AccessHR Harvard July 2010 v2

2010 Public Sector Shared Services Summit
Canada Post Corporation – AccessHR Program
July 2010
1
THE PROBLEM
2
Key Drivers for Shared Services




Canada Post was in a period of significant cost constraint
beginning in 2007, with an emphasis on headcount reductions
and a hiring freeze among other cost saving strategies
This trend of focusing on cost reduction would continue into
the future
At the same time, about 30 to 40% of Canada Post’s
workforce would retire within the next 5 to 7 years
This attrition would severely strain parts of the HR
organization
3
Current Challenges Addressed by Shared Services
Canada Post had recognized that it’s HR department was
currently facing three significant challenges that could be
addressed by an HR Shared Services delivery model:



Lack of standardized HR process (doing transaction
activities a different way) across the company/country
was contributing to inconsistent service delivery
Transactional inefficiencies (infrequent transactions
and re-work increase processing time) were resulting in
increased service delivery costs
Ineffective HR service provision and access (night
shift workers unable to contact HR), was adversely
impacting employee satisfaction and engagement
4
What is Transactional Work?
•
“Transactional” work tends to be:
– Routine
or repetitive, e.g. a standard set of duties
– Composed of simple or complex tasks
– Based on decision-making that is procedural in nature
– Comprised of a high volume, which will enable the
realization of cost savings through economies of scale
– Stable over time, rather than constantly changing or volatile
– Consistent in approach, tools, etc. across Canada, rather
than having regional differences
5
Strategic Imperatives
The following three strategic imperatives were used to guide our
decision making:
•
Meet customer requirements
•
Control costs and ensure quality
•
Minimize the degree of change, where possible
6
DESIGNING THE
SOLUTION
7
Size of the Problem
• People – Designing, creating and implementing a new
organization of more than 200 people, with new job descriptions,
roles and responsibilities
• Process – Over 70 new processes to be created and documented
• Technology – New technology platform composed of
o SAP EIC
o SAP Workflow
o Enhanced Employee Self Service Portal
o Adobe Smart Forms
o Expansion of Canada Post telephony solution
8
Size of the Project
• Multi-year, multiple release program
• 3 different companies involved
• Team size peaked at 78 people
• 6 month Business Case phase, followed by a 15 month
Execution phase
• Funding of $16.5M for the HR Shared Services project,
plus an additional $5.6M for the Short Term Disability
initiative
9
Guiding Principles
Guiding principles were created to provide focus to the design of the
operating model:
Principle #1: Standardized & Reengineered Processes
Principle #2: Strong & Evolving Technology Platform
Principle #3: High-Performing, Customer-focused Workforce
Principle #4: Low Cost Model
Principle #5: Operate Like a Separate Business
10
How Were We to Address Our Challenges
Challenge
•
Lack of standardized
HR processes
How the new organization addressed the challenge
• Use of a process based model with supporting
processes to ensure consistent delivery of
transactional work
• New and standardized processes managed by a
control group
• Service level agreements to measure effectiveness
and track process and service delivery commitments
•
Transactional
inefficiencies
• Transaction Centre has a process based organization
model
• Quality control processing of information
• Consistent transaction processes with SLA’s
•
Ineffective HR service
provision and access
• HR Contact Centre to provide consistent and effective
customer service
• Contact Centre shift support (open for business 5AM
to 10PM EST)
• Implementation of a new Knowledge Management
Tool – Consistent and accurate responses to HR
enquiries
• Employee’s provided with Self Serve access
11
OPERATING MODEL
12
Delivery Model for AccessHR
AccessHR is composed of a Contact & Transaction Centre
Self
Service
Contact
Centre
Transaction
Centre
Policy
Owners
Contact Centre Hours of operation:
5am to 10pm Eastern time
The AccessHR community at Canada Post will leverage self
service on one side; and will seek guidance from policy owners
on the other side for policy interpretation.
13
Operating Model for AccessHR
CONTACT CENTRE
Supervisors
Phone
CC Agents
Hard Copies
Fax
Emails
CC Mailroom
Su
bj
ec
tL
in
e
Id
en
t if
ie
Level 2
SMEs
r
On Line
Forms
Leave of Absence
Employee Movement
Master Data
TRANSACTION CENTRE
14
THE REALITY
15
2009 Abandon % vs. Call Volumes
14000
12000
10000
8000
11615
8932
7977
8023
5365
4031
106
208
7997
7097
10705
Total calls
Abandoned
7030
5883
5244
652 990
1103
439
1125
590
1167
1571
Ju
ne
Ju
Au ly
Se gu
pt st
em
b
O er
ct
o
No be
ve r
m
D
ec ber
em
be
r
6000
4000
2000
0
13235
Ja
nu
Fe ary
br
ua
ry
M
ar
ch
Ap
ri l
M
ay
Call Qty
Abandoned
2466
10.82%
Month (2009)
16
2009 Contact Centre Volumes
Total Call
Volumes
97,890
Total Email
Volumes
30,560
Total
Contacts
128,450
17
Calls Offered vs Total Calls Answered
# of calls
Total Calls Offered vs Total calls Answered vs Total Calls Abandoned
20000
18000
16000
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
16955
9274
6638
16180
15319
10264
4582
Jan
Feb
17541
10888
10598
6097
6843
Mar
Apr
2010
Month
Total Calls Offered
Total Calls Answered
Total Calls Abandoned
18
2010 Contact Centre Volumes
Total Call
Volumes
66,973
Total Email
Volumes
19,760
Total
Contacts
86,733
19
Comparison Summary
2008
2009
First 4 months of
2010
Calls Offered
18,929
97,890
66,973
Calls Answered
18,034
80,287
41,657
Abandon Rate %
1.4%
10.82%
35,13%
Average Speed of
Answer
65 seconds
90 seconds
265 seconds
Emails
8,500
30,560
19,760
Total Contacts
26,667
128,450
86,733
(4 minutes 42 s)
20
Transaction Centre Weekly Inventory
Transaction Centre
Weekly Inventory
12000
11000
10000
9000
8000
7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
Feb-
22
Mar01
Mar08
Mar15
Mar22
Mar29
Apr05
Apr12
Apr20
Apr26
May
-03
May
-10
May
-17
May
-24
May
-31
Jun07
15
08
Feb-
01
Bring Forward C ases
Feb-
Feb-
Jan-
25
18
11
Jan-
04
Jan-
Jan-
28
Dec-
Dec-
21
14
07
Open C ases
Dec-
Dec-
-30
Nov
Nov
-23
0
Validate & Final Validation C ases
On-Hold C ases
21
WHAT WENT WELL
22
Lessons Learned
Building the Team
• Jointly created a Team Charter (how we would work together)
• Project Oversight was handled by joint committee composed of a
senior member from each company
• All team members were co-located
• Team events and team member recognition
Project Management Discipline
• Used Earned Value calculations for the critical areas –
technology, change management
• For none critical areas (workforce management, solution
architecture) tracked progress against a detailed work plan
• Weekly status meetings to review progress
23
Lessons Learned
Process Design
• Used people currently working in the processes to select/create
best processes in company
• Developed and vetted ‘to be’ process designs before looking at
technology for further efficiencies – were able to reduce original
technology estimate by 30%
Technology
• Used a two weekend Cutover strategy – the majority of the
technology moved into production on the first weekend, but not
available (or seen) by users; smaller amount moved over on the
second weekend
• Variety of testing strategies used:
• Two touch points with SAP for formal load, performance and
cutover testing
• pre-UAT done in product test, extensive UAT Testing,
landing tests
24
WHAT I WISHED I
KNEW
25
If I Were To Do This Again, We Would …..


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Go live during a low volume (calls, emails, transactions) period e.g.
summer
Plan for six months of stabilization and be prepared for numerous
change requests
Be prepared for increased volume of calls i.e. more than expected or
predicted, as employees use this solution as a catchall for any
question
Implement strategies up front to reduce potential call volumes – i.e.
get a handle on all communications that might cause employees to
call AccessHR – work with originators of the communication to:
clarify messaging, direct questions to an expert source and to
provide on site experts in the contact centre to support call volumes
26
Once we were underway …..
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
We met regularly with large volume transactional clients so that we
could: a) manage their expectations; b) move them from being an
antagonist to becoming a member of the team; and c) utilize them
to help get the message out to the broader audience (in many cases,
these people need to know that they have been heard).
We realigned the workload, while still keeping a process based
organization in the transaction centre:
–
–
–
–

Work was streamlined by similar type activities and actions
Standard processes and practices were implemented
Specialty teams for bargaining units were eliminated in favour of moving more
volume through the work units
Winshuttle loads were created for like transactions eliminating manual work effort
We enhanced our Data Quality Analysis be developing reports that
targeted accurate processing of transactions. As a result, we were
able to:
–
–
–
Prevent overpayments
Identify inaccurate input and make timely correction
Identify training needs
27
You Only Know What You Know. However after 6 months …


We moved our generic email inboxes from Employee
Interaction Centre, back into Outlook
We copied shamelessly ideas from Customer Service on how
to handle call volumes:

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Skill sets used on the IVR
Removed email and phone references from an up front position
of the Website
Re-designed the website so that it was: a) User friendly, and b)
Answered the most frequent employee enquiries, before
providing an automated form for their request if their enquiry
still could not be addressed
We re-designed our reports once we had some operational
experience under our belts:


In house reports were developed to monitor workload, outstanding
balances and total case load inventory
Provided ability to view workload on a daily basis; develop trends; and
forecast and plan
28
Questions & Answers
29