Rather than your HR and Payroll people having to run common reports for managers, the managers can run their own reports via HR21.

A good example is a leave balances report. This can be written using the Chris21 Report Designer and then added to the HR21 menu. The manager can then run this report when required. The key point it that security is built in, so that the manager will only see the leave balances of their direct reports.

To create a report that uses Relationship reporting, all you need to do is check the Use Relationships checkbox under the Options tab in the Report Designer. As shown below:

If you’re not sure how to add your Chris21 manager reports to a menu, have a look at my blog: How to Add Chris21 Reports to a Menu.

Note: The steps outlined in the above blog post will usually be performed by your Chris21 administrator. If you don’t have full security access to your system you will need some assistance from your administrator.

After following these steps all managers who have access to HR21 will now have access to your Chris21 report and will be able to view the information of their direct reports only.

Try this functionality for an easy way to provide up to date and useful information to managers in Chris21. Reach out in the comments if you have any questions about this functionality.

The post Adding Chris21 Manager Reports to HR21 appeared first on System Logic.

Firstly let me make it clear that I am all for Employee Self Service (ESS) systems and the obvious benefits that they can deliver to organisations.

While these benefits are loudly touted and well known enough that I don’t need to list them here, there are pitfalls to success that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Recognising the pitfalls can be the difference between successful Employee Self Service implementations and mediocre outcomes. If there’s not much to view or update in an ESS system or it’s difficult to access, then employees won’t see the benefits.

Here are some issues to consider:

Will all employees be able to access the system?

In some organisations, not all employees have a personal computer or email address. This is often the case for the traditional blue collar worker.

Sure you can setup ‘kiosks’ in lunchrooms and the like, but these can have their own issues, usually related to security. I mention this later in the article.

The risk is that rather than address access issues, organisations may find it easier to maintain manual systems for their ‘blue collar’ employees and implement ESS for the rest.

How will you approach training and change management?

ESS systems may be quite intuitive and easy to use, however many organisations will have policies regarding training.

The employees in your organisation may be very savvy with newer technologies and they may embrace it. Others may resist the change and require some degree of training to adapt.

Training for ESS systems can be difficult, time consuming and costly to undertake. At the very minimum, you will need to develop training manuals and/or instructions to assist employees. At the other end of the scale, you may need group demonstrations.

What about the human error factor?

I know this can be a big concern for payroll officers, in particular about the quality and integrity of the data being entered. This is especially relevant for data such as bank details and home address details.

There can also be issues with the format of phone numbers, and whether data is entered in upper case, lower case or a mix.

You will need to consider setting up controls to counter these concerns. A good example is email alerts whenever changes are made by users via HR21. My blog Using Chris21 Email Notifications in HR21 for Added Peace of Mind for more information. Additionally, you can run reports on a regular basis to check the quality of the data.

Has security been considered?

While your IT department will ensure sufficient security from a network perspective with corporate intranets and firewalls, there are other security issues to consider.

If you do need to setup ‘lunchroom kiosks’ for employees be aware that there can be security concerns relating to the printing of payslips to a communal printer.

Or, what if an employee forgets to logout correctly? Most systems will have timeouts, these should be set to 5 minutes at the most.

Also, password resets can be an issue and this will lead to more help desk calls. Single sign on systems, such as LDAP are critical to the success of Employee Self Service implementations.

What are the barriers to successful user uptake of the system?

You’re going to all the trouble of implementing the system so you want to be sure that it will be embraced by employees. I mentioned resistance to change earlier and this will be a significant issue for many organisations.

This can happen for many reasons, for example, managers who may have traditionally passed some functions onto assistants. These functions now must be handled by the manager because the system requires them to be logged in.

Organisations who take a ‘too cautious’ approach with their Employee Self Service Implementations just may not be offering enough to their employees. Why login if there’s not much to see?

Do employees understand how to access and use the system? This comes back to the question of training.

Don’t employees still rely on face to face interaction?

Some employees will still need to talk to someone in HR or Payroll so that they can understand exactly what is required when updating some data. Of course, this avenue will still be open to employees but the employees themselves may feel that this has been removed by ESS.

This is an important message to get across to all employees in your organisation during your training phase.

In addition to these issues, I have also seen some evidence of the divide between HR and Payroll departments. I’m not saying that this happens everywhere, but I would be interested to hear opinions from anyone in the HR and Payroll fields.

I often see HR wanting to put more information into the hands of employees, while Payroll are much more cautious about this, citing risks to data integrity.

Regardless of this, if organisations aren’t willing to recognise these issues and factor them into their planning, they run the risk of failing to attain all of the benefits that Employee Self Service implementations can deliver.

The post Employee Self Service Implementations – Ensuring Success appeared first on System Logic.

This might mean allowing employees to change non-payroll critical information, for instance, their address details. Providing this type of functionality not only frees up payroll staff for other value add activities, it also empowers employees by giving them greater access to their own data.

Of course, this ‘opening up’ of access to information that has traditionally been controlled by Payroll and HR can be a cause for concern. This is particularly of relevance when it comes to sensitive or critical data. Payroll staff can rightly be concerned that inaccurate data may be entered into the system without their knowledge.

A good example of this is bank details updates. This can be a regular task for Payroll staff so it makes sense to allow employees to perform their own updates. You might have considered allowing employees to update their bank details via HR21 but were reluctant due to the possibility of inaccurate data entering the system.

You could consider using Chris21 email notifications for extra peace of mind. While email notifications won’t stop the bad data entering the system, they will at least provide documentary evidence of changes that have occurred. These notifications will be sent whenever bank details are updated in Chris21. Should invalid details be entered, the email generated by this change will be accessible. This will help Payroll staff to identify the changes that were made to the employee’s record, once the problem becomes evident.

Chris21 email notifications are straightforward to setup using the Email Notification (MMN) form. They can be configured to send an email to an employee number, position number, or a specified email address. Of course, email notifications can be setup to track changes to any HR21 page, not just bank details. One important point to remember: email notifications will be sent whenever a bank details record is changed. This could be a change made by Payroll in Chris21 or a user in HR21.

Consider Chris21 email notifications as a very effective way to keep track of any changes that employees are making in HR21. This will not only empower employees but also give you, as a payroll professional, peace of mind!

The post Using Chris21 Email Notifications in HR21 for Added Peace of Mind appeared first on System Logic.

You may be considering a HR21 implementation. I know from experience that there are a significant number of organisations who use Chris21 and haven’t implemented HR21 – you may be one of these. Given the obvious advantages of online employee self-service systems I often wonder why this is the case.

The answer may be that you think a HR21 implementation is complicated and a heavy drain on your resources. It can be, but it can also be a relatively straightforward process. It all depends on the approach you take.

There are two ways you can go about it. The first is to implement the system with all the functionality your organisation requires in one fell swoop. The second is to implement in stages. From my experience, the staged approach usually works best.

What do I mean by a staged approach?

I consider a good staged approach to be:

• Stage 1. A basic HR21 implementation that gives employees access to their information but with limited opportunity to perform updates. Simple information updates such as address details are ok. Not much can go wrong at this stage and, when complete, you have implemented a functional system.
• Stage 2. Introduce workflow. As a minimum you will want to implement leave workflow so that employees can request leave online. This stage introduces some complexity, for instance, workflow escalation and email functionality. This will take some planning and testing.
• Stage 3. Open up the system to allow employees to update more of their information. There are many areas you can comfortably allow this, such as personal details, work details, and bank details. While this is a very straightforward stage to configure, you will need to consider user training and your own reporting requirements to track updates.
• Stage 4. Consider implementing some of the other HR features. For example, e-Performance, e-Recruitment, online training requests. There will be much more work involved when considering these options but once done it is just a matter of adding a new menu option to HR21.

Of course, once stage 1 is implemented the other stages can follow at a time that suits your timetable.

Why is the staged approach better?

From my personal experience implementing HR21 for clients I prefer a staged approach because:

• By its very nature, HR21 is a system that will be used by many of your employees, if not all. Therefore, there is a risk involved – if things don’t go right, users will lose confidence in the system. You can mitigate this risk to a large degree by approaching your HR21 implementation in stages.
• It will make training easier. HR21 is a simple system to use, especially for employees who are already used to browsing the internet. The first stage is very basic and will require minimal training. In my experience a short user manual covering things like how to access and navigate the system usually suffices.
• It enables you to deliver a functional system to employees within a short period of time and with little risk. Employees will now have access to their details such as leave balances and history, payslips, training history, and other details depending on how the system is implemented.
• It gives you time to receive and digest user feedback. This is critical before you go to the next stage. Better to address issues before ploughing ahead with more features.

How long does it take to complete stage 1?

If you are considering a basic HR21 implementation similar to the one I suggest at Stage 1, I would estimate two days for an experienced consultant. This is assuming you have completed the planning, documentation and approval processes within your organisation. The two days includes:

• Installing HR21
• Creating the menu and sub-menus
• Configuring security
• Installing your logo and colour scheme
• Testing

See my blog “HR21 Implementation – Some Useful Information” for more details.

You would also need to consider the degree of training required. As mentioned, for a basic implementation this could be minimal. Your planning process should have already determined this.

Once your HR21 implementation is complete you can plan your rollout to users. The system is ready to use but users won’t be able to login until you setup their security access. This way, you can control the rollout to be all users at once or in groups.

As you can see, your HR21 implementation doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out, onerous process. You can take the plunge and have a functional system within a few days. Then you can add more stages to the implementation as a work in progress.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions from your own experience implementing HR21.

The post Don’t Overdo Your HR21 Implementation appeared first on System Logic.

Now is a good time to review your HR21 implementation. You may have been using HR21 in your organisation for a number of years now. If so, you probably haven’t had to do much except for the annual upgrades that accompany the Chris21 upgrades.

For those who haven’t yet implemented HR21, now is a great opportunity. This is because of the impending upgrade to Chris 21 version 8.7. As mentioned, with each Chris21 upgrade you will receive the very latest version of HR21.

HR21, or employee self-service as it is commonly known, provides many benefits to organisations. Due to this, it is a very worthwhile exercise to review your HR21 implementation.

I often see organisations who have implemented HR21 and then nothing much else happens. In other words, the system is rolled out with minimal features and left like that indefinitely. This is a pity because there are many features available that can deliver tangible savings, in both time and money.

Examples of recent advances in HR21 functionality

A few year’s ago I wrote a blog on this topic and back then I mentioned some of these features:

• Emailing password protected payslips. These are delivered in PDF format. If an employee doesn’t have an email address, the payslip can be emailed to their private email address. Just make sure this email address is specified on their Details (DET) record. Printing and delivering payslips to employees can be a thing of the past;
• Making payment summaries available in HR21. During your end of year processing the Payment Summary File (GCF) process allows payment summaries to be generated in PDF format in HR21. No more printing and mailing payment summaries. And if employees lose them, which I hear is quite common, then they can simply print another one directly from HR21.Employee updates.
• You can now configure HR21 from within Chris21. This means you can decide whether a form is updateable or whether individual fields on forms are read only or updateable. This gives you much more control over what employees can change. See my blog HR21 Implementation – Some Useful Information, which explains more about this. In addition, you can setup email alerts to go to payroll or HR whenever an employee makes a change in HR21. This is particularly useful if you allow employees to update critical information, such as their bank details.
• Workflow functionality. Most organisations setup leave workflow when they implement HR21. Managing leave via HR21 has many advantages and works well. There are other functions that can be implemented with workflow, such as timesheets, training, expenses, flexi-time and travel. These all have the potential to deliver great benefits, yet are often overlooked.

Since the earlier blog was written, another new feature worth mentioning is:

• Relationship based reporting. This allows managers to run reports from HR21 that show information related to only the manager’s direct reports. I recently wrote this blog, which goes into more detail about this feature – Understanding Chris21 Relationships for HR21 Workflow and Reporting.

So you can see that it is worthwhile keeping abreast of advancements in HR21. Furthermore, it is a good idea to review your HR21 implementation from time to time to take advantage of these advancements. Giving employees access to more functions in HR21 empowers them and at the same time frees up payroll and HR staff to focus on more strategic activities.

I hope this article has given you some ideas to help you to get more value from your HR21 system. I would be interested to hear your thoughts if you have implemented features of HR21 that have delivered real benefits to your organisation.

The post Why it’s a Good Idea to Review Your HR21 Implementation appeared first on System Logic.

With the recent upgrade to Chris21 version 8, running manager reports for HR21 is now much improved. This is because the reports will run based on relationships, that is, based on a manager’s direct and indirect reports. What this means is that managers can run reports from HR21 and see only the employees who report to them.

For instance, you could create a report to display leave balances . When a manager runs this report from HR21 they will see a list of all of their staff along with their current leave balances.

New Functionality in the Report Designer

Creating manager reports for HR21 has been enabled by new functionality in the Report Designer. You now have the option to List Staff Members by Relationship.

By selecting the checkboxes as shown above you will create a relationship report that can be used in HR21. Note: If you find that these checkboxes are not able to be selected it will mean you have the incorrect version of Chris21. You must be using version 8.04.4 as a minimum.

Once this report has been attached to the HR21 menu, managers will be able to select a report to run:

In our Leave Balances report example the manager will then select a leave type to view and then click the Update link to run the report:

The report produced is shown below:

The leave balances report is just one example of a report that could be useful to managers. Others could include Training History, Leave Taken, Licences. The big advantage to managers is they can view all of their staff in a single list rather than one by one using HR21.

There is a bit of setup required to create manager reports for HR21. Firstly you will need to write the report. If you’re new to the Report Designer you can read my blog 10 Ways to Ensure Great Chris21 Reports for a few tips.

When writing your report in the Report Designer don’t forget to select the Use Relationships checkbox under the Options tab. You also must ensure that you set the Access Control to Allow Modification by Non Owners.

If you don’t do this then managers will receive an error message when attempting to run the report from HR21.

Report File Access

Also remember to allow access to the files your report uses. In the leave balances example you will need to provide access to Balances (EMLAC) and Details (EMDET). File access is created using the Report Privileges (ATF) form in Chris21. This access is granted to your HR21 security profile. If you don’t have security access you will need to ask your Chris21 Administrator to help.

Adding Your Report to the HR21 Menu

The final step when creating manager reports for HR21 is to add the report to your HR21 menu. This step is quite detailed and is usually performed by your Chris21 administrator. Write a comment below if you need a bit more information about this.

The ability to create manager reports for HR21 is a long awaited feature that will provide greater access to information for managers. With a little setup work on your part you will soon be able to provide a whole suite of useful reports and thus a very useful tool for managers.

The post Creating Manager Reports for HR21 appeared first on System Logic.

The default list includes all of the leave types that have been setup in Chris21, however this is rarely what you want when using HR21. For the majority of clients, the HR21 leave types comprise just annual, sick/carers and long service leave. The screen shot below shows how the leave type list might look if it was referring to the default list:

How do you setup the HR21 leave types list specific to your organisation?

You specify the leave types for HR21 in a separate table. The table is called Kiosk Leave Types – KKLVE. When adding leave types to this table you must ensure that the codes match those on the Leave Types -LVETP table. For instance, if the code for Annual Leave on LVETP is ANN, then you must enter ANN on the KKLVE table. You can add as many leave types as you require on KKLVE but they must already exist on LVETP.

This is an example of how the KKLVE table would typically look when viewed from the Tables (TAB) form in Chris21:

You might notice that your HR21 system has already been implemented using the KKLVE table. In this case, if you want to add or remove HR21 leave types you simply need to go to this table and update as required. If you are not using KKLVE it means your system may still be configured to use LVETP. You will know this because you HR21 leave types list will be a long list (as shown in the first screen shot), containing all of your Chris21 leave types. If this is the case, you will need to change the configuration to use KKLVE.

How to configure HR21 to use the KKLVE table

This is done in the Data Dictionary (DMA) form in Chris21. Go to DMA and look up the field LAP TYPE CD. This is the field that holds the lookup table that the system uses for HR21 leave types. The Validate Table field will show which table is being used.

You should make sure that KKLVE is entered, as shown above. Since Chris21 will default to LVETP, it is possible that this may not have been changed when your HR21 system was implemented. If your system does still show LVETP then you will need to change it to KKLVE. Once you have made this change you will see this the next time you access the Leave Requests page in HR21:

Once you have this setup correctly you only need to change the entries in the KKLVE table and these changes will then be reflected in HR21.

This configuration change will ensure that you only display a limited list of HR21 leave types for users to choose from. Thus letting you control the types of leave that users can request and making future maintenance easier.

On a final note, I always recommend that you make these types of system changes in your test system first. This way you can be sure the system is behaving as you expect before updating your live system.

The post How to Configure Your HR21 Leave Types appeared first on System Logic.

One of the great benefits that an HR21 implementation will deliver is the ready access to information by employees. This is in addition to the many other benefits that you can expect from an employee self service system.

And it’s not just about delivering information to employees but also about giving them the ability to make changes. This might mean allowing employees to change non-payroll critical information, for instance, their address details. Providing this type of functionality not only frees up payroll staff for other value add activities, it also empowers employees by giving them greater access to their own data.

Of course, this ‘opening up’ of access to information that has traditionally been controlled by Payroll and HR can sometimes be a cause for concern. This is particularly of relevance when it comes to sensitive or critical data. Payroll staff can rightly be concerned that inaccurate data may be entered into the system without their knowledge.

A good example of this is bank details. If you are considering allowing employees to update their bank details via HR21 but are concerned about the potential issues, you could consider using email notifications. These can be used to alert you whenever bank details are updated in Chris21. This will help payroll staff to identify changes that have been made to an employee’s bank details, in the event of an issue being raised.

Chris21 email notifications are straightforward to setup using the Email Notification (MMN) form. They can be configured to send an email to an employee number, position number, or a specified email address. Of course, email notifications can be setup to track changes to any HR21 page, not just bank details.

Consider Chris21 email notifications as a very effective way to keep track of any changes that employees are making in HR21. This will not only empower employees but also give you, as a payroll professional, peace of mind!

The post How Chris21 Email Notifications Can Help Your HR21 Implementation appeared first on System Logic.

Employee self service is ideally suited to delivering up to date information that employees regularly want to access, for example leave balances, pay information and leave requests. Prior to the introduction of self-service payroll and HR officers could spend a significant amount of time dealing with these types of requests from employees. With the advent of self service, they now have more time to tackle the more complex or urgent queries. This has benefits for both the Payroll and HR departments, and end users.

To take this point further, by enabling users to take charge of some common tasks, Payroll and HR have more time available to focus on issues which are more challenging to resolve. This in turn gives them the opportunity to specialise and to learn new skills, which has a positive effect on morale.

Given the obvious benefits that employee self service systems can deliver its worthwhile investing the time to keep up to date with changes and enhancements. I specialise in the Chris21 system and it has its own employee self service portal (called HR21). Over the years I have seen a number of enhancements to HR21, delivered by way of regular system upgrades. My article, Why You Should Revisit Your HR21 Implementation highlights this.

In this article I talk about some newer features that can be of great benefit to organisations. A good example is the availability of payment summaries via the self service portal. If you implement this feature you can eliminate the need to print and mail out payment summaries to all of your employees. And if an employee loses theirs (which I am led to believe is a very common occurrence) they can simply log in to the portal and print another one.

Continual investment in your employee self service portal doesn’t have to be an onerous and resource draining task. It’s as simple as taking the time to review system upgrade release notes once per year to see if there is anything new that can provide real benefits for your organisation.

In most cases the work required to implement enhancements will be minimal, perhaps adding an extra link on the portal’s menu along with some minor behind the scenes configuration. You may already have the in-house resources available to do this. Even if you have to call in a specialist to help, the time and cost involved should be minimal.

Implementing enhancements to your employee self service portal has the added advantage of continually ‘refreshing’ the system from an end user’s perspective. I have seen systems that have not changed in years. To the end user this will become old and perhaps not so interesting and they will only visit for the few regular tasks that they perform. For a relatively small effort you can give them something that is constantly evolving and being renewed. Your employees will appreciate it and use it more.

The post The Importance of Continual Investment in Employee Self Service appeared first on System Logic.

HR21 is a highly configurable system since the upgrade to what is commonly referred to as ‘Version 3’. This means that you can do most of the customisations yourself by updating the data dictionary settings in your Chris21 system. For some background information see my blog HR21 Implementation – Some Useful Information.

If you are considering making major changes to your HR21 setup you will need someone in your organisation with a sound knowledge of the Chris21 data dictionary and who knows how to customise the system. Since not many organisations have this level of expertise on hand it may be necessary to seek outside help for this. I’ve helped many clients with this type of work. Feel free to contact me tony.danher@systemlogic.com.au if you need some further advice.

How do you configure the leave balances display in HR21?

For the purposes of this topic you will be happy to know that this is a very straightforward task. You will need access to the Payment Rules (LTR) form in Chris21. The Payment Rules form is part of the leave rules collection of forms and is used when initially setting up the leave rules applicable to your organisation. A typical Payment Rules configuration for Sick Leave is shown below:

The field to look for here is Hide from Interface. This is the field that determines your leave balances display in HR21. If this field is unchecked then the leave type will be displayed in HR21, if it’s checked then the leave type will not be displayed.

Note: this doesn’t affect the way leave balances display in Chris21, it is only HR21.

In the screenshot shown above, the leave balances display in HR21 will include Sick Leave for all employees in the Standard (STD) leave group. Bear in mind that you will need to review all of your leave groups and make sure the Hide from Interface flag is set appropriately for each leave type in each leave group.

The post How to Configure Your Leave Balances Display in HR21 appeared first on System Logic.