No more non-uniform salary processing

On top of the structural reform’s other changes, the decision to optimise the work in the former counties’ four payroll offices was almost the final straw for the 80 salaried employees in the new Region Zealand.

“There was a lot of uncertainty connected with the merger. Everything was up in the air, so the starting point was that job security had gone. When we also decided to optimise the organisation, we encountered a lot of resistance,” remembers Peter Rasmussen, Head of Systems and Planning in Region Zealand.

One place of employment was an advantage
The first priority for the merger, which involved 19,500 employees equating to 15,000 full-time positions, was secure operations. As part of the reform, the region also went over to a corporate structure and became one place of employment. This is very important for payroll and HR, so the changes were urgent.

“80% of the employee turnover is internal to the region, and there is a huge difference between being able to move an employee internally and having to terminate an employment relationship and set up a new one. However, it requires us to all do things the same, and we weren’t doing that. We therefore launched the project as a natural part of the change process,” explains Anne Holm, Organisation Director in Region Zealand.

First processes, then the system
The counties had a common system as a starting point, namely KMD Opus Payroll and Personnel. The system was reimplemented in the new region, firstly focusing on processes, then on system support.

The project organisation, which comprised employees from both the region and KMD, began with a lean project.

“The good thing about lean is that it is process optimisation with employee involvement. When the employees have an influence, they incorporate the resistance in the project and deal with it. This demystified the project, and if we had worked top-down, I’m sure we would still have had resistance,” assesses Peter Rasmussen.

The result of, among other things, a number of workshops was that the region kept the best things and came up with new things along the way. When the common processes were in place, KMD Opus Payroll and Personnel was set up to support them.

“We are now much more efficient, but we also had to do something about the shortage of payroll employees,” says Peter Rasmussen, pointing out that the training is quicker, which means that the old story that it takes two to four years to train a good payroll and personnel employee doesn’t hold water in Region Zealand.

Focus on better quality
The next HR project will be to go out into the field and enter into dialogue with the region’s managers. This should identify the information that is needed on whether forms and systems are good enough and what system support is needed.

“We need to understand and be at the leading edge of the core business’s challenges. Then we need to look at organising ourselves in terms of helping managers to handle HR issues as effectively as possible,” says Anne Holm.

At the same time, a common forum for maintenance is ensuring that the quality of the payroll procedures is maintained.