Case Study 1 - OUTSOURCING AT TEXAS INSTRUMENTS CANADA

Dawn McWhirter, CHRP, is the HR manager at Texas Instruments (TI) Canada. if Canada outsourced its payroll function to a national provider but, faced with a large number of transaction errors, Dawn is crunching the numbers to determine whether it makes more sense to have payroll provided by staff internal to Texas Instruments.

The current external provider is paid $30 000 annually to prepare biweekly payroll inputs/changes, additions/terminations, ad hoc payments (such as commissions and bonuses), car allowances, mileage reimbursements, and so on, plus pay-slip printouts, tax remittances, and T4s. However, so many errors are made that Dawn has to pay an administrator $37 440 annually to correct mistakes and liaise with the provider. Additionally, the employees at headquarters in Dallas are also spending time correcting these errors for an additional cost of $12 000 annually. Dawn estimates that she is spending about 100 hours a year overseeing the errors and auditing quarterly reports for a cost of about $3400.

To provide these same services internally, Dawn prepared the following estimates:

- New national provider: $4000 annually for partial in-house-all biweekly payroll changes/additions would be input on-site using a secure web portal provided by the carrier; the new provider would only be responsible for printing pay slips, remitting taxes to government agencies, and preparing year-end filings such as T4 remittances.

QUESTIONS

1. If you were Dawn, what decision would you make and why?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the decision that you made?

CASE STUDY 2 - TALENT MANAGEMENT AND WORKFORCE ANALYTICS AT FRITO-LAY

Frito-Lay, a manufacturer of well-known brands such as Ruffles and Doritos, is a division of PepsiCo, which employs about 10 000 people across Canada. An employee group, called the Route Sales Representatives, was considered a key talent group. A Route Sales Representative (RSR) performed three key tasks:

1. Driving and delivery-taking the products from distribution centres to stores

2. Merchandising-managing in-store inventory and product placement

3. Sales-taking orders and negotiating for additional shelf space in order to increase sales

However, Frito-Lay was experiencing low productivity and high turnover among this group. Frito-Lay decided to use workforce analytics to identify the source of the problems. The company surveyed both the RSRs and their supervisors, and analyzed recruitment sources and successes, and the characteristics of successful RSRs. Using advanced statistical techniques, the work uncovered several causes. Their traditional labour pool of high school graduates was shrinking, at the same time as the complexity of the job was increasing. The company began increasing the compensation rate to reflect the new job demands. It also found that on larger routes, the RSR was unable to find the time to merchandise, so a dedicated merchandiser was hired for these large routes. Analyzing the profiles of successful candidates resulted in a change to the hiring profile to include prior sales experience.

This process of analysis required a great deal of managerial and employee commitment, and a time frame of about six months.

QUESTIONS

1. What methods were used in this case to identify the causes of high turn-over and low productivity? What other methods could have been used to obtain better data?

2. Though their efforts resulted in improved retention and productivity, what is missing from this case?

CASE STUDY 3- MEASURING CULTURE TO SUPPORT GROWTH AT CMA

Certified Management Accountants of Ontario (CMAO) provides the CMA des-ignation to certify professional accountants and resources to optimize enterprise performance. CMA of Ontario has approximately 25 000 members. CMA Ontario has 83 employees and has doubled in size from five years ago. Its annual revenue has also doubled from five years ago when a new strategic vision was adapted and propelled the not-for-profit organization to perform like a Fortune 500 company. Development at CMA has been fuelled by the need to offer members and pros-pects more value with an aggressive growth target of 5 percent annually.

"If we are going to compete in today's marketplace, it's not enough to be a sleepy not-for-profit. We must operate similarly to our membership, many of whom are running successful Canadian businesses," says Christine Thrussell, Manager of Human Resources for CMA Ontario, who recalls the push for change when she first started with the organization. Thrussell made it her objective to be a designa¬tion of choice for employees in the not-for-profit sector. "To be competitive, we have to ensure we have the resources employees are looking for."

As part of having the necessary resources, CMA Ontario knew the importance of having a culture to support new work designs. As a result, it was important to the leadership to tap into how their employees valued their workplace. In combination with its balanced scorecard system, CMA Ontario implemented a culture audit assessing employee satisfaction with technology, training, benefits, etc.

At the beginning of Thrussell's career at CMA Ontario, the employee t li¬ma survey indicated the organization was in the bottom 10 percent of companies of similar size and revenue base. After four years of improvement and changes under the current leadership, CMAO reached the top 10 percent of the survey. For example, four years ago, 52 percent of employees believed they had the technology needed to support the business. Today, 88 percent indicate they have appropriate technology to do their work.

CMA Ontario reports back to employees on these improvements at quarterly town halls and senior leadership and management team meetings. "Employees are able to see the benefits. They've been able to draw a line of sight from what they had to what they have today," says Thrussell. "We have a different mindset now, where the focus is on a world-class customer service experience. It's all about implementing the strategy and doing it with discipline."

QUESTIONS

1. If you were the manager of HR, how would you rationalize to your members investing in a culture audit?

2. What additional measures would you use to show the value of investing?