In the meantime, what is happening is that employers that make the leap from just providing content to enabling Web-based transactions for employees find that it increases utilization. “There’s a reason to come to the site, which can then be used to broadcast information on a more current and topical basis. The plan sponsor is more successful in pushing information to employees, and employees get more information and become more informed plan members.”
Over the past two years, “for our clients who have rolled out flexible benefits plans, every one of them has opted to roll out Web enrolment,” says Goodchild. They may also offer paper-based enrolment, “but not one of them has elected not to do Web enrolment, which tells me that plan sponsors are very much buying into the idea.”
While there are hopes of achieving a certain level of initial cost savings, “it’s also a service issue,” because they want to communicate effectively with employees.
One of Towers Perrin’s largest clients is Canada Post. Once Web-based self-service was introduced, employees became heavy users of the pension self-service Web site. Canada Post allows employees to buy back years of service, and Goodchild says employees are taking advantage of the ability to run different scenarios. “They’re actively engaged in making decisions about their retirement and how to use their pension to meet that goal.”
While costs savings and return on investment are difficult to estimate, running scenarios “can be quite expensive if employees go to a live person and calculations are run in the traditional fashion by a pension administrator.”
Goodchild says that one provision helpful to companies moving to Web-based transactions is the use of a temporary call centre for hotline support, at least during the first year of the transition. “That adds to the cost, but it’s a temporary, first-year cost,” and increases the comfort level of employees.
The move to Web-based transactions is a natural evolution in the utilization of the technology, says Goodchild. When the Internet became widely available, and HR intranets were first used to convey information, a lot of people put information on the Web, “but it wasn’t necessarily done well, because people didn’t realize that you need to have a strategy to make information available in a user-friendly way.”
Many organizations just dumped text onto a site, and information became difficult to find. “What we’ve seen in the past couple of years is that companies are going through ‘Web rehab.’” They step back, take an inventory of all their corporate Web sites, go through a site mapping process, and look for better ways to do things. In conjunction with that, as companies upgrade HRIS systems, they get transactional abilities.
However, companies are also concerned about expense, and recognize the costs of maintenance and development, so they are more prepared to consider outsourcing, says Goodchild.
There has been recent pressure on HR departments to become more of a business partner in their organization, says Goodchild. “In the past two years, we’ve seen a lot of changes in the business environment, including the dotcom crash and the downturn in the economy,” and companies want HR to provide services including e-HR that allow them to attract and retain the right people, and help the organization achieve maximum operational effectiveness.
“What we see is that the tactical, operational side of some HR functions have been outsourced,” freeing HR staff to focus on the more strategic issues and make sure that the HR goals are aligned with the business goals.
