“We have multiple events, sometimes seven in the same day, so we may have
to get 500 to 700 people,” Campanella says. It would take his former staff of
four job schedulers several days to forge a list of waiters, resulting in a
trail of voice-mail-clogging messages and, too often, missed opportunities to
put together the best event staff. “Whoever calls first gets the best people,
but for us it’s hard to stay ahead because we’re so busy,” Campanella says.
“So often we had to work with B-level waiters while a mom-and-pop restaurant
got an A team.”
Slashing costs
But that was last year. Now, with the web-based STAFFeasy employee scheduling
application from Principal Decision System International, Campanella says he
not only gets the A team, but he’s also benefiting from happier workers and
managers, better planned events, and a nearly 50% drop in costs related to scheduling
workers. Campanella declines to give the cost of using STAFFeasy, which PDSI
hosts on its own servers. But he says it has let him replace his staff of labor
schedulers, whose combined annual compensation was $150,000, with a single labor
specialist who is free to analyze the costs and efficiency of each event. Wolfgang
Puck now pays about $85,000 a year for both STAFFeasy and its staff labor analyst.
“The big question I’m left with is what did we get for $150,000 compared to
what we now get for $85,000?” he says. PDSI says the price to run STAFFeasy,
which is based on the number of positions filled per month, varies according
to a company’s size and type of business, and ranges from $50 to $5,000 a month.
While Wolfgang Puck and its Hollywood clientele may be a unique combination,
the company is not alone in its attempt to use the web to get control of managing
employees. “This is a growing area where there is room for a lot of payoff and
ROI within 12 months,” says Katherine Jones, managing director of enterprise
business applications for researchers Aberdeen Group Inc. “A web-based system
helps orchestrate an entire workforce. For a retailer that means looking at
the system to see if she has enough staff to run a store.”
In addition to scheduling and managing a staff, other retailers are saving
administrative time by having employees enter much of their own personal information
into web-based human resources applications, such as when they change home address
or phone number, and by having employees directly access a web-based application
for information such as vacation policies and work schedules, Jones says.
Employee self-service
One of the significant benefits Wolfgang Puck derives from the STAFFeasy system,
is the self-service ability the web-based application gives freelance waiters
to check for upcoming events. Instead of playing phone tag with human schedulers,
and often at the last minute to confirm assignments, the waiters can view an
entire month’s schedule and sign up for the days that suit their availability.
Managers then electronically sort the names by whatever attributes they need
for a particular event, such as years of experience or particular skills like
operating cash registers or serving as a maitre d’. After selecting the best
people for an event, managers use the STAFFeasy system to notify the candidates
through e-mail or other electronic means, such as text messages to cell phones.
The chosen workers then reply to the e-mail or other electronic message to confirm
their acceptance.
The result is that workers, especially those most qualified, have a better
chance to work their preferred schedules. “We have more contented employees,
because they have more control over their lives,” Campanella says.
Hourly employees can be particularly difficult to manage, a point amplified
by the fact that retailers employ a large number of them. The U.S. Department
of Labor says hourly workers have an average turnover rate four times that of
salaried workers.
The decrease in the cost of managing hourly workers with a workforce management
system can be substantial, Aberdeen says. It figures a retailer with a before-tax
profit of 4% can double its bottom line profits by implementing a web-based
workforce management system for hourly employees. This improvement calculates
only the direct cost savings; Aberdeen estimates a retailer with $500 million
in annual revenue could save $9.5 million in a reduced workforce, $14.5 million
from lower turnover, $350,000 in less shrinkage and $335,000 in a reduction
of unemployment claims, for a total of more than $24 million.
In addition, it figures a retailer could improve its bottom line even further
through related cost savings and productivity increases. It believes retailers
can expect increased sales and customer loyalty stemming from a higher concentration
of skilled employees, and less administrative time spent by managers, who can
instead focus on sales and other management strategies.
Three weeks ahead
At Wolfgang Puck, managers used to take days to build a staff for a particular
event, often running into the final week before the event. Now their web-based
scheduling system enables managers to build staffing for an entire month of
events within a few hours. “We’re three weeks ahead of anyone else in town,
giving us a better chance to get A waiters,” Campanella says.
The hourly hiring management system cited by Aberdeen would cover the full
cycle of recruitment through retention and exit policies. A web-based recruitment
application, such as from Unicru Inc., can better pre-screen candidates by automatically
checking application forms against pre-set parameters and integrated databases.
This process can indicate whether candidates have required skills or other attributes,
such as when they can be available to start work, their smoking habits, and
whether they have a history of theft.
For retention and exit policies, other software applications can handle tasks
such as employee scheduling, access to personal information including productivity
goals and retirement benefits, and, upon job terminations, automated alerts
to managers regarding the terminated employee’s eligibility for unemployment
insurance. These applications, from companies like PeopleSoft Inc. and Datamatics
Management Services Inc., can boost employee morale by making workers feel more
involved with direct browser-based access to information, and by helping both
them and managers better review and manage employee performance goals. “Because
a good attendance record and favorable employee reviews can be monitored better,
it leads to a more favorable work environment and fosters upward movement of
employees,” says Bill Loss, vice president of Datamatics.
There are other niche players also serving the web-based workforce management
market. Human Asset Technology, which says it is just starting to serve the
retail industry but cannot yet name any clients, is focusing on performance
management. Charlie Palmer, co-founder and co-CEO, says his performance management
software analyzes gaps between employee competency levels and pre-set goals,
provides automated e-mail alerts to employees and managers about scheduled goal
completion, and recommends training or work experiences that could help fill
gaps. The system works on data entered by managers regarding goals and by employees
regarding when and how they completed tasks. But the system can also integrate
with back-end software systems to show an employee’s work history, Palmer adds.
Portals to HR
Even Microsoft Corp. is developing a niche in HR applications. It recently
acquired PlaceWare, whose web conferencing technology is used by retailers such
as Gap Inc. for e-learning programs. PlaceWare enables two or more people in
distant locations to view the same documents, PowerPoint displays or other files
simultaneously.
Because new niche HR software products tend to be web-based and built with
open architecture, integrating them with related software should be easy, Jones
says. This could add to their value as, for example, a recruitment system shares
data on an employee’s skills with the goals-setting information in a performance
management system. “Ideally all of these things will be integrated,” Jones says.
As in all web-based software, web-based workforce management can be deployed
most quickly as a hosted application, as is the case with Wolfgang Puck, because
it needs only a browser to get connected.
Still
another method of making HR applications available is through corporate portals,
an option used by retailers such as Kmart Corp., Burger King franchisee AmeriKing
Inc., and Hy-Vee Inc., a food and drug retailer with 216 stores under the Hy-Vee
and DrugTown brands. Each of these retailers is using corporate portals from
Plumtree Software Inc. The portals, or intranets based on Internet technology
operating behind a corporate firewall, can be divided into several portlets,
which are portal sections designated for specific applications, one of the most
common being HR applications. “HR is one of the biggest users of portals,” says
Leslie Lin, Plumtree product marketing manager.
Hy-Vee, with 46,000 employees, makes several HR applications available through
a Plumtree portal, including job postings and application forms, job performance
review forms, personnel directories and a corporate calendar.
AmeriKing provides in its portal several HR directories, including physician
directories and employee profiles. It also allows employees to access the portal
to change their personal information, automatically updating back-end systems
such as payroll and employee benefits administration. In addition, its portal
includes a training section where employees can access course materials and
scheduling. Along with other applications on its portal, including schedules
of marketing promotions, AmeriKing has saved $3 million over the past three
years in the cost of paper, telephone calls and time spent by HR administrators,
Lin says.
Getting buy-in
At Kmart, 250,000 employees can access the corporate PeopleSoft HR system
through the MyKmart.com portal from their desktop computers, store kiosks and,
eventually, cash registers. Requests for HR assistance, such as changes to medical
coverage, are processed now within days instead of weeks, the company says.
Plumtree portals, derived from out-of-the-box software, can typically be installed
on a company’s servers in a day, though a complete rollout may take longer as
a company’s departments figure out which applications they want to deploy. Plumtree’s
customers generally spend about a week meeting with HR department managers and
other executives to determine what a portal will present and employee access
policies, Lin says.
“HR is one of the few business applications that affect everyone in an organization,
so it’s important to get input from key individuals to make sure you get buy-in
from everyone,” Datamatics’ Loss says. “A payroll administrator’s needs may
differ from a vice president of HR, whose needs may differ from someone in operations,
so it’s important to get them involved early.”
“I could wait for the payroll department to enter a new employee’s full information
or I could enter his name and basic information right away into an HR application
to immediately track his attendance,” Loss says. “Then when they make the payroll,
his information is already in the integrated system. So he can start right away
but we don’t have to enter his information twice.”
At Wolfgang Puck, Campanella is considering linking data from his web-based
employee scheduling application with the company’s time and attendance program,
providing for easier and automated updates of workers’ records. Wolfgang Puck
may extend the system to cover salaried managers as well. This can open up a
whole new range of benefits, Campanella says.
No looking back
With managers entering their own schedules into the system, including their
vacation times, Campanella and other senior managers will be able to get a quick
online look at where all staff are working at any time. Among the benefits this
could bring is increased control over unemployment claims, because the employees’
self-entered work schedules provide excellent records.
Expanding the STAFFeasy system’s reach will become more important as Wolfgang
Puck Catering & Events expands its operations outside of L.A., because it
will let Campanella and other senior managers oversee their widely distributed
operations on a web page. And as Wolfgang Puck expands within metropolitan areas
like L.A. and Chicago, it will also begin to sort candidate workers by Zip Codes,
so managers can choose those who live closest to a planned event.
The technology has become so integrated into operations that Campanella professes
surprise when he looks back on how things used to operate. “We live with the
system,” he says. “The idea of ever going or even looking back is daunting.”
paul@verticalwebmedia.com
