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Recently, senior management asked HR
to re-design our current Performance Evaluations. What
we heard was the focus needed to be more dialog between
manager and associate, less documentation, and an easier
way to capture the information. After coming up with
the outline, our HR Director came to me and said “How
do we make this happen in IMAESS (employee self service)?”
Although Vista does have a place to capture review information
in the base application, I was having difficulty making
it fit our needs. While I do posses good technical skills,
this was beyond my capabilities. What was I going to
do? Call PDS!
After an initial conversation explaining
our needs, PDS sent a timeline and a cost estimate.
They also asked me to send them a screen print of what
we wanted to see. How do you send a screen print of
something that doesn’t exist?
The first step was visualizing the
screen and getting it on paper. Next was the documentation
of the actual data we wanted to capture in each field,
either from the evaluation screen, or from other tables
in the database. The final step was putting the two
together and letting a PDS consultant work their magic.
Part of our request was to embed a
print icon on the evaluation screen. Along with this
came development of a database view so that the “Evaluation”
could be written as a Crystal Report and produced in
PDF format (like the one used to print a “payroll
statement”). By providing this to our managers
(and users), a hard copy of the evaluation is no longer
required for their personnel file. The data is captured
and can be reported on just like any other data in Vista.
This means no more “I know I sent that evaluation,
it must have gotten lost in the inter-office mail”.
Another bonus, no more paper filing to hard files, or
scanning of 400+ evaluations to electronic personnel
files! My wrists and fingernails are thanking me!
With any HR change, there are always
things to think about from a legal and security standpoint.
Make sure you check with your legal department on guidelines
or laws regarding signatures and printed “paper”
documents. Think through the security set-up that will
need to be done in Vista (i.e. a manager has write access,
but an employee only has read access). And what about
history? Is this something we should have snapshot and
transaction history capturing?
The number one rule for any new feature
is always test….test….test! The PDS consultants
do a fabulous job of designing the product, but they
cannot possibly account for every scenario. Their job
is to deliver it, your job is to make sure it looks
feels and works flawlessly!
contributed
by:
TeddiAnne Krehbiel
HRIS Administrator
The IMA Financial Group, Inc.
teddianne.krehbiel@imacorp.com
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