There are so many people that are involved in the planning and implementation process for HRx and to help you get to know the people behind the project, we are introducing a new segment to the blog called "Getting to know". This segment will help showcase each person's role in the project, and more importantly, let us get all sorts of juicy details about what makes them tick.
Today we wanted to introduce you to Noah Leyva who is the Sr. Business Consultant with Lawson. Noah has been facilitating the Lawson Core Training sessions for the UNC HC staff. He was born and raised in St. Louis Missouri, is an avid Cardinal's fan and has been with Lawson for 9 years. Here are some questions we asked Noah:
What did you do prior to Lawson?
Prior to joining Lawson, I worked for Ceridian as an HR/PR Implementation Consultant. I was there for 4 years.
What do you do as a Lawson Sr. Business Consultant?
I'm not actually an official trainer. I do trainings occasionally when I am transitioning between projects once they get completed. The majority of the time I am staffed at a client's location conducting their HR/PR implementation through a successful go-live.
What is the coolest feature of the new Lawson System?
You gotta love the "drill around" functionality. You basically have anything and everything you need to know about the employee in one spot. Also, Lawson MS Add-ins is a must have- I don't know how we ever lived without it! Also your employees will love the employee self service once it's rolled out!
What are your top 3 favorite non-Lawson things to do?
First and foremost, I love spending time with my 5 year old son, Carter! I just started taking him fishing and he absolutely loves it. He also loves to play baseball so we play as much as we can- he's a future St. Louis Cardinal in the making!
Being from St. Louis, you have to love sports. It is such a great sports town, especially for baseball so I try and catch as many games as I possibly can.
Last but not least, I love firing up the grill outside and cooking up steaks, chicken, BBQ pork steaks, brats, burgers...you name it! If I could, I would do that daily. There is something that is just relaxing about it to me, don't ask me why.
What is your favorite food and where in the world do you think is the best version of it?
That's a tough one! Probably steak and seafood are my favorite. I was at a client in San Francisco for about a year and a half and ate at some amazing seafood restaurants out there! For steaks, it's hard to beat the Midwest for a good one. Ther is a place called Annie Gunn's in St. Louis and their filet is to die for. Amazing!
Tarheel or Blue Devil?
Definitely Tarheels!!
As the answer to the last question shows- Noah's one smart guy! We are very excited he's with us, especially since he's been making week-long trainings fun. Here is a picture of Noah in action, and now that you know him a little better, stop and say hi to him!
-HRx Team
It’s been three weeks since the Brown Paper Processes (BPP) were completed, so what have our CIBER Friends been doing since then? One of them, Jack Crowley, successfully completed his 3rd ½ Iron Man Competition in Wilmington, NC (this was after he spent all Friday finishing HRx-related work!), Michelle Tharp, has been overseeing Dee Gibson-Smith and Patrick O’Keefe as they have been taking the results from the BPPs and preparing them for the To-Be Process Workshops that will be held in October and November.
The To-Be Process Workshops will focus on how UNC Health Care wants to tailor Lawson services so that they meet our needs and utilize the healthcare industry’s best practices. Dee and Patrick have been taking the BPP processes and using their Lawson expertise to make suggestions for process improvement. After this has been completed they move onto the process documentation and make notes to help document any development that might be related to their proposed processes. This end result is then reviewed/double checked by CIBER tech’s to help them get an idea of how much work is required and whether the proposed improvements make sense.
But, of course Pat and Dee couldn’t get all of this done without the hard work and assistance of UNC HC’s Payroll and Human Resources Departments. Our HR peers are working extra hours in order to provide the reports and documentation that are necessary for the To Be Process to be effective.
In October and November during the To-Be Process Workshops, Dee and Patrick will present the To-Be processes that they envision for UNC Health Care. These sessions are going to be exciting, there will be- a lot of discussion, a lot of coffee, and maybe even a song (or two) as the Core Team makes further modifications to the proposed processes.
-HRx Team
The intensity and scope of a project can best be understood by looking at the manuals that are created to help guide your understanding and give you comfort when you inevitably have to troubleshoot. Here are some examples of important manuals:
- The Navy’s manual for fighter jet pilots, Navy F/A-18 FIGHTER JET Pilot's Manual Airplane BOOK, has 809 pages,
- The cook’s manual, also known as The Joy of Cooking, has 1,152 pages, and
- The original physician’s manual for navigating the human body, Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body, has 1,675 pages.
With those books in mind, can you guess how many pages are in the manual for HRx? We’ll give you a hint- it is much more than any of the above examples. Here’s another hint, below is a picture of the Lawson Human Capital Management Software Suite manual broken into more manageable and not-back-breaking pieces.
The answer is 1,975 pages! This project is BIG!
-HRx Team
Who doesn't love a good newsletter? The HRx team certainly does! Here is the first issue of the monthly newsletter, The HRx Pad, which will highlight the progress of the HRx implementation project. It will not only be available via UNC Health Care's News for Managers but also available here on the project's blog.
Click on this link to access and download the HRx Pad
To view The HRx Pad, just click on this picture below!
- HRx Team
Have you been wondering what HRx team has been doing since the launch of Project HRx on August 20th? The answer is- a lot! Every morning for the past two weeks, the HRx Team andand our Ciber Friends have been starting the day with 4 hour long sessions called the Brown Paper Process (BPP). The purpose of BPP is to identify and track every task/activity that must or may occur before a specific objective is achieved. The method for doing a BPP is to roll out a giant (and we mean giant!) sheet of paper and in a thorough and systematic way insert all of the tasks and documents that need to be completed before a business objective is met.
Here is an example of one of the shorter BPP processes that was completed that shows the current steps needed to get Employee Academic Assistance at UNC Health Care-
Over the past two weeks, the HRx Team and Ciber Friends completed BPP's for 36 different processes that included simpiler ones like Academic Assistance and Entering Life Event Changes to much more complex ones like Hiring a New Employee and Filing a Grievance. The BPP for each process required information on the following:
• Detailed description of every task/activity including the When, Who, Why, Where and How information for each task, and
• Detailed description of the When, Who, Why, Where and How of information that is reported from each task/activity identified.
The entire BPP process was long, but a necessary step. It helped us break down every task that UNC Health Care does to help manage our most valuable asset, our employees, so that our new HRx system will make everything easier not just from the HR perspective, but also from the employee's perspective as well!
-Team HRx
So, we've been told that implementing the new Lawson Human Capital Management software suite is an intensive 18 month project. Since HRx impacts every aspect of Human Resources and beyond, it can be safe to assume that the project is not as simple as installing a new software like Adobe Photoshop or even a new operating system like Windows 7, but what exactly does implementing HRx really entail?
For those of us who want to be "in the know," our consulting friends at Ciber Inc, have provided us with a detailed road map to help guide us through the current HRx journey we have undertaken. The map, which looks like this-
may at first glance resemble a fun board game, but upon closer inspection you will see that it is so much more. This road map is actually an interactive tool which provides detailed information on each of the major steps that needs to be completed in order for us to maximize the benefits of the new HRx system. Playing around with the map you will quickly see just how much work lies ahead of us. You will also see how important it is for us to successfully complete each step because everything, no matter how small, impacts the project's future successes and failures.
If you are interested in viewing the actual model, please contact Smitha Katragadda, the HRx Communications Coordinator at skatraga@unch.unc.edu and after verification of your connection to UNC Health Care, you will be provided with a username and password that gives you access to the complete model, as well as some guidance on how to use it.
In 6 short weeks, you can see we've come quite a long way and are currently at step 1.14- Develop Documentation Plan. We've got quite a lot more to do, but as you can see we have a plan and are on task and before we know it we will be launching HRx!
-HRx Team
