Repercussions of Faulty Implementation of e-HRM – My Personal Experience

Repercussions of Faulty Implementation of e-HRM – My Personal Experience

Author- Ishita Alok

Thanks to Soniya’s blog topic, I do not need to enlighten any of you out there about what ESS can and can’t do. She has covered all the features and reasons as to why managing one’s own account at the work place is a convenient option and why every company today is trying to join this league.

Not to anyone’s surprise, 2 months back, the DGM of HR at my office too sent a power point presentation containing details of how all the earlier used softwares (like Empower, Orwell  etc..) were going to be old talk because they were being replaced by one single software called “MyManManagament – (M3) System”. This would be an effective replacement of the multiple tools that the company had been using to record and maintain employee data. There was buzz about it in every department as our earlier processes of leave approvals, attendance regularizations and clock in- clock out regularizations used to be manual and quite obviously tedious. I personally was elated about it because, having learnt about some of the SAP HR modules in the preceding weeks, I was excited to see their execution in my own company. But my thrill was only short lived. Here’s what happened with me.

When I had joined this company, the HR department had carried out its routine procedure of collecting my documents, getting my identity card readied, induction and of course getting my finger prints for the biometric machine. It so happened that the machine just never recognized my prints. It was always the case and it was a particular nuisance when in the evenings, the buses were leaving premises and I was standing in front of the machine and punching once, twice, thrice….I finally gave up and complained about this problem to the respective HR person, but in vain. He gave me an alternate solution. He said it would be ok to punch in 10 minutes before our shift ended. And it worked! I don’t know how but from then on, I started punching at approximately ten minutes to 5pm and was peaceful. This practise continued till Feb 2012 when M3S was introduced. The software went live on the 3^rd of Feb, 2012. Now, as data (like shift schedules, employee details, holiday calendar etc) was fed into the software in the beginning of the month, there was no changing it. At least, we couldn’t do it without some sort of an authorization from our managers. It was informed to us that the period of Feb-April would be a trial session for the software and payroll would be generated from here, May onwards. We were given an “orientation” regarding the usage of the software and many people were apprehensive because it changed a lot of the processes that had been in practise over here for more than five years. But the lady giving us the introduction said that it was to get used to the idea of M3S and that we were having a trial run so there was no need to panic. There was no warning given to us that the old softwares which we had been using would be rendered ineffective from that moment on.

Having been assured, people started checking out swipe in-swipe out displays, leave balances and team calendars on a regular basis on M3S. The general shift timings of our department is 8.30 am-5.00 pm. For the rest of the office, the general shift is from 8.00 am to 5.00 pm. This data had been fed into M3S for every employee. The other 2 shifts are 6.30 am-3.00 pm and 3.00 pm to 11.30 pm. Another point to note here is that almost 90% of the crowd uses office commute to travel. So the shift schedules were fed into the software and employee biometric data was collected as always. As was my habit, I used to punch in 10 minutes before our shift ended. So when I checked my own M3S record, I was taken aback to see systemic errors against which it showed “Loss of Pay for early clock-out” in a yellow block against the date. This was the case on several days. When I checked with the guy who was responsible for the data maintenance of the software, he said that I was to punch out not a minute before 5 pm. The system was programmed to function this way and it would show these errors in many cases. That was the day I realised that there were n number of people throughout the office who used to punch out early just like me and we all had the same issue. We were again ensured (even in written communication from the head of our department) that there would be no loss of pay since this was still running on a trial basis. But at the end of the month, that very guy released a list of all those employees (which practically included most of the office) who had these kind of systemic errors and that the salary for the month was indeed going to be generated from M3S. There was a lot of retaliation from people. My immediate manager even took it up with the HR department and raised our concerns but he was also hushed up in a very unprofessional manner.

There were issues like the buses coming in late due to traffic, some emergency popping up due to which employees got late by a few minutes and on some days, overly large queues to punch in! We were in such a helpless state and there was no one to understand us. The worst thing that happened in that month was that people in that list had to regularize their attendance using their respective leave quotas. And there were people who had as many as 27 LOPs. For all the people whose case was like mine (early punch by 1 or 2 mins), it was quite distressing as we were very much present in the office premises till the end of the shift, we all use the office commute and hence there was no way we could’ve taken off earlier than scheduled. But no amount of pleading worked with the HR department. They said nothing was in their hands and that it was a group office order so we all had to abide by it. Strangely enough, hardly any of the employees from the HR department had issues of this sort which is probably why they never understood our frustration. It was the most unfair usage of power displayed by our DGM and many people went on to saying things like the office was just looking for a second source of income. Today, thanks to this system, I have just 3 leaves left in my quota for the rest of the year (my leaves for this year will be credited on 31^st Dec, 2012 as per company policy). Mine was the only department that had the option of Casual Leaves (CLs) as we’re a 6 day working department, but since M3S couldn’t accommodate CLs, and so we were deprived of this privilege too.

The reason behind narrating this long incident in my blog is that I wanted you all to understand the depth of the problem. Mismanagement of the software by one single department (in fact only a handful of people) has caused problems in so many people’s work lives. I’m not making it up when I say that there are quite a few people who’ve put down their papers just because they do not agree with the level of discomfort that this software has caused. Of course, the soul motive behind implementing this system was to introduce a far more superior tool to manage employee data. But it back fired really badly and is very easily visible on people’s faces. Employees have become victims to the CEO’s orders and are paying for it through their noses. After a lot of poking around, a few seniors found out that the entire training program given to the people in the HR department for the implementation and smooth running of the software was of low quality. The trainers as well as the trainees were under qualified and one can only imagine the level of understanding and knowledge transfer that would’ve taken place during the 2 month long training session. The guy who updates the software currently can speak nothing but Hindi and Marathi, and his communication is insufferable. If this is the kind of people who’re going to manage employee data, where are we to go! Who do we go to, to raise our concerns and who will be a solution provider to us?

This blog covers a very narrow aspect of a wide range of problems that could be faced in many other ways in different companies. Unless there is understanding of the importance of these kinds of softwares, technology can help us only so much. Just as significant is the usage of e-HR, its enactment has an equal weightage. Mismanagement of systems like these will only aggravate employees into taking drastic steps and in the end the only losers will be the management.