As you know, the Core Team has been spending the past few weeks in Lawson Training sessions. Recently there was a week solely devoted to Benefits and all of the ways that Lawson will make our work in HR more effective. Sherretta Carter, the HR Benefits Manager, attended all of the sessions and so we asked her the following questions to see what she thought of the training sessions.
As Benefits Manager, what are the top two issues you have with the current GEAC System?
GEAC has a number of limitations. The main one is that it is not user friendly. There are no dropdown menus in order to help us understand exactly what information is in the system. The next issue is that it is very unpredictable. While we can enter data, we are not certain if that information gets appropriately transferred and reflected in the paycheck. The system that we are using was designed by people who are no longer with us, and we are always having to contact Andy Capps over at ISD to help us troubleshoot. This is time consuming for us and him.
Now that you have gone through the Benefits training, what are you overall thoughts about it?
The new Lawson system will give us a lot more capabilities to do the types of transactions that we need to do, so we can do more for our employees. I didn’t expect, however, for our role to change so significantly. We are going to have to do some programming whenever changes need to be made which we previously gave to ISD to do. For example, if there are any changes that need to be made to health insurance, then we in benefits will have to insert the necessary tables versus giving it to ISD to do. But, this is the direction that technology is going in- forcing us to be responsible for our own content, which will be a good thing in the end.
I am excited to see what the actual UNC HC module will look like, which will be available in November. Currently we have been training on a generic Lawson module, but the new one will be tailored for UNC HC’s needs.
What do you see is the most important way that the new HRx system will make Benefits Administration easier?
I think the new system is more user friendly not just for us but also for the employee and manager as well. The self service capabilities will allow employees and managers to easily make necessary changes, which will allow us to focus more on educating employees about benefits. Right now we are spending far too much time changing or correcting easy things like a change of address, but with the new system, the employee can quickly and easily do it themselves. It empowers the employee and lets us spend more time educating people about their benefits.
How have you liked the HRx implementation process thus far?
It has been a wonderful experience! I have a greater appreciation of how every level of Human Resources impacts my work, as well as how my work affects others. It has been quite an eye-opener. Seeing Lawson’s impact not just on our department but the entire institution will be exciting as well, especially considering all of the hard work we have been putting into it. The result will be a product we can all be proud of.
