Date: 9 Nov 2009
By Gary Adamson
As we approach the end of the calendar year, a familiar scenario arises in most organisations that managers can identify with; coordination and visibility of your team's leave. Whether it is voluntary leave or the organisation closes down, the HR officer is usually responsible for consolidating all the business unit leave plans and disseminating the information to managers. All too often, this results in the only employee with a holistic view of company employee leave is the HR processor, not the managers - surely this can't be right?
I have had to manage the above scenario on numerous occasions while working as a HR officer. Not only is it the busiest time of the year for a HR team, it is when we are the most short staffed! Where was the SAP ESS/MSS portal when we needed it?
SAP Employee Self Service and Manager Self Service (ESS and MSS)
I envy the current crop of HR personnel who have the luxury of using standard ESS/MSS functionality. Just imagine, the manager of the business units approving or rejecting leave requests, and being able to view their own team to see who is absent from work, and the period of time they are away. The manager can review this daily, without involving the HR team. In addition, the manager can plan and kick off a recruitment request to backfill the Christmas and school holiday period.
The above business processes are just some of many HR-related processes that managers can now control and manage from start to end.
In addition, standard MSS allows managers to control information and stay up-to-date with information on their team such as;
Using MSS managers can review their team and take action, via the MSS system. The manager can trigger some standard business processes with the use of Adobe Interactive Forms, such as termination of employment, organisational change, new starter requirements and promotion requests. Reports are also readily accessible through MSS and can be based on different types of technology, such as standard SAP ERP transactional reports, SAP query reports, ABAP reports, and BI web reports.
I commonly hear the complaint that administrative costs are too high. My recommended solution is the use of MSS tools. Managers can have far greater clarity about the cost exposure that has been occurring within their department. They can receive costing and HR reports directly to their desktops, rather than requesting these types of reports from the finance and HR business units. In addition, MSS can alert managers to a cost variance on salary expenses, for that matter there are many differing variances that a manager can use to track and monitor their yearly budgets.
Empowering managers to execute some of the standard financial, human capital and operational management business processes within the company can create a real return on investment for typical administrative business units such as finance and HR. It can also be a powerful tool for managers to plan and organise their teams in line with the strategic goal of the organisation.
A Team Calendar
