Personnel requisition and employee update processes are vital to ensuring that new employees can be hired, current employees can retire, and any other employment status changes can be processed in an accurate and timely manner. These processes are key functions of the personnel office’s workload and have always been paper-based. A quick look at the data found that personnel has processed roughly 343 employee update forms and 143 employee requisition forms since July.
Through mapping the process and keeping benchmarks of our progress on this project, API is trying to identify every possible place where process changes could be made. We want to make sure we haven’t missed any important steps in the process that could benefit from changes. Creating a process map is like baking a cake. You don't want to leave out any steps in your cake recipe, or you could end up with something that looks nothing like a cake. Process mapping ensures that we don’t ignore the flour or the eggs that might prevent the cake—I mean—process, from rising up to its true potential. Measuring our progress is just as important because we need to determine how the effect of adding an additional egg, or an additional tablespoon of flour impacts our recipe. In fact, when we started process mapping, we provided our stakeholders with a “process recipe activity” to help them think through the process as if they were baking a cake. Now we can explore the insights we’ve gathered from this process.
Pictured Above: A blue and white process map visualizing the flow of work for baking cupcakes. Blue rectangles contain activities in the flow of work. Blue diamonds contain decision points in the flow of work. Blue ovals exhibit the starting point and ending point of the process.
Understanding the Process
In the past, there wasn't a standardized way to keep track of employee update and personnel requisition forms. Our team set out to understand these processes using process mapping. Process mapping allows us to visually think through each step in the process. As we identify each step, we also determine who is involved, how, why, and where the step is executed. Additionally, we look for decision points and pain points associated with each step. Our learning is enhanced by interviews with personnel and budget representatives, senior leadership, and heavy users of the process including DPW and the Parks department.
So far, we’ve learned from process mapping that the personnel requisition and employee update processes are fairly complicated and have begun brainstorming a variety of interventions:
Problem: At this time, not everyone who touches the process moves it along the same way. Many departments will start the forms and send them to budget, personnel, or even the mayor’s office.
Solution: We are recommending standardization of process steps and procedures. This could include establishing practices for who checks forms for accuracy and completeness, and when they do so.
Solution: Having educational materials that can be distributed to departments to help them adjust to process changes and standardization.
Problem: The Budget Office conducts analysis to determine if departments have the money to fill positions before approving personnel requisitions, however, departments still struggle to coordinate their expectations for requisition with this analysis.
Problem: A breakdown in communication during these processes can create duplicative situations where information is being shared multiple times with different stakeholders in the process when only one correspondence on an issue is necessary, in reality.
Solution: Departments require clarity about whether or not they can afford to fill vacancies. Having a communication tool linked to the process would help the Budget office to clarify decision points with departments.
Problem: COVID-19 has exacerbated challenges around maintaining print records for these processes, with many individuals working remotely.
Problem: Employee update and personnel requisition forms have historically traveled by physical delivery to departments, or email. Some never arrive at their destination.
Solution: One of the big asks of our stakeholders is to digitize the personnel requisition and employee update processes, as well. A business analysis allowed us to identify an e-signature tool would allow forms to be shared and signed electronically, and accommodate the information sharing needs of departments.
Problem: Portions of the personnel requisition and employee update processes go hand in hand, to the point of duplicitousness
Solution: it may be helpful to consolidate these forms at least partially for instances where both forms are needed.
Problem: The combined process of both HR and Budget needed to process these forms seems to be time-consuming. It is assumed by departments that HR is the department that determines if a position is able to be filled by the department, this really lives with Budget.
Solution: Creating a procedure for forms to be submitted to both departments simultaneously could be helpful in reducing approval time for these forms.
Problem: Missing information on these forms is a problem. Both HR and Budget often receive forms that are missing critical information which causes the process to be held up.
Solution: Create clarity as to who is checking for what information and when through documentation and educational materials that departments submitting these forms can use to discern what information is required and why.
Measuring Process Changes
To measure the impact of changes we are making to the personnel requisition and employee update processes, we are systematically reviewing existing data. This data serves as a baseline for how each process operates before interventions are implemented. As we make process changes, we can review the metrics we have baseline data for and observe any effects that could be correlated with our interventions. When analyzing the baseline data, we’ve determined that the employee update process takes 12 days on average to complete, while the personnel requisition process takes 32 days on average. One of the desired outcomes of our work is to reduce the time these processes take to complete, making baseline data about how long this process takes now highly valuable. Our next step is to determine how the baseline data we have can be used to achieve the other desired outcomes we’ve outlined so far in our process mapping.
Through process mapping and impact analysis, our team is gathering important insights about the personnel requisition and employee update processes. These insights are helping us to determine what interventions could be implemented to optimize both processes. API will continue working with Personnel, Budget, and Senior Staff to identify these interventions. The next steps include procuring a digital tool to help manage process workflows, interviewing more frequent users of the processes, and transforming process mapping insights into actionable interventions. Revisiting our cake anecdote, mapping, and measuring the process and process changes will help us to bake the tastiest cake. The personnel requisition and employee update processes have seen their fair share of eggshells in the batter and burnt edges, but process changes curated by our team will help to rethink these processes for the better, apply frosting, and enjoy.