WAM-Pro Case Study Submission (Time & Labor System Upgrade)

WAM-Pro® Case Study Submission
AWAM LLC © 2015 1
Time and Labor System Upgrade
1.0 Problem or Opportunity Statement
Brief statement about the workforce asset management related problem(s),
issue(s) or opportunity(ies)that inspired or required the project or
effort.
Decentralization; home-grown, standalone technology and the lack of
proactive analytics brought significant labor spend overages, high
compliance risks and overburdened back office processes impeding
scalability for growth of the organization as well as creating
disengagement and dissatisfaction of operations, administrators,
Executive leaders and Ownership.
2.0 Project Background and Context
Context on the organization and the problem. How important was the
problem to the organization? What was the organization’s ability to handle
change? What levels of leadership were deeply invested? Was there support
of a Workforce Management Office? Why was the WAM-Pro asked to participate
in the project? What resources were allotted? How was the case made for
this project?
In my short tenure, I noticed that sudden rapid growth had unveiled
the potential for high risk and the lack of scalability in the
current timekeeping system. I approached Executive leadership and
explained that the decentralized, home-grown approach had many risks
associated with state and federal regulatory compliance and was
causing the Payroll Department to spend an inordinate amount of time
collecting and processing required items and pushing dangerously
close to deadlines for timely payroll delivery.
There was definite concern on the Executive level due to my feedback
on how dire the current situation was as well as how it would be
relative to ownership’s plan for serious growth upwards, of 25-30%
annually, over the next 3-5 years.
The organization’s ability to handle a change of this magnitude was
uncertain due to the established company culture, a lack of project
management and other professionals that had experience in large
implementations as well as competing and overlapping priorities.
With no Workforce Management Office, and as the leader over all
Workforce Management Systems having had experience in many full-
scale implementations in previous jobs, I was tasked with
orchestrating and managing this project from inception to
completion.

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Executive leadership in Finance was fully invested in the need of
moving forward due to pressures from ownership on labor spend and
the potential for increased risk. However, although their current
processes were very arduous and overly time-consuming, Finance was
reluctant to get onboard because the change would create a complete
overhaul that would also be time-consuming and add to their already
overly full plate.
Executive Operational leadership knew that the current processes
were inefficient and creating a great struggle for all areas, but
were doubtful of the overhaul making a great impact and improving
the process. It was the vision of some to throw headcount at the
problem, but this would not be sustainable and would be overly
costly in the long run.
3.0 Requirements
The business and functional requirements to make this project a success.
● Decrease overtime spend
o Although budgets were established and provided to
operations, there was still a major amount of overtime
spend and the current tools were causing management to be
reactive instead of proactive.
● Develop actionable reporting and analytics, through the use of
real-time information from centralized timekeeping data, for
trend analyses, forecasting and decision-making.
o A lack of real-time analytics created a reactive approach
to managing labor for the current period and the absence of
centralized data proved cumbersome for analysts in Payroll
and Finance to provide timely and meaningful analysis to
the Executive team.
● Use scheduling to manage attendance and provide an avenue for
improved labor forecasting

AWAM LLC © 2015 3
o The absence of scheduling made it difficult for operations
to quickly manage attendance and be better prepared for the
future by having the ability to forecast labor spend.
● Increase visibility and transparency for all respective areas of
labor management to include Operations, Finance and Payroll
o Lack of standardized pay policies and the decentralization
of timekeeping processes left gaps in accountability and
transparency while additionally creating difficulty in
managing shared labor across multiple cost centers and
leaving exposure to gaming and favoritism.
● Reduce pay shortages and inaccuracies contributing to risk and
time-consuming back office processing.
o Frequent pay shortages and inaccuracies, due to limited or
poorly functioning labor management tools and processes,
created an arduous workload for the small payroll staff
with regard to daily off-cycle checks in excess of 100 per
day and over 3 hours of off-cycle check reconciliation at
the close of the payroll cycle.
4.0 Planned Approach for Execution - People
Initial assessment of the stakeholders and project team including roles
that were included and excluded from the project and why. An accounting of
group dynamic and challenges expected to navigate.
Stakeholders consisted of Payroll / HRIS, Operations, Finance and
Information Technology.
The Executive suite decided which TLM solution would be implemented.
Cost was the primary driver of the decision because some leaders did
not buy into the philosophy of conducting a formal functional
analysis or total cost of ownership study as a proof point to
determine actual functionality and resources needed to accommodate
complicated labor distribution, planned aggressive growth and
organizational structure changes that laid ahead.
With no business case and analysis to go on, ROI would only be based
on reduction of overtime due to proactive tools being in place.
Gained efficiencies and cost of risk could not be measured to
increase ROI and justify the expense of a more robust TLM system.

AWAM LLC © 2015 4
As project leader, I assigned Payroll / HRIS as the Center of
Excellence, due to the level of subject matter expertise across the
department, and coordinated with other stakeholders to gather
requirements and concerns, provide direction for different stages of
implementation and testing, and coordinated deployment and training.
I.T. would manage time clock configuration / distribution and work
with the remote locations to set up appropriate electrical and data
drops.
Finance and Operations would participate in testing and training.
Since the deployment was to be rolled out in waves over a 12 month
period, the complication of managing two different systems and
methods of reporting proved to be arduous and hectic, as expected.
Despite attempts to quell concerns and provide damage control for
decisions made from the Executive level, there was a tense dynamic
between Payroll / HRIS and Finance. Finance had not bought into the
need for moving away from their old process because they were
focused on how it would impact their work levels and held the
opinion that Payroll had somehow made the decision and this change
was only catering to our needs. Parts of the project would suffer
due to this dynamic and navigating the dialogue and delegating
duties became tedious.
5.0 Planned Approach for Execution – Systems & Technologies
Listing of systems, technologies, or features engaged for this project and
why they were specifically chosen.
Vendor Confidential (Time & Labor Management System)
Replacing legacy TLM system
Labor Standards
Labor standards was chosen to be a real-time replacement
to the “Daily Man Hours Report” that was provided mid-
afternoon for yesterday’s labor details, allowing only
for a reactive approach to managing the growing overtime
problem.
Pay to Schedule
Pay to schedule was new functionality chosen for certain
job sites to allow for exceptions to schedules to be
entered instead of regular punches since job functions
were scattered all over the hospital and it was not cost-

AWAM LLC © 2015 5
efficient to have clocks at all job locations within the
site.
Global Paycode Updates
New functionality to allow for automatic holiday pay to
be appended to a timecard if certain criteria were met.
This had been an ongoing problem because it was done
manually, at the job site level, for over 4,000 employees
in total. This process was laden with errors and always
caused overages and shortages in employee pay.
SalesForce© CRM
SalesForce would serve as a central repository for all time
data from New System to be used for historical reporting and
daily analytics. A custom export to our sftp site was created
by the vendor and set up on a schedule to provide updates
twice a day.
6.0 Planned Approach for Execution – Policies & Procedures
An account of efforts to ensure that the technology was supported in
practice by policy and process.
Flowcharts
Created flowcharts to provide guidance on managing employee data
changes depending on which system a job site was using until all
migrations had taken place.

AWAM LLC © 2015 7
Pay Policies
I had uncovered many job sites using shift differential and premiums
inappropriately because they had the ability to apply manually
without any supporting documentation and no formal shift
differential or premium policy in place. I made my recommendations
to the CFO and with his and Operations senior leadership’s help,
shift differentials and premiums were standardized to ensure best
practices were being maintained.

AWAM LLC © 2015 8
I was able to use the new technology to input shift differential and
premium thresholds and minimum requirements what would apply
automatically to prevent manual application; thus, mitigating
favoritism and other misuse of these pay codes.
Initially there was considerable pushback from field operations
managers who were using these premiums pay codes for a myriad of
improper applications such as calculating mileage reimbursements,
favoritism and unapproved rate upgrades mid period. Sharing this
with the CFO and Operations senior leadership paved the way for
reform in these areas on a cultural level.
7.0 Progress Documentation and Success Metrics
How the project was documented and the approach for measuring its success.
Overtime data was exported from the payroll system each month and
graphed to show trending of overtime spend for migrated job sites.
The KPI for overtime was set at 2% or less of total labor spend.
This was the threshold for measuring success of the new labor
management tools.
The analytics contained data from the prior year’s processing as
well, showing total overtime percentage by month, percent change
year over year and month over month, and for specific times of year
such as holidays when overtime tended to be more prevalent due to
having more employees off for vacation and personal time.
This information was provided monthly to the CFO for review and
feedback. It was also discussed during the P&L Review process each
month with each Vice President for his or her respective region.
I was able to provide information to the CFO, based on my
recommendations to standardize and automate shift and premium pay
codes and provide real-time analytics to operational managers,
showing an eventual reduction in labor spend in problem job sites.
Phase two would address the use of scheduling features to mitigate
gaming and provide predictive analytics.

AWAM LLC © 2015 9
8.0 Project Execution
Listing of the various phases of the project.
Step 1: Communication
● Activities:
o Make formal announcement to field operations and
corporate headquarters
o Provide FAQs
o Schedule periodic progress calls & demo webinars
● The phase was the beginning of change management messaging
to advise affected areas of purpose and timeline.
Step 2: System Build Out & Pilot Site Selection
● Activities:
o Creating Labor standards criteria and thresholds
o Creating pay codes, shift differentials & premiums
o Orchestrating Employee Master File data flow
o Defining custom fields
o Run test scenarios
o Select pilot job sites
o Collaborate with IT to design roll out plan
● This phase set the foundation for the rest of the project
by creating the steps necessary for successfully migrating
job sites from the legacy system. Without these items
clearly defined and executed, thousands of employees could
suffer inaccurate pay which would lead to dissatisfaction,
a lack of confidence in the corporate office and the high
risk of penalties and litigation.
Step 3: Hardware Deployment and Software Configuration
● Activities:

AWAM LLC © 2015 10
o Coordinate with job sites to install data & electrical
drops for time clocks
o Time clock configuration, distribution and testing
o Time card assignment and distribution
o Loading of budgets and labor standard criteria
● This phase was put in place to prepare hardware/software for
pilot job sites in anticipation of their go-live dates. This
would also serve as the go-forward plan for rolling on other
waves of job sites until project completion.
Step 4: Training
● Activities:
o Conduct training for field operations pilot sites, IT,
Finance & Payroll
● This phase set the standards and expectations of each role
for project and production requirements / goals.
Step 5: Preparing for new reporting and analytics
● Activities:
o Create database, using SalesForce, to house legacy and
New System data for ease of compiling labor analytics,
compliance reporting and audits
o Create payroll audits to catch anomalies while
managing two systems to ensure no lost or duplicate
time.
● This phase was established to ensure we had reporting
available after the first payroll run following go-live and
saved us from having to run reports from each system and then
compile them in a series of spreadsheets.
Step 6: Go-Live for Pilot and Future Job Sites
● Activities:

AWAM LLC © 2015 11
o Run clock connectivity testing
o Have job site management validate roster from payroll
o Dedicate payroll resources for first few payrolls
o Run parallel payroll in both systems for very first
payroll to compare outcomes and make any last minute
changes. (this only applies to job sites migrating
from legacy to New System)
● This phase set the standard process for bringing on the
remainder of job site waves as well as new job sites as we
grow.
9.0 Results
An account of actual results or outcomes of the project.
Reduction in overtime was successful, in job sites that had major
issues, due to providing daily real-time variance reports of
budgeted hours and dollars at the fingertips of each operational
manager. Instead of having to react to overtime that had already
been spent the prior day, a manager could now look at their labor
spend as they went through the day and send employees home early if
needed, etc. Additionally, since we were using a unified system,
vice presidents could log in and run reports for themselves and
better communicate with their job sites to ensure operational
management was staying on top of labor management on a daily basis.
Unification of data and real-time analytics also allowed operators
to run reports to show missing punches that needed resolving to
ensure labor reporting was accurate. Payroll would also use this
function throughout the pay period to ensure there were no missing
punches across the organization and provide counseling to operators
and their vice presidents when missing punches were not resolved
within 24 hours. Payroll would also run this report prior to
processing payroll to ensure all time was accounted for.
Initially there were some issues with using the global paycode
update because operations did not have holiday pay policies in place
for different locations. As it turned out there were different
rules depending on which job site an employee worked. Job sites
that had hand-shake agreements with the local hospital
administration on holiday pay rules had always applied holiday
manually and corporate was unaware of the guidelines on holiday pay.
Once this was brought to our attention we had to work with

AWAM LLC © 2015 12
divisional vice presidents to get something official in writing and
redesign the global paycode engine for the needed exceptions.
10.0 Sustainability
An account of whether the results were sustainable and why.
Results were definitely sustainable because it brought transparency
and proactive approach to managing labor. With this new capability,
senior leadership would not be willing to revert to the previous
methods and were onboard to help change the culture with regard to
labor management practices. Now they had access to what was going
on in real-time, what trends were transpiring and which operators
were falling short that may have been using excuses that were hard
to prove prior.
Going forward, any new pay rules or special negotiations with
customer requests that would impact labor management could no longer
be inputted locally and unchecked. A discussion with the CFO,
Operations Leadership, HR & Payroll would have to take place to
discuss statutory compliance, value for effort and scope. This
would allow the system to enforce thresholds and Payroll and
Auditors to keep a watchful eye on any potential abuse caused by
work-arounds.
11.0 Reflections
An account of what led to success and turning points that caused
undesirable effects. What unforeseen obstacles arose and how the WAM-Pro
will prepare for those next time?
Centralization and unification of timekeeping data provided much
needed transparency and access to actionable analytics that had not
been possible with the home-grown, standalone legacy system.
Previously, it was challenging to determine why productive wages
were consistently missing the mark on budget. Additionally,
auditing was difficult and a myriad of compliance issues coupled
with rapid growth were contributing to very high risk and a
dissatisfied, vocal and potentially litigious workforce.
We had conducted a thorough analysis of shift differentials and
premiums across the organization, to standardize where possible, and

AWAM LLC © 2015 13
ensure system capabilities were present for such rules. However,
Holiday pay rules were not discussed prior to mapping out the
process and it was assumed that holiday pay rules would be the same
across the board based on generic language in our handbook.
Unforeseen, by the corporate project group, were these hand-shake
agreements with our customers at the job site level on how holiday
pay would be handled. Nothing was written into their contracts
which created confusion and high risk for discrimination.
We conducted a review of our process for entering into new business
relationships with future clients and how we could create more
standardization to limit errant exceptions that were not scalable.
However, the organization was split on whether or not to review pay
rules and guidelines requested of the customer prior to agreeing
verbally or in writing.
Many wanted to continue with the hand-shake culture to give them the
freedom to build great relationships with the customer. The culture
had supported this way of doing business for over 30 years. It may
have functioned well enough when the company was small, but it was
challenging to convey to this audience that too much autonomy and
decentralization leads to deliberate abuse which brings about high
risk and dissatisfaction throughout the workforce.
It would have been helpful if we had buy-in from ownership to allow
us to spend the necessary time to evaluate our client contract
process and interview job sites and operational leadership. This
step would ensure we knew exactly what our organization looked like
before seeking out solutions. Instead we only focused on a few of
the symptoms such as excessive labor spend and compliance.
We really needed to know what we were dealing with on a larger scale
to understand our current infrastructure and what the vision would
be down the road a bit. We took a reactive approach and left the
door open for forced evaluation later, which did occur as the
company started to diversify its profile. In less than a year we
discovered that we had selected the wrong timekeeping platform and
quickly outlived the new system’s functionality. Culture was now
forced to change to accommodate recent growth of over 35% and
unbridled labor issues greater than previously faced.

AWAM LLC © 2015 14
I feel that my role in this project brought a level of awareness
that was previously not present. I believe this unawareness was
due, in part, to a very junior corporate workforce with no real
experienced leadership. The entire infrastructure was a “putting
out fires” approach and didn’t leave time for assessing the
situation before the next big wave of fires came about. While I got
pushback on some of my recommendations, I was able to drive
awareness to the necessity of standardization for compliance
reasons. The culture in place made it very prohibitive in how
operational leaders were permitted to think and proved difficult to
manage the project, but there was success in awareness in general
and a short term gain in managing labor as a proactive approach
instead of reactive.
I learned that there is no such thing as too many questions and have
made a list of questions that needed to be asked so that next time I
am faced with a project, I will add that to my repertoire of
analysis inquiries.
Upskilling with the CWAM certification for WFM professionals
combined my many years of expertise with the training around a well-
rounded, holistic approach to WFM. I am grateful to the Association
for Workforce Asset Management (AWAM) that there was a way for me to
become a strategic business partner for my clients.
I am looking forward to future opportunities to help businesses
think differently before they start to grow or make changes to their
approach on labor management as well as help them mitigate
considerable leakages and gain efficiencies so that they have the
time and wherewithal to focus on more strategic efforts and make
better decisions regarding workforce management.
This particular case provided me with great insight into the
pitfalls and obstacles that can be encountered when decision-making
is focused on symptoms and not the holistic well-being of an
organization. I think this is an important philosophy to impress on
client from the beginning.

WAM-Pro Case Study Submission (Time & Labor System Upgrade)

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