Sustaining Growth

Business
Plastics manufacturer with 80 employees at three plants and a headquarters office

Challenge
The high cost of managing basic payroll, benefits, and personnel services is a drain on company profits. Competition is growing, and customers are pressing for price reductions and speedier delivery. The company wants to reduce HR costs and better match various workers' skills to projects at hand. The HR staff wants to devote more time to matching skills to positions and retaining employees than processing benefits revisions that individual employees phone in each day.

Internet-Based HR Solution
The company installs an intranet to provide online access to various HR applications. HR employees at the plants can review personnel records and benefits accounts. Payroll and benefits management applications are outsourced to an ASP.

Benefits
HR staff across the company can assess training and skills needs on line and respond quickly. Salespeople can quickly communicate staffing requests for new jobs via e-mail, and a password-protected portion of the company's intranet provides a quick overview of skills needed at each plant, with an estimate of available capacity for each area. The automation of these HR functions means that the company doesn't have to add HR personnel, even as it grows rapidly. And with the ASP providing the software and systems to run the basic HR applications, the company retains control but doesn't need to buy and maintain fast-evolving HR software packages.

This article was adapted from Cisco's Easy Guide to Human Resources in the Internet Age. To download the entire PDF version of the piece, click here.