Migrating from an embedded, paper-based workforce management to an automated WFM delivers significant transformation for this Government Agency
When clients tell us they are going to move from a paper-based rostering process into a single enterprise rostering solution – and that they are going to do it in less than a year – our collective hearts skip a large beat.
As an organisation, Quay have been involved in numerous workforce management (WFM) initiatives and without exception, each program has taken considerably more time and effort than the initial client expectations.
The obvious question is WHY? To untangle the WFM challenges that arise for organisations attempting to transform, we will explore our recent work with a major Government Agency, which was aiming to transform its workforce management processes – and in doing so, unravel more than 150 years of divergent practices.
The Challenge
The Agency had made a number of false starts and significant investment in moving its workforce from a long-standing practice of manual timesheets and award interpretation to an automated environment. Its goals were to:
- Enable efficiency gains
- Deliver a platform capable of being leveraged for future rostering optimisation
- Gain clarity around the tangible benefits and path to realisation
At the time, the program was struggling to deliver on these goals and external expertise was sought to refocus the program so that it could be set up for success.
Quay was called in to assess all aspects of delivery, including the program’s governance, change and implementation approach, then build a plan to remediate the situation.
Quay was selected for a number of reasons. Our team has a proven record in reviewing troubled projects, we have the ability to lead and recover projects with transparency and focus, and our hands-on delivery credentials in the Workforce Management domain.
The Solution
Untangling the challenge that is WFM transformation is a complex process and the solution for this Agency required restructuring, alignment across the program and an end-to-end delivery approach that included some quick wins and benefits realisation.
The key points in this process was to ensure the Agency understood that:
- Rostering is not just a function but a “relationship”
- Rostering is not a function in isolation
- The inter-relationship between people, processes, awards and change is inherently complex
Together, Quay and the Agency built an end-to-end delivery approach, an immediate remediation plan focused on guiding principles, identified quick wins and realisation of benefits that would help gain momentum and trust. Quay then focused on restructuring the governance and change management to support the new implementation approach to achieve the alignment needed across the program.
The Outcomes
Within a matter of months, Quay’s work with the Agency enabled the creation of a functional and organisational delivery plan (incremental waves), which enabled:
- Definition and management of critical success factors required to implement and go live with two pilot sites.
- Time was captured electronically and exceptions were managed within the system.
- An initial electronic timesheet was created and used as a basis to calculate pay.
In addition to expediting benefits realisation through the pilot, the Quay team was able to build an Award Rules Knowledge Base that captured the entire catalogue of pay rules that apply to the organisation.
This Pay Rules Catalogue then formed the basis for business rules to be configured into the systems Award Interpreter and an ongoing central point of reference to manage future EBA changes.
Current State
Working closely together, Quay and the Agency have ensured that the entire workforce are now capturing their work time electronically, recording actual time worked against planned (rostered) time, rolling out the full time sheet functionality and tested the accuracy of the Award Interpretation.
For more information about Quay’s Workforce Management capability, please contact us on 02 9098 6300.
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