An HR automation tool is proposed to provide employees a single window to view their status across various company policies like leave, travel claims, referrals, and more. Currently employees must search PDF documents and consult managers to understand exceptions. The proposed tool would integrate with the SAP database and provide personalized policy details and calculations for each employee based on their profile. It would reduce workload for HR and employees by automating common queries and tasks like calculating referral bonuses. The tool has potential to improve the employee experience with company policies and reduce exceptions through consistent automated responses.

1. 2009
Introduction of latest IT Technologies in HR functions
Rushit Shah
GAPR09GHRM045
7/16/2009

2. HCL Technologies are a leading global IT services company, working with clients
in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since its
inception into the global landscape after its IPO in 1999, HCL focuses on 'transformational
outsourcing', underlined by innovation and value creation, and offers integrated portfolio of
services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and
R&D services and BPO. HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network
of offices in 20 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals
including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Telecom, Retail & CPG,
Life Sciences & Healthcare, Media & Entertainment, Travel, Transportation & Logistics,
Automotive, Government, Energy & Utilities. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of 'Employee
First' which empowers 54,026 transformers to create a real value for the customers. HCL
Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues of US$ 2.0 billion (Rs.
9,842 crores), as on 31st March 2009.
NATASHA
She is the most popular lady at HCL with her own website on the company's Intranet. Her job
profile is crucial: she is the team mascot for HCL's Employee HR Services group and
communicates daily with each employee on what's happening within the company in a language
they understand and in a format they can easily access. Impersonal communication on HR
policies can become a drag at times; Natasha has helped give it a humane touch.
The process serves two objectives: it enables HCL to communicate to its employees that the
company cares and is there to help on their problems. She has helped the organization reduce
paper and printing cost tangibly and the time and energy spent on explaining policies to
employees. This has reduced the workload of HR department and the tool can handle four times
the number of queries with the same HR headcount.

3. Scope for Improvement:
Post the introduction of Natasha, it has become simpler for the employees to regularly have a
check on the company policies that are available to the employees in general across the
organization, barring, gender, age, and the designation.
But this has led to Natasha being uploaded with a huge database of documents with policies
explained in it. An employee first need to filter out the policy he is looking out for and then go
through single or multiple pages of PDF documents. The issue starts here when there are still
doubts and also an employee is not clear about the exception cases that are applicable to him and
also the repercussions of exercising one policy or the other for any transaction that takes place.
For Example: There are different categories of leaves available in different geographies and an
employee is applicable to different categories at different times. On reading the policy he gets an
overview of the entire policy but many a times there are still doubts about his/her leave balance.
To clear this he/she approaches their respective manager or their respective HR managers. This is
then explained person to person and clarified. This process utilizes the employee and the
manager / hr time which could be directed to more strategic objectives which would contribute to
increasing the top line or reducing the bottom line rather than spending time in explaining the
results of various employees on exercising a policy. Sometimes the implications are very simple
and still the employee would prefer hearing it face to face rather than interpreting it from the
PDF. There are also cases where the employee would not be very comfortable in approaching the
HR and discuss any issues with them due to the pre conceived wrong HR notions.
Related Research:
http://www.gridpay.com.au/pdf/HRISbenefits.pdf - HR Automation
http://www.hrinformationsolutions.com/images/CostSavingsInAutomatingHRAndBenefits.
pdf - Cost Savings in Automating HR&benefits

4. Improvisation through Technology:
To ensure employees are able to analyze their current position with regard to all / some policies
which are applicable to them, an automated tool could be developed which could give them a
single window look of their current status with respect to their policy.
To begin with this project, this automated tool could be piloted by picking up some of the
policies which are universally applicable to all employees.
• Leave Policy
• Flexi Hours Policy
• Separation / Exit rules / formalities
• Travel Claims
• Transfer Policy
• Relocation Policy
• Appraisals
• ALARMS
• Training
• On boarding
• Employee Referral
Above mentioned policies are in general used by all employees across the organization.
HCL Technologies uses SAP as its ERP. All employee details and companywide transactions are
recorded into the SAP database.
HR’s and senior managers across the organization have access to retrieve information for the
employees to which they have access to details about.
The above mentioned automation, it is possible to create one window tool with all the 11 policies
available as a PDF and one window which would then reflect the employee details as mentioned
in the records of the organization in SAP.
Once the employee enters the application, the current status would appear followed by few
buttons which the employee would have to choose to customize his requirement. Post entering
the details, the system would initiate few mathematical and logical calculations listing down the
various alternatives available for the employee to choose from for exercising a policy.

5. Technology involved:
As SAP is the single source of data for all applications across HCL, it would continue to remain
as an input into the single window for every employee.
On logging in, the employee would be able to view his / her personal details that are available on
the data base. Any changes to be made here, have to be corrected through necessary approvals
through the Employee Self Service (ESS) workflow already available.
After checking on the correctness of the data, the employee would have to choose the necessary
policy which he or she wishes to exercise. The link would be connected with Natasha and the
simple PDF’s would pop up in a different window which would enable the employee to view the
policy.
Post reading the policy, the employee can continue with the single window application which
would then have specific details with regard to the policy.
For Example: If the employee is looking for an Employee Referral, he / she will have to fill in
the following details in the relevant boxes and by mathematical and logical calculation fed into
the system by the back end developers of linking it with the policy logic, the necessary result
would be published.
Name of the employee referred - _______________
On providing this name, the application would mine the name from the existing database and
share a list of names which are similar / exact to the given name.
The employee would then be choosing the relevant name that he / she had referred in the
organization.
On selection, the system would calculate the tenure of the referred employee in the organization
as a full time employee and would provide display the amount he / she are eligible for. The
system would be instructed to provide the amount, if and only if the employee is on roll of HCL
Technologies as a full time employee, is in the rolls for more than 3 months and is still an active
employee, the referred employee is in the organization for less than 6 months (as the employee
referral bonus is not applicable if claimed after 6 months of referring an employee). If all the
above conditions are met, he / she are eligible for the employee referral bonus.
The employee need not intimate anyone about this amount. The referred employee would have
already informed the organization on the details of who had referred him / her as this is
mandatory for any referral job applicant. In case, the referred employee has not mentioned the
same and has still got into the system, it is a mistake of the recruiter who has hired him / her
under referral scheme without even asking for the employee code of the existing employee who
has referred the candidate. Such cases would be treated on a case to case basis as the respective

6. recruiter needs to be informed about the lag. This gap can be obtained if the referring employee
does not get his assigned bonus within two months of the date of completion of 3 months of the
referred employee in the organization.
The single window application would have the facility of generating automated mails; every time
an employee is referring another candidate through the referral portal available on the Intranet of
HCL Technologies at www.myhcl.in. On receipt of the automated mailer, the HR would be
informed about the referring candidate and on completion of 3 months of the referred candidate
in the organization, HR will get a second and final reminder to check the payroll updates and
cross verify if the referral bonus is uploaded. HR does not have to manually enter any details
(barring any exceptional cases). On completion of 3 months, the single window would calculate
the amount due to the employee and automatically send details to the payroll application to credit
“X” amount to the referring employee.
Below flow chart would help in clear understanding of the work process:
Infrastructure of application

7. Workflow of application at the backend Application workflow available for employee
to check
Advantages: By implementing this technology, the employee would not have to reach HR or
managers to clear any first or second level doubts. The time saved could be utilized for strategic
functions by HR and also automation would help the employees get a picture of all various
possibilities available and they would not have to depend on any other source to utilize their
policies. As the tool would generate the results, employees would abide by it more and exception
cases would reduce.
References
http://www.hcltech.com/about-us/
http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/jul/01guest3.htm
*End of Report*