The U.S. Postal Service Delivers an Innovative HR Strategy

Workforce, Oct, 2000 by Jennifer Hutchins

From the Pony Express to airmail, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has fueled American innovation for centuries. Today, the second-largest civilian employer in the country is using Web-based technology to surmount a surge in HR demands.

Madolyn Wiley used to spend a good chunk of her workdays searching through printed manuals and handbooks. Now the HR specialist for USPS's Arkansas district simply logs on to an HR intranet for the tools she needs to process benefits and compensation. As part of the team that built USPS's Personnel Desktop, Wiley has helped the federal agency make strides in computer-based HR systems. "It's the way to go," says Wiley, who has seen a lot of changes during the two decades she has been with USPS. "Every one of our HR people around the country has access to the system. We get the forms and information we need immediately."

It was not always so easy. Two and a half years ago, Wiley and three of her colleagues were recruited from another project to embark on an ambitious mission: to streamline benefits and compensation processing for 1,500 HR professionals who deal with more than 800,000 employees. The four team members came from different parts of the country to Washington, D.C. , where they were asked to create a Web-based system that would offer step-by-step benefits and compensation processing. Under the guidance of John Mahoney, HRIS manager, Donna Peak, formerly USPS compensation manager and now CFO, and Dixie Wiles, HRIS information systems coordinator, the team joined forces with five Web programmers.

"People were out there with large workloads flying to administer benefits by searching drawers full of files," explains Wiles. "They were going through manuals, looking for correct and current forms, and trying to find current compensation information that could be in a notebook somewhere or tacked up on a wall. There were pieces of information scattered all over the place.. .The challenges were distributing and accessing timely information, along with standardized, consistent, and accurate benefits- processing procedures by each office."

As if that weren't enough, HR support was shrinking. "In 1992 we had a 40 percent cut in support staff, but not in workload," says Wiles. "We had a buyout situation where we lost a lot of veteran staff members. It was a major knowledge drain that really hurt us. And it will continue; in the next one to five years, 20 to 25 percent more of that staff will be eligible for retirement."

The project team was not daunted. They began to map out a system that would incorporate a huge number of federally regulated procedures into a navigable site. They decided to put the site on the USPS HR intranet, which had already been active for two years. "Our benefits processing is complex, rules-intensive, and forms-driven," explains Wiles. "Because we are regulated under the Office of Personnel Management, there is little flexibility to streamline the processes. We had a Web team for HR and had already done some work on workflows, so it seemed like the next logical step to build our own desktop system."

Four months later, the team proudly introduced the Personnel Desktop at a national USPS compensation conference. They kicked off the event with seminars attended by more than 200 field people who would spread the word among the HR workforce. "People were absolutely speechless," says Wiles. "What it did for them was amazing. They had information, forms, manuals, and links to other Web sites in an organized, easy-to-use system at their fingertips. They could bring in new employees and sit them at the computer to easily learn to process benefits."

The system features 52 Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), complete with online forms, documents, memos, letters, and links to other agency sites. Within minutes, the system guides users through actions that previously could take hours. It not only makes HR tasks faster, but also cuts down on errors and paperwork, while improving workflow processes. It instantly became the second- most-used site on the USPS intranet. The system combats the agency's decline in HR support. "It created a high-level knowledge-based system that will provide a way to train our new HR professionals on benefits processing," explains Wiles.

Calculators for compensation packages were also a big hit with field personnel. "We have 41 different payment schedules," says Wiles. "The people in the field loved the fact that they had historical pay schedules online. They use the site to go back to the old pay schedule when they need to adjust employees' pay. Believe it or not, they used to have to call headquarters compensation to seek that information." HR staff members now use the calculators to determine things such as promotions within the same or different pay scales and changes to lower levels. They also use the benefit-cost calculator to determine different scenarios for life insurance, health benefits, and flexible spending accounts to see how those packages would affect a paycheck.