Many Human Resource (HR) leaders experience a disconnect between their vision for their team’s roles and functions and the actual day-to-day HR activities being performed.  What gets in the way?  Dr. Wade Larson, CHRO for Wagstaff, Inc. identifies common barriers toward achieving this vision for HR as he discusses his company’s journey to automation – one that was process-centered and resulted in significant outcomes increasing HR time to devote to Wagstaff’s employees and contributing to overall business outcomes. Larson shares how his evaluation of his HR processes ultimately lead to HCM Cloud.

Barriers to Fully Realized HR Core Functions

Research suggests some HR departments are spending 25 percent of their time record-keeping and auditing.  Wade Larson believes that may be an underestimate for most HR departments. According to Larson, the following are common barriers to HR efficiency and effectiveness:

• Reliance on multiple systems with limited coordination between systems
• Utilization of systems lacking potential for automation or requiring manual entry
• Continuation of unproductive “bad” processes no longer meeting current HR needs

Quest Member Journey: Wagstaff, Inc.

What resulted in an eventual full Oracle HCM Cloud implementation for Wagstaff began with a search for a Learning Management System (LMS).  It was by initially exploring available LMS options, Wagstaff’s perspective widened as to the greater opportunity that presented for putting all HR processes and systems together under one “roof.”

Wagstaff defined its goals for this broadened initiative to include increasing the efficiency, effectiveness, and timeliness of its HR processes, as well as enhancing the overall employee experience with the system. Yet, goal-setting was only one piece of the puzzle before Wagstaff moved toward increased automation. Wagstaff also thoroughly evaluated what existing processes were worth keeping aware that automating bad processes would still result in bad processes.  Lastly, Wagstaff considered how their refined goals and processes aligned with what their Oracle solution offered to make the most of their investment.  With these steps taken, Wagstaff moved forward in partnership with Jibe Consulting for full HCM Cloud implementation.

A Model to Evaluate and Improve HR Processes

To avoid automating unproductive processes, Wagstaff took a continuous improvement approach to work through its existing HR processes.  They started with those processes that aligned with what their Oracle product offered. At each of the following steps, Wagstaff asked these questions of each HR process considered:

1. Identify: In detail, what processes are we currently doing?  How and why are we doing them? This included looking closely at processes attributed to being done for compliance to confirm actual underlying compliance requirements.
2. Evaluate: How well is the identified process working?  What does good or best practice look like for this process?  How does our identified process compare to these standards? Wagstaff continued to ask what of these standards would be congruent with their Oracle HCM Cloud system.
3. Plan: If our current processes work within the Oracle environment, what can we do better? If they do not work within the Oracle system, what are we going to do about it?
4. Execute: What processes are important and urgent to the organization?  These may be considered as such due to the political, customer, or employee environments, to promising the most immediate ROI, or to being the low hanging fruit needed to show results.  The important and urgent processes became Wagstaff’s core targets to be tackled first.
5. Repeat! Through Wagstaff’s strategy of continuous improvement, this model was repeated for each HR process prioritized.

Learn More

Watch the full video to learn more from Wagstaff’s CHRO, Dr. Wade Larson about Wagstaff’s process-centered approach to their HCM Cloud implementation.

Additional Resources

Click here for more Quest Oracle Community customer stories about Oracle HCM Cloud implementation.