ESR solution to a point that it would work, we had
zero tolerance for the types of things that we probably would have been more tolerant of otherwise,”
he says. “I have zero tolerance under any circumstances for what I consider to be poor performance,
and I think this turned out to be an incredibly well-managed, well-controlled project.”
Each wave began with a call to each of the
trusts 14 months prior to the go-live date to find
out what systems they were using and learn about
any peculiarities in their data that would affect
how ESR functioned. At month 11, they entered a
three-month prerequisite stage, during which each
payroll group set up its own implementation governance structure, complete with a project board
and manager, and prepared a project initiation
document detailing its implementation process. At
the end of the three months, O’Connell’s implementation team completed a readiness assessment.
If there were issues yet to resolve, the trust got an
amber light. When everything was in order, they
got a green light. They never had to issue a red light
at that stage, O’Connell notes, adding that his team
did a thorough job of selling the benefits of ESR
before and during each wave.
At month eight, a three-month hard implementation period began, starting with any local build
required by idiosyncrasies in the trust’s data configuration and ending with an overlay of the larger
ESR template. The final five months were spent in
two testing cycles. Data was cleansed to ensure a
smooth automated migration.
“It was a relatively heavy-handed implementation in the
sense that we had a very tight project timeline with clear deliverables,” says O’Connell. “We were very clear in terms of what
we were going to do and what we expected the local trusts to
do. We had a rapid recovery team in place, and we made it
clear we would take no nonsense, that we will stand over the
implementation if we have to. We didn’t do that for everyone,
of course, because we wanted the local trusts to pull the solution into their organizations for themselves. Our attitude was
born out of the difficult times early on, and I believe our rollout
methodology was very, very sound.”
When talk about a comprehensive solution for payroll began at the NHS, Jim
O’Connell, then a local HR director and eventually the programme director for the
solution, felt, along with others, that it would be a missed opportunity if it weren’t a
fully integrated system that included the HR systems as well.
his team stayed on time and on budget through 39 pilots and
12 rollout waves, migrating more than 100,000 records every
two months and covering more than 50 NHS organizations per
wave. The first pilot went live in October 2004, the first rollout
sites went live in March 2006, and the final wave was launched
in February 2007 and is expected to be fully live in March 2008.
They accomplished these milestones, he says, by organizing
waves based on some 200 payroll groups, a number that has
remained relatively constant over the seven-plus years of design,
build, and implementation. “The question was, if we believe the
core principle is right, that this is the right system for the health
service, and we acknowledge that the health service is changing,
how can we ensure an implementation that delivers on time,
cost, and quality? By being creative and looking at structures that
were least likely to change—the payroll groupings—we were
able to stick with the business justification despite the fact that
we were restructuring throughout the process,” says O’Connell.
RUNNING A TIGHT SHIP
O’Connell got involved with ESR in 2001 when he moved
from a local to a national HR job; he took over as programme
director in January 2003. O’Connell is the first to admit that he
was a bit of a control freak, especially in the early days when
the project went through rough times. “By the time we got the
REAL BENEFITS TO EMPLOYEES
The immediate benefit of ESR for employees is the capacity
to take control of their own careers. With ESR, they’re able
to access and modify some of the details in their personnel
records, view pay slips, assess their own readiness for promotion, and browse and enroll in training opportunities. Managers
have the same self-service capacity, enabling them to record
transfers, promotions, and terminations; indicate contractual
changes relating to employees; conduct online appraisal and
development reviews; and handle other tasks that make them
more accountable for and to their employees.
