Getting Headcount Reporting Right -- How Napkins and Yankee Stadium Helped

It goes like this ... in the 90's I was brought to Zurich as an expat to run global HRIS for the investment banking division of 1 of the 'big 3' Swiss banks at that time. I spent the first month gathering the perspectives of my key internal customers and was then summoned to Basel to meet with the #2 executive in the overall bank. The first half hour of that meeting focused on what the bank was paying in expat costs for me (and my family) to be there. The exec then lit up his cigar, took out a napkin, drew criss-crossing horizontal and vertical lines on it, and said the following: "If you can help us get and maintain a truly accurate headount by business unit / by region (filling in the boxes on the napkin with illustrative numbers), your 3-year stay here in Zurich will be well worth the cost." We then each had a small cognac in his office for good luck and off I went.

In retrospect, that astute executive knew that the global rollout of an HR-ERP, innovative comp planning and workforce planning tools, and even HR process re-engineering to leverage the new tools (i.e., the global HRIS function's mandate) would all be compromised if consumers of headcount and 'people cost' data didn't believe the numbers ... or the numbers didn't match the excel s/sheets they felt compelled to maintain. Fortunately for me, I had been down this road before. In the late 80's I received my one and only call from the Chairman of Paine Webber as I ran HRIS there as well. He said the following ... "I would like you and your team to suspend all headcount reporting until we can get all employees in the company to Yankee Stadium to raise their hands -- so we can finally get an accurate headcount." We were obviously forced to get it right.

The answer or solution was twofold: Data Standards and Effective Education -- including mandatory education and training for all consumers of HR data / reports / metrics ... so they (a) understood how ALL numbers were being arrived at; and (b) understood why Finance, HR, Payroll and Business Units might report numbers that were different -- even though all might still be accurate based on their reporting methodology! The training also included real-time 'learning tidbits or booster shots' in how to properly interpret every report or specific data when delivered.

There are appropriate reasons and purposes for counting or not counting employees on salary continuance, or on paid or unpaid leave, or long-term or short-term contractors, or summer interns, or part-timers under or over 20 hours/week ... and on the comp costs side, whether to count deferred comp, or sign-on's, or employee referral bonuses, or other imputed income (e.g., club memberships) or whether to blend different salary rates if multiple assignments for hourlies, etc, etc.

There are 2 choices for getting this right as I see it: Let your line managers, sr execs, HR, Finance and other admin staff throughout the organization spend untold hours (and perhaps millions of dollars) forever reconciling and explaining why numbers are different depending on who reports them (the "1 source of the truth" notion is not enough ... purposes will vary) --- or aggressively attack this near-universal problem with HR-related data standards and very effective training for all consumers of the information.

Steve Goldberg
HR Technology Advisor
July 2012

Next 3 (of 5) Often Overlooked Questions to ask your HR Technology Provider

Again, based on procuring and implementing the solutions of over 20 HR Technology vendors as a global HRIS practitioner (in the 80's and 90's), and then moving over to the solution provider side in various executive roles, I would urge all companies evaluating HR technology vendors to ask the following 5 often overlooked questions.

The last 3 questions below are discussed in this post ... the first 2 were discussed in my previous post.

(1) Can you provide some data on how you've executed in recent years against your product roadmap?

(2) How do you define the word 'solution'?

(3) What are the various ways that you specifically ensure customer success?

(4) Which of your product capabilities would you say are "truly game-changing" if any, and can you provide examples of customers that have experienced this type of business impact?

(5) How do you deal with a situation where a large and strategic customer requests product changes or enhancements that would likely not be applicable to -- or leveraged by -- many other customers?

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What are the various ways that you specifically ensure customer success?

A comprehensive program for ensuring customer success is one of the key things that separates solution providers that otherwise have comparable technology and people capabilities.  Such a program typically begins with fully understanding -- and then tracking to -- the customer’s definition of success.  The ‘tracking to’ part of this relates to having a variety of mechanisms and means for effectively intervening (ideally as a partnership) when the trajectory of success metrics does not foretell a good outcome.  Those various "mechanisms and means" are the heart of any customer success program and should be fully understood and well documented.  It should also be noted that success metrics might appropriately look different for the “initial go-live” phase than for a broader roll-out phase, a solution optimization or maximum adoption phase, etc.  Finally, the role that “driving user adoption and understanding adoption impediments” plays in ensuring customer success cannot be over-stated.

Which of your product capabilities would you say are "truly game-changing" if any, and can you provide examples of customers that have experienced this type of business impact?

Game-changing is, of course, beyond “wow factor.”  We’re talking about a solution or suite of solutions that fundamentally if not radically changes the way a business operates – leading to new (and often material) sources of value and/or competitive advantage.  One example in the world of HR/Talent Management technology is the ability to better understand cause and effect in the context of what people-related factors are behind a precipitous decline in sales, or an exodus of some strategic customers.  While this “game changing” capability relies on leveraging science or sophisticated statistics in HR/HCM, a game-changing impact can also be the result of a simple feature or capability that allows the potential benefits of a system to be unlocked or fully realized. 

An example from my background was the introduction of a “Challenge Feature” in a Global Workforce Planning & Decision Support Tool which allowed global line managers the ability to easily flag and comment on questionable or incorrect data on employees in their charge.  Due to a combination of well-designed workflows and internal service level agreements involving all data owners, “challenges” were automatically routed to and addressed by the appropriate data owner within 24-48 hours.  The manager’s free-form comments in a “Challenge Box” also helped the data owner – wherever they resided in the world -- research the problem if necessary.  This fairly simple feature totally elevated confidence in the data … inextricably tied to confidence in -- and use of -- the system, which drives ROI of course.  

How do you deal with a situation where a large and strategic customer requests product changes or enhancements that would likely not be applicable to -- or leveraged by -- many other customers?

There is probably no correct or perfect answer to this one; rather it’s perhaps a “test of vendor integrity.”  The vast majority of solution vendors will have to deal with this situation at one time or another to win a very large/strategic account or generally take their business to the next level, so it is probably wise to be dubious about claims of “our roadmaps are never hijacked or dominated by any one customer.”  That said, a SaaS multi-instance or "secure SaaS" architecture is often able to solve this dilemma for the vendor and their ‘unique’ customer.  When this is not an option, the feature could perhaps also be tied to a particular customer/user profile, so other SaaS customers would not even see the particular functionality.  

Steve Goldberg

HR Technology Advisor

July 2012