Success Story: ConstructionSkills

ConstructionSkills is the Sector Skills Council for the construction industry, working to deliver a safe, professional and fully qualified UK construction workforce. It works with construction companies to help them improve skills to increase their competitive edge.

Managing a widespread organisation

The organisation itself has over 1,400 employees, based at over 15 different locations around the UK. Like many large organisations that are geographically spread, managing its own headcount and staff provides challenges for the HR Managers and Senior Managers at ConstructionSkills. The company has recently implemented OrgPlus software from HumanConcepts to manage its organisational structure.

According to David Johnson, HR Services Manager at ConstructionSkills; "Since implementing OrgPlus we have an up to date, accurate picture of our total organisation. We can quickly see exactly what headcount we have, what has been approved and where there may be vacancies. This is a particularly difficult time for the construction industry — and it is important that we provide efficient products and services to our customers. OrgPlus enables us to do this by giving us a complete central view for our senior management and HR Managers."

Easy to use at any level

Prior to implementing OrgPlus, the company used spreadsheets to record and report on its department and organisational structures. However, often the HR Manger would have a different chart to that of the departmental manager, where staff may have left or moved and organisational charts not kept up to date.

Using OrgPlus all charts are now produced using information direct from the payroll system, providing accurate and up to the minute data to populate the charts.

"We selected OrgPlus for its inherent simplicity," explained Johnson. "I have always considered it a market leader — it is very easy to use and yet a very powerful tool. It also has good interfaces with all the Microsoft software packages that we use, so that our managers can put the information they need into their preferred format — Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint or PDFs. "

The organisation uses the software at three levels. The lowest level enables all employees to view staff names, email addresses and job names and titles — almost like a company address book. All information is displayed in an organisational format.

The second level is for senior managers and heads of departments. The views are more detailed and include information on their direct reports including salaries, grades, performance ratings, sickness, holidays taken and outstanding. The system displays true headcount, since all staff exist on the HR payroll, as well as positions that have been approved by the CEO.

Accurate, up to the minute employee data

"OrgPlus gives our managers a lot of information and control at their fingertips," said Johnson. "They can quickly see how their department is working, if there are gaps, where headcount has been approved or where there may be issues with a lot of holiday outstanding. The feedback has been excellent."

The HR managers are able to view the same information as the senior managers for the whole organisation. It provides details on employee diversity, as well as a 'roll —up facility', providing data on how many direct and indirect reports a manager may have and what salaries they manage and control.

This provides a useful tool to ensure that departments are within budget and that vacancies are filled. It can also highlight whether they may be any issues with staff sickness — for example, high rates of absenteeism.

"As a visual tool, OrgPlus is outstanding," said Johnson. "It gives us a very easy way to show organisational information to act quickly. We have definitely seen business benefits from having better information that is up to date. One colleague has said that she can now produce the information that she requires in five minutes that used to take a day to pull together."

The HR Services team is able to display information applying a 'what if' conditional rule, to show certain employee circumstances. This enables managers and the HR team to very quickly get a picture of the organisation and identify any potential risk areas that may need to be addressed.

ConstructionSkills also has a team of business analysts working on a transformational change programme, and OrgPlus has been an invaluable tool to provide the latest data. The team has been using OrgPlus to help with their analysis — for example, the number of reporting staff in departments that a manager has, the number of administration staff that support the front line and how departments are structured.

"We know that over one hundred people a day are using the system," said Johnson. "People are actually using the information on OrgPlus to help them do their jobs - there is no doubt that we have seen a return on our investment within two months of implementing it."