As a Ceridian client, it was natural for Nancy consider Ceridian’s HRIS solution, however info:HR had certain functionality she was looking for, including flags and follow-ups, and email notifications for upcoming reminders. She also likes that HRSS offers custom programming options that make daily tasks easier for them.  Nancy said, “The solutions from HRSS fit my budget and I could tell they really wanted me as a client.  For example, Michelle Beasley, Business Development Manager, and the President Andy Staniewski took the time to meet me at my office in South Vancouver.”

Training took place on-site as Michelle lives close by NEC’s office. ”This was a huge plus as it gave us the personal touch,”  Nancy said, “Michelle was and is always close by to provide training and ongoing support.  HR System Strategies has been great to work with overall.  Michelle, Jerry Rowland, the Chief Technology Officer, and Hemu Mistry, Manager of Application Development, have been a huge asset for training and implementation.  They are all very knowledgeable and have provided tremendous support to us during the entire process.”

“There were two primary things I was looking for with our investment in the HRSS solutions.  Firstly, the time and cost savings we would realize from the functionality of info:HR, ESS, and Timesheets.  And secondly, avoiding dual data entry and associated errors with having info:HR and Powerpay Plus integrated together.”

Of the HRSS solutions Nancy said, “We are using pretty much all of the basic functionality of the system.  Things that I love?  We can look online to see whose timesheets haven’t been submitted yet, or who has pre-booked vacation until the end of the year. Senior managers are happy that they don’t have to manually track employees’ time requests. Implementing info:HR has allowed us to get rid of spreadsheets such as benefit analysis, seniority analysis, and pension and union reports. It has also improved our employment history tracking, as I now have it at my fingertips – items like turnover reports are just a few clicks away.”

The Ceridian Powerpay Plus interface project went very smoothly. HR Systems Strategies’ approach to working with payroll systems is unique in the industry. Rather than providing  generic off-the-shelf connector software or an API, HRSS works in tandem with each client to develop an integration that is unique to that client’s requirements. Jerry Rowland summarized it very well, “In my 30-plus years in the industry I have seen countless interfaces to Ceridian, ADP, Sage 300, and others. What we are doing is building on our knowledge, expertise, and the software building blocks we have for each flavor of interface and taking the client’s input as to how they want the data flows to work, together with the data they wish to transfer, to deliver an integration that is unique to them. An easy way of explaining what we do is to use an analogy of going into a subway shop and ordering a sub. You tell the server you would like a ham sub and then proceed to say which bread and how you would like it, and all the various toppings to make it your sub.  That’s what we do.  Our competition at best provides a ham and cheese sub shrink-wrapped in plastic wrap!”

Jerry continued, “Working with Nancy and Native Education College was great.  We had done many Powerpay Plus interfaces before so I had a good idea going into the project.  And Nancy was great.  She was knowledgeable, eager and always available when we needed to schedule her time.”  The first step was the data mapping.  Here, they reviewed the main areas of data transfer – employee master data, benefits/deductions, and timecard data.  After Hemu Mistry programmed the interface testing could begin.  As each area was tested, Jerry would check to see if there are any discrepancies between expected and actual data values in Ceridian.  If and when there is a discrepancy, Jerry has the interface configured to resolve this issue.

Nancy summarized the payroll project – “What I really liked about the Ceridian integration is that it is unique and specific to my and NEC’s own requirements.  Hemu and Jerry were great to work with…knowledgeable and very thorough in their work and communication.   I’m happy to report the interface is now live and I don’t have to worry about duplicate data entry or errors that were a problem for us in the past.  I would highly recommend HR System Strategies to any other users of Ceridian Powerpay Plus.”

Nancy had the following to say for other potential and existing clients, “To existing users – if you are not using HRSS support, I encourage you to do so.  They are available to me, transparent, friendly and very knowledgeable. And if you are considering HR Systems Strategies’ solutions, I would highly recommend them.  I know the saying goes, no one ever got fired for going with IBM and HRSS might take a leap of faith, but I did and very happy with my decision!”

Looking ahead, Nancy has seen some of the upcoming enhancements that will be provided.  “I am very excited about some of the newer features of ESS and have shown those to some of my employees, who are equally enthusiastic!”

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The NBIH began setting up operations in early 2020. In that short time they have grown from 25 to nearly 40 employees. They had already decided that Sage 300 would be their finance/payroll system and were working with Nicole Boileau of The Solution Provider Inc., a Sage business partner with extensive experience implementing Sage 300 in First Nation organizations. Nicole has other clients using info:HR and interfacing it with the Sage 300 payroll module. She commented, “I’ve been working with info:HR and the implementation team for several years now and I know how much day-to-day work my clients can save in the Payroll department with the two systems sharing data. For the NBIH we were starting from scratch for both systems, which was ideal – we could be sure to configure both systems in a manner that would take the fullest advantage of both of them.”  The NBIH would be using info:HR’s Employee/Manager Self-Service (ESS) and Online Timesheets modules to collect attendance and absence data for passing to Sage 300 payroll.

At the NBIH both Sarah Iahtail, Finance Officer, and Krystal Meawasige, Bookkeeping Clerk, took part in the info:HR decision and both subsequently would play key roles in the implementation. From Krystal: “Knowing what info:HR could do in working with Sage 300 made it the top contender. The ease of use perked us all up. Having all our employee data stored in one place, eliminating paper files, giving employees access to the system whether they are inside or outside the office, these would be huge benefits for us.”  Sarah added, “Being a small organization at the beginning, we didn’t have the luxury of having someone dedicated to HR responsibilities – the duties were spread across all of senior management, including our Executive Director, Laureen Linklater-Pizzale.  We wanted a system that would alleviate the manual administrative work that she was doing so she could devote that time to more strategic initiatives.”

The NBIH chose to have HR Systems Strategies host info:HR for them on their cloud server in Toronto. HRSS staff completed the provisioning in early March of this year and training started immediately. The current approach to training sessions is to schedule short, frequent sessions of two hours, each followed by a “homework” assignment – data entry/update work in info:HR that complements the training just conducted and prepares for the next session. The two-hour time frame is much easier to schedule than a full day session and doesn’t result in information overload for the attendees. Barbara Chicago, Manager of Client Services, conducted the sessions and noted, “Sarah and Krystal were a pleasure to work with. They learned quickly, easily picked up the concepts, asked intelligent questions and got the homework sessions done on time, which let us keep to our aggressive schedule. All in all, the implementation went very smoothly.”

The NBIH wanted the Sage 300 interface to be up and running as soon as possible, so work on it started even before the first training session. Jerry Rowland, Chief Technology Officer, and Frank Shen, Senior Software Engineer, have implemented Sage interfaces numerous times in the past several years, so they knew how to get the ball rolling even as Sarah and Krystal were taking their first training sessions. Said Jerry, “We anticipated that the interface work for the NBIH would go very smoothly since both info:HR and Sage 300 were new applications to them. There would be no questionable legacy data to have to reconcile – and that’s exactly how it turned out.”  Krystal pointed out, “Because we were new to Sage 300, in the beginning we didn’t know exactly what we would need. And, as we grew, we saw features we could take advantage of to provide even more automation in the interface. Having Jerry and Frank there to recognize those situations and then include them in the interface has made a world of difference.”  Jerry stresses, “Don’t be fooled – no HRIS can offer such a thing as a “right out of the box” data transfer to payroll. Each one is unique to the client using it, even if that client has the same payroll system as the organization next door. For that reason, every payroll interface project requires some level of configuration and programming customization to capture client-specific uniqueness and ensure the interface operates per that particular client’s payroll system requirements. That work is done as a standard part of any interface implementation project and we test that together with the client to confirm that the customization operates as expected. In the case of the NBIH we were fortunate to have Nicole participate as the resident payroll expert.”

As Sarah and Krystal expanded their use of info:HR and rolled out the ESS and Online Timesheets modules to all staff, they took advantage of HRSS assistance. Krystal remarked, “Support has been excellent – any time I need a question answered help is literally just a phone call away. At first, we were unsure since it was all new but, with the aid of the info:HR support team and the great little how-to’s that Barbara gave us for our own use and to provide to our people, Sarah and I can deliver assistance to the rest of the staff. Thankfully, we had good training and we are able to feel confident in providing that help.”

The organization is now seeing the results that they had hoped for six months ago. The Sage 300 interface is fully operational, transferring employee master and timecard data from info:HR to Sage. Employees are using ESS to keep track of their time-off balances and submit their absence requests. And for Laureen it has worked out well. She is dealing with much less HR paperwork than before after Sarah and Krystal showed her how to use ESS to respond to the time-off requests that come her way. In fact, she became the first user there of the ESS mobile version, using her phone to check on and respond to those requests.

As for the future, Sarah plans on investigating the use of document attachments, where employee documents can be associated with the employee’s profile and stored in and retrieved from the info:HR database. She will also explore automatic email follow-ups for future-dated activities like performance reviews and certification renewals, to eliminate the need for Outlook calendar entries and paper to-do lists. Krystal would like to roll out the new Online Timesheets mobile data entry / submission option to make it available for staff who might be away or otherwise not in the office to get their timesheets in for payroll processing. She is also interested in exploring the upcoming ESS feature for employee location tracking (described elsewhere in this newsletter).

When asked if they had any advice for new clients, Sarah suggests that the HR/Payroll staff take all the training available to them. The more you know about what the system can do, the more you can reduce and eliminate manual administrative effort and let the system do it for you. Krystal recommends that you start small, plan and prepare for the implementation, and think ahead for growth – you’ll use the system more than you ever thought you would.

And, as Sarah and Krystal grow and expand the use of info:HR at the NBIH, we at HRSS will be with them to assist as needed every step of the way. They both have proven to be excellent users, so we look forward to hearing about their accomplishments.

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HR Systems Strategies Inc. (HRSS) reached out to Chapleau Cree FN in late 2018 when they had already started to look for a better way to modernize their existing manual methods. Edith Larocque, Band Administrator, and team wasted no time and after demonstrations, conducting due diligence, and lining up financing they became a client in early 2019. Like many First Nations, Chapleau Cree’s suite of solutions included Employee/Manager Self-Service (ESS), Online Timesheets, the core info:HR Engine, and Sage 300 Payroll Integration for their 50 employees.

Chapleau Cree has employees working in multiple locations – Administration Office, Health Centre and off-site such as Public Works. The challenge for Chapleau Cree FN was managing employee attendance and absences, most notably regular hours worked, banked overtime and sick time off.

After getting their data automatically populated into the system, the Chapleau Cree team of Edith, Lori Moreau (Finance Controller) and Connie Martin (Accounting Clerk) began training with Barbara Chicago and they were off! Lori commented, “We were excited to see the system working in our own environment with our own data, doing for us what we saw in the demonstrations. In retrospect it probably wasn’t the best time to get started as we were in the middle of our year-end and audit. It was a big change for our staff, but like everything else after getting used to it, they like the system.”

Previously, employees were doing everything on paper. Lori said, “An employee would fill out a paper time-sheet that went to their Manager. The Manager would review it and sign it. Then it went to the Band Administrator, Edith, who would do the same. Finally, it would end up with us and we reviewed everything yet again. That’s a big process! That’s all gone now. We have the Online Timesheets portal and it’s all on the employee now to enter their hours worked and of course they want to make sure they are getting paid accurately. And then there’s the ESS web portal that provides employees the ability to see selected portions of their personnel file and, more importantly, their current balances of all time-off categories to which they are eligible – vacation, sick, banked overtime and more.”

The staff use either their own workstations, shared workstations or their phones to track their time banks and make vacation requests. Lori said, “The employees and managers like the mobile ESS and it would be great to have the same mobile capability for Timesheets, which I understand is coming.”

The automation in place now has paid off during COVID-19. Lori said, “For sure the priority has been and continues to be everyone practicing social distancing and being safe. The system has made it much easier for us to collect data from employees wherever they are rather than the way we were doing it before – pushing paper around and trying to get approvals manually. So, it’s been a big help!”

Chapleau Cree and HRSS have been working together to finalize the integration between Sage 300 and info:HR. Currently Lori pulls a report from info:HR and then enters the information into the Sage 300 accounting system. “It will be nice to have that manual step automated, which we are close to having.” There are two primary reports that Lori uses. “I generate the Attendance Summary Report as well as the Individual Attendance Report for all employees listed on the summary report.”

Chapleau Cree FN is one of HRSS’s clients taking advantage of the hosting service. Lori said, “We are not near a major centre so the Internet Service provided to us was slow to start but we have noticed much better response times now, so the hosting is working well.”

Regarding vendor support Lori added, “Barbara has been great. She did all of our training and if ever I have a question, I call her. I’ve also used the main support group and the team there has been very responsive as well.”

Moving ahead Lori is looking forward to getting the Mobile Timesheets capability and finalizing the Sage 300 integration. “I know there is more in the system we aren’t using yet. Once our workload returns to something more normal, we’ll have the time to do that.

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To date, the Centre has been using a combination of paper files and Excel spreadsheets to store and track employee information. “This has presented significant challenges for accurately reporting absences,” remarked Melissa Roy, Wikwemikong Health Centre.

Presently, the Centre uses paper timesheets to track employee hours worked as well as absences for its 100 employees. “Trying to produce a report of time that people have taken off takes so long, I cannot wait till this system is fully implemented, so when I want to know how many days an employee has been away I can have the answer instantly,” explained Melissa. “Now I have to sift through timesheets, create a spreadsheet and manually calculate all of the time off. Sometimes it could take more than a day to ensure an accurate report for one employee.”

The ESS and Timesheets modules work in conjunction with info:HR to provide a full circle attendance tracking system. ESS provides the facility to request time off in advance, Timesheets records time worked in a pay period and info:HR provides a large number of reporting options. “The accountability this system creates is super and the reporting function, I can find out what I need with a few clicks. This is going to be incredible,” said Melissa.

Wikwemikong is currently seeking accreditation with the Ontario Ministry of Health. “This system is going to allow us to accurately generate reports we need so quickly,” Melissa added.

Andy Staniewski, President of HR Systems Strategies, noted, “We are pleased to welcome Wikwemikong to our info:HR client base. Wikwemikong provides essential services to community members. We are thrilled to provide them with tools and support they require to improve their HR processes and achieve their accreditation goals.”

Wikwemikong Health Centre, located on Manitoulin Island (Ontario), opened its doors to the community in July of 1988 to provide family medical care and community-based health programs. All services provided at the Health Centre are in both the Native language and English to serve all members of the community. The Centre’s mission is to provide access of all opportunities of traditional and western health care to the community.

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Located in downtown Toronto, the Chiefs of Ontario advocates for Ontario’s First Nations communities. Nathan Wright, Chief Operating Officer, was a previous HRSS client at the Assembly of First Nations in Ottawa, ON and immediately saw the opportunity for the Chiefs. He and Melvin Thompson, Director of Finance, called HRSS in and the rest is history.

Melvin Thompson commented, “We were consistently following up with employees to submit timesheets in a timely manner. Vacation and other entitlement balances were not accurate and employees were not aware of the time available to them. We have a very lean organization and consequently our administration team is extremely busy. They did not have the available time to ensure employee files were maintained in an efficient manner.”

Since implementing info:HR, ESS and TS, Chiefs of Ontario employees have been able to electronically submit their vacation and time requests, with the ability to view the amount of time available to them online. Timesheets are now submitted promptly. “We have noticed a reduction in investigation already. Employees can immediately see the balances in their time banks, and any requests that have been approved are in the timesheet, making the submission process for employees much simpler,” said Melvin. “Reporting is also much easier. Everything is in one place and with a couple of clicks we can get the information we require. The system is very easy and logical to use.”

“We are thrilled to have the Chiefs of Ontario join the growing community of info:HR users. It’s especially satisfying when some one from an existing client moves to a new organization and recommends our products and services,” added HRSS President Andy Staniewski.

Chiefs of Ontario is a political forum and secretariat for collective decision-making, action, and advocacy for the 133 First Nations communities located within the boundaries of the province of Ontario. Guided by the Chiefs in Assembly, it upholds self-determination efforts of the Anishinaabek, Mushkegowuk, Onkwehon:we, and Lenape Peoples in protecting and exercising their inherent and Treaty rights.

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Like many organizations, Kunuwanimano had been tracking employee information using spreadsheets, manual methods, and using paper approval processes. The HR team knew there had to be a better way and with growth of the organization on the horizon, pressure was on to select and implement an automated online Human Resource Information System (HRIS) and say goodbye to the time-consuming, error-prone ways of the past.

“The organization needed software that would be able to grow with us – Kunuwanimano has more than doubled in size since initial implementation! – and be flexible to accommodate our ever-changing requirements,” said Donna Woodrow, HR Manager. “Spreadsheets and paper files were not going to suffice any more. Reporting requirements could not be met in a timely manner, data was not centralized, and too much time was being spent on tasks that could be automated.”

Donna arrived during the implementation of info:HR and the Employee/Manager Self Serve (ESS) module and jumped right in beside Jamie Stevens, HR Generalist at Kunuwanimano, the lead on the implementation project. “I have experience with other HRIS systems and I find info:HR very user-friendly and easy to use,” remarked Donna.

The project was efficiently managed by the Kunuwanimano team, beginning with info:HR and then launching ESS to a pilot group of employees before expanding to the entire organization. “Our employees now have access to their entitlements and attendance data, creating accountability and providing our managers the ability to effectively monitor and manage their teams. There are fewer calls to the HR department with inquiries on entitlement balances, allowing us to focus on other projects,” commented Donna.

“With all of our data centralized, reporting is much more efficient and accurate. We are able to produce a report in a couple of clicks now, when in the past it could take us hours or even days to collect the data. We are able to manage our attendance much more effectively. We are tracking training data and finally also uploading documents into the database. Quite simply, we are so much more efficient. Our goal is to eventually be paperless and we are well on our way to achieving that.”

Andy Staniewski, President of HR Systems Strategies was enthusiastic in saying, “We are thrilled to count Kunuwanimano Child and Family Services as a client of ours. They are doing tremendous work in their community and for the children and families of First Nations Members. The HRSS team is privileged to contribute to their efforts any way that we can.”

Kunuwanimano Child and Family Services, funded by the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, began operations as a child and family services agency in 1989 serving the needs of children and families under Section X of the Child and Family Services Act. Their mission is to collaboratively work with their First Nations Members to ensure the safety and well-being of children by strengthening, supporting and encouraging the healthy development of families. They are committed to providing services in a manner that is holistically and bi-culturally appropriate for the First Nations.

For more information, please contact Bill Kennedy at 416-599-4747 or email info@infohr.com

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