Johannesburg, 20 Jul 2004
Execution against human resources policy depends in part on the ability to capture staff data and deploy it in a company, and to ensure that it is accurate and up to date. To improve the quality of this data, it is ideal to outsource the maintenance of staff data to the individual staff members themselves.
"The value of data is reduced if it is not accurate," says Sybille McCloghrie, director at e-business and enterprise software developer Tilos. "This has been shown time and again in all walks of business, and it is as relevant in the HR field, where the execution of many internal procedures depends on accurate data.
"Making the information providers - the staff themselves - personally responsible for the accuracy of their own data is the key to solving HR information inaccuracy," adds McCloghrie. To do this, an incentive must be built into the system: when staff realise that it is up to them to ensure that their administration affairs are in order, this is often incentive enough.
Incentives include the correct allocation and record of leave, salary payment details, next of kin and personal data, and qualification levels, all of which directly affect the person involved. This revolves around the premise that the person who owns the data has the most to gain by ensuring it is up-to-date.
"Other critical success elements in guaranteeing data quality include using push technology to request regular updates at intervals," continues McCloghrie. "This will ensure that staff confirm in person that there are no changes, or that new information is entered timeously."
Another method of keeping data clean is to acquire data scrubbing functionality and build it into the HR solution. This entails a system where input data is corrected and checked for duplications, redundancies, inconsistencies and other errors.
The company intranet is the best channel for implementing such a system. This means any solution acquired must be Web-enabled.
"This will allow maximum participation by all staff and ensure constant monitoring of service levels," says McCloghrie. "The solution should provide feedback on who has responded and who has not, and should be fully integrated with other internal systems."
Finally, there are extended business benefits to acquiring such a solution, Burger adds. It is possible to extend the same rigorous data accuracy solution - with slight modification - to the broader enterprise and ensure customer data accuracy.
"For example, customers can be made responsible for ensuring the accuracy of their own data through an Internet connection," says McCloghrie. "There are manifold enterprise-wide advantages to ensuring data accuracy."
Share