"It's a love story" - The HRTechFest with Alison Kennedy

13/12/16

Alison Kennedy has been in the Remuneration world now for around 20 years. On the side of reward, she also has a business that specialises in working with Hoarders – she thinks the cross over between the two has got something to do with seeing a solution through a mess, whether physical or in the case of a company, data and technology. When people ask what she does – she says, “I solve problems”. Recently Alison spoke at HR TechFest about her experience in using Remuneration Review Technology to solve NON-REM problems. This article gives you some of the highlights of that talk which was both humorous and entertaining, especially for reward specialists who can relate to the trials and pain that can come from discovering a source of truth in your organisation’s data. Alison opens with explaining one of her passions to save another Lemming from falling off the cliff.

The Lemming Effect – is a behaviour that physically pains me. I feel it destroys even the chance of creative thought and action. You know that you live in a business filled with Lemmings – when it’s common to hear "That’s how we do things around here".

To counteract this – there are 2 things I try to say frequently.
One is “That’s interesting… I wonder why that happened?”
The other – especially with technology - is “ I wonder what else I could use that for?”

I’m a big fan of context – so it helps to go back in time to where the love story began…

Back in the day, I was a bit of an excel guru – I prided myself on making spreadsheets dance, talk, interact intelligently, and run reviews as pain free as possible. To do that – the pain was mine. And it was hard – but it was my strength and at the time, not many others did it the way I could.

In 2006 I travelled back in time to a place that technology forgot.
I was working in HK. Which may sound strange that I would say such a thing about technology in Asia. But at the time, for the bulk of organizations - speed of business was based on headcount not technology. Especially local businesses.

The remuneration market shifted from week to week. Up AND down. And not by a small amount. Where salary surveys were out of date within weeks of being published. To put this into context – the most accurate source of market information was from recruiters! – no personal motive at all built into that working model!

Remuneration market data – didn’t exist in the format that we understand it to be.
It was where my payroll manager, had to walk a physical disc in a security envelope, over to the bank for people to be paid each month.

Let me repeat that – In 2007, my payroll manager had to walk a physical disc in a security envelope, over to the bank for people to be paid each month.

From 2006 through to 2009 – I spent 3 years un-learning everything I took for granted in the normal operations of an organization and where HR was positioned in the business.
Being a HR Director was a completely different role in HK. I resettled back in Sydney at the end of 2009 and in 2010 – I met my first big challenge.

The Group Remuneration Manager, was 3 weeks from her due date, 1 week from starting mat leave, 2 weeks from the start of the annual remuneration review and the internal resourcing plan had gone to hell.

They had spent the year, ensuring they had a team of 3 to manage the review when she started maternity leave. 1 long term employee, a second one who had joined 6 months ago, and a new analyst would be on hand to help. For unforeseen disconnected reasons – they were all gone.

The annual review was to cover 6,500 people, it was a Complex business, matrix reporting lines, across 40 countries, nearly as many currencies and the most complex set of allowances I had ever seen.
In the previous year they had implemented Pivot and I had never heard of them. Not surprising really – since the last 3 years I had spent living in the 1980’s.

It is here that Alison spends time explaining that her comfort in the past had come from the ability to control the front end of the review and awareness that a lot of time is spent here when a review is done through spreadsheets. “... my focus was not delivering my dancing spreadsheets – but data – just data.”

And when the review was done – I had been scooted right back into the 21st century – where technology my new best friend. I was just so impressed.

I had a long held a philosophy in the way I practiced consulting – my job was always, always to FIRST make my client look good. And Pivot made me look like a rockstar – as much as that might be.
The focus during the review had completely shifted. It wasn’t focused on managing files.

I was having quality conversations – with HR, with managers, with executives and with the Board. The focus was supporting managers in making good decisions regarding fixed and variable pay – Which had always come second to running a process.

And when you have a review that is focused on the conversation and not the spreadsheet – you have reward nirvana.
I had officially fallen in love…..With an online tool.

Here at Pivot we haven’t yet decided if she is an “expert user” or “Pivot Addict” – either way we are glad that we were able to work with her over across 4 different organisations, using our tool in different ways each time. Alison noted that over the years, fielding many questions on online tools. “… that there is a fundamental question on fit for purpose and is it tailored?”

The fear behind the question - is that this is just another tool that in a few years time doesn’t fit, that it’s another off the shelf module – that kind of works – but not quite and so there’s always an ongoing point of pain to manage. Everyone knows one of those tools. We have seen them – we’ve used them. We know the disappointment that comes with them. We have even bought them.

The retail consumer is a great example of the potential for disappointment – the thing I regret purchasing…. The iPod. How many of these do you have in a drawer? I’m not sure about you – but my music – lives in my phone now.

– oh and by the way … Alison admits to owning 4 of them.

So the fear is real. Especially when your big organization wide deliverable – is the annual remuneration review. Nothing is more personal for each employee – than the decision about how much they are paid.
Enter the next chapter.

I had over 3,000 employees -

14 countries & currencies -
a Greenfield site that was in a financially challenging position -
had no set process –
Rem ranges were pencil on paper -
And there was no Rem team!

The project was to build an entire framework in a short amount of time. The beauty of a remuneration tool implementation when there is no structure or process… is that you can use the implementation process itself to design it.
It gives you the spare set of hands you need to get the Rem structure built.
It was fit for purpose – flexible enough to change as the framework developed over time. And flexible enough to work with the increased need to support the data needs of the business.

But there is a bigger issue that Alison talks about. She is a lone voice talking about the Data Crisis in the new world….

And there is one. People aren’t talking about it yet. Technology has powered along. The speed at which we can operate – is phenomenal. And the search for information. It really is amazing – the tools we now have are so readily and easily available. The old way has been pushed aside.

We have Apps for everything, smart phones that run our lives and user driven content.

But there is a problem. The fancy new HRIS – a lot of the time relies on user fed data.

Doors to the data store have been opened.

The quality of data, has been handed over to employees – without any accountability as to when and how often data is updated. The sales pitch is around – accessibility, speed, the decentralization of administrative processes.

Tools have been developed ahead of the organizations ability to enter & maintain the right data into an accessible reliable structure – controlling quality, relevance, format.

Alison showed us some examples of what Reward professionals face every day – poor data, and raises the most common concern she hears from organizations – when they are considering an online rem tool – is that we don’t have good data.

How can we implement a tool – when we don’t trust the data we have – or we just don’t have all the pieces that you want to put on the screen.

Here Alison shows us 2 images to explain the difference in data between this client and her next. Climbing Everest versus the other guy. Alison tells us about her 9,000 employee sized Australian business that had ignored its data management needs over time. The names have been removed to protect the guilty.

This was a place – where if you had a data need – your soul died a little each day. And each time you turned over the next data rock – you wanted to cry.

In the middle of seemingly mind-boggling data madness, Alison’s practice is to stop in the middle of the organizational freeway – and say, “That’s interesting… How did they do it last time? “

Isn’t it interesting – “how we do things around here” results in an ongoing practice – that once we survive the project or piece of work was done – you would move to the next thing on the list, and carry on. All the information you just gathered – sat in your personal hard drive. There was no concept of data management. Or data integrity. Or business implications of poor data. Or data risk.

One of Alison’s insights for the group becomes clear with this statement.
“Data should be a verb. Data is a doing word.”

This client had

No data
First Organisation wide review in its history
6 weeks lead time
Unknown number of reviewing managers [which turned out to be over 160]
The first year of organisation wide Performance Ratings
No rem team members to assist in the preparation, and
A CEO who would want to review each individual decision before signing off (just for fun)

Alison's initial reaction to this project...

Asking "I wonder what else I could use that for" – works in your favour in these moments.

If people ask me, how they can implement a rem tool when the data quality is poor – my answer is that the tool can give you to space to get the data you need to a usable point. It gives you the focus of what data is critical and what data is a bonus.

And what you need might change over time. I think the fear I mentioned earlier, also comes from thinking you have to do everything at once. It certainly is a little better and more cost effective to be able to land your end game set-up in year one. But I think there is a lot to be said frankly for taking it slowly, with stages and building along with the growth of your managers – or the growth of your data.

After that meeting – Alison called Pip from Pivot – At this stage in Pivot’s history – they had never done a spec, build and implementation in 6 weeks before. There was lots of laughing on the other end of the phone. But because it was me – they agreed we could all die trying.

With a tool – all those 160 spreadsheets – vanished in an instant.

Alison walked us through using the tool to help build the data she needed, using the Organisation Chart function to build a clean source of reporting line information – which she noted is the proverbial sword an online tool will fall upon. She made us laugh with stories of the effort it takes to get what seems “straight forward enough”. The group could very much understand the pain that comes from a HR Business Partner who “changes the order of all the columns in your data critical spreadsheet, reminding us that even if the data is good – it can be problematic to access quality information. Alison reminds us of those moments where you ask a business partner to enter the name of the manager in the appropriate column, and how the result of “Matty” – often just causes more time to be spent chasing rabbits down a hole. She reminds us that asking the question, “I wonder what else I can use that for ?”, can provide an new opportunity to build and clean data. “…and back to the love story analogy – like human relationships - love grows though learning.”

But the learnings didn’t stop there.

Alison’s next client showed us that sometimes rethinking the way you use online tools, can solve very unexpected problems. Let’s rejoin the story…

There was a brand new company with an instant 6,500 employees. The services divisions in three separate organisations were joining forces.

No policies, procedures, systems, payroll, HRIS, Accounting …. No company logo!

There were service agreements in place with the home companies for things like payroll – but there was a looming end date. From which time the new business would need to be ready to pay their employees, run their own accounts payable, have their own insurances, Superannuation Fund, operating standards and policies.

We had a mammoth to do list

One task – was that we had to re-contract roughly 2,600 salaried employees. The rest were covered by enterprise agreements and so legally would just be transferred to the new entity.

There was a formal process that we managed for all the in-house employees – roughly 600 people - which was a restructure and redundancy program. It was slow and manual, all the documents either redundancy, or the new contract if they won a role was created manually by our team of 4 people.

Because they were in-house roles, like finance and HR – their terms and conditions were already relatively straightforward and there were not many allowances to account for. So while it was slow and manual – it was manageable – requests for documents came into the Integration Office as decisions were made. It was clumsy, and carried with it a high risk of errors. But do-able.

- The real problem – was the remaining 2000 contracts - they were not being restructured. But they needed to be employed by the new entity and have signed contracts before the deadline hit.

The management team had a theory – that because they were just being re-contracted – it would be easy compared to the manual restructure - so the unrealistic window of 8 weeks was given to complete this part of the process.

The volume of data we were managing was massive & messy. It was not complete. It was from 3 different payroll systems, with various levels of accuracy and not all contracts were available.

We certainly didn’t have direct access to all systems. Requests put into payroll teams had a service level agreement attached – in which the team was allowed to take up to 5 days to reply. And some of those payroll teams – were not the easiest to deal with. Especially when we were constantly identifying errors in their payroll data!

These were 3 big companies with 3 long and complex histories that resulted in an extraordinary variety of terms and conditions.

Contracts had been built over the years based on need in the moment – and speed to get the people on board.

It was a project based business – so sometimes a contract was built on the fly for 15 people who were to be based out in a mine site, and somewhat colourful allowances were created to attract people to what could be really challenging working conditions.

We were on instruction to deliver a “one company” – streamlining the terms, conditions and allowances.

The contracts were seen as a really big piece of the communications strategy. It was to brand, to build confidence, cohesion. For everyone to feel like they were included and not forgotten.

We are talking about over 20 Allowances, and over 35 additional terms and conditions. With clauses – this resulted in the requirement to develop a contract process able to cater for over 50 possible versions of a one standard contract.

So much for the one way.

The biggest obstacle we had – was that there was no single source of truth. The Integration Office was to create a source of truth from the mess of data in front of us.

And I was thinking beyond what showed in a contract. I was thinking about all the individual pieces of information that a corporate usually holds about a person and how we going to connect with that. I was thinking about how difficult the 600 people were, the difficulty we had with managing through a spreadsheet. And how that would amplify with 2,000 contracts, in less time.

How we were going to confidently control quality and minimise errors.

Do you Remember that question???…. “I wonder what else I could use that for?”

I started thinking about Pivot.

It had the ability to house large amounts of data.
I could have more than one person with the authority to access and edit the information at one time.
The tool itself could become a source of truth that integrated back with the new systems on the other side.
It had the ability to hold a little or as much as I needed.
And the best part? The tool had a letter function.

The letter function was a neat part of the tool, where at the end of the review – a letter is built based on need. I saw the opportunity for the tailor made letter to be a tailor-made contract – in my mind it was just a bigger letter….

So that’s what we did. We were able to turn the tool into the client’s source of truth for their people data. We built our clause bank inside the tool and a data field would hold either a dollar value, or maybe just a Yes or No – which would trigger the clause to be added to the contract. The core letter was the core of the contract.

Adding a Letter Round Field, Alison was able to batch groups of employees together and split 2,000 contracts into 104 batches. She goes on to explain that some rounds had 4 people in them, some had hundreds. Most had less than 50. “We no longer had the problem of managing a spreadsheet – we could now focus on getting the right data into the contract.”

So whether it is a remuneration, recruitment or learning tool. I encourage you to take a moment occasionally and ask a few more questions of your technology and your team.