BAE SYSTEMS Human Resources
BAE at a glance
- A global systems company innovating for a safer world
- Dedicated to making the intelligent connections needed to
deliver innovative solutions to customers with technologically
challenging requirements
- Prime contractor and systems integrator in air, sea, land and
space
- Order book of £42.5bn (year-end 2003)
- Sales of £12.6bn (year-end 2003)
- Presence across all five continents
- Over 100,000 employees worldwide
- Wide breadth of activities
- Within the UK employees (including those in joint ventures and Airbus UK) are working in a variety of roles from leading edge, innovative scientists in the company's Advanced Technology Centres, to fitters and welders building the next generation of nuclear submarines or the Eurofighter Typhoon.
The Business Challenge - delivering corporate HR Services in 5 weeks
The BAE Human Resources Satisfaction Survey & Employee
Opinion Survey suggested that the BAE HR Information System (HRIS),
'peopleportal' was not being used as readily as might have been
expected:-
a. Visibility of HR capabilities - employees were not aware
of all the services supplied by HR.
b. Employees were required to 'log-on' to access even
general HR information (whereas authentication was only necessary
for personal information and services).
c. Confusion - HR information was available from a number of
separate websites:- HR within Business Units, Functions, People
Portal etc.
It was also clear that many of the Business Unit HR web sites
provided differing information and often contained conflicting
messages due to lack of governance. The cost of maintaining these
separate web sites was also a critical factor to BAE who adopted
the vision for the HR function to - "Do it once and do it well".
The GateWest Solution
BAE SYSTEMS and Xchanging (BAE's outsourced HR partner)
turned to GateWest to develop the HR services interface to People
Portal. It would be used as the primary source of corporate HR
services and used by all Business Units. Importantly, the HR
information and services needed to be easily accessed across the
organisation without the need to login, but still allow employees
to login when required to access personal information such as
pension, payroll, car scheme and health care benefits.
These personal services required authentication and therefore
would require individuals to log-on. The analogy often used when
developing this concept is that of a bank's website - information
is readily available regarding information services offered, but
individuals are required to log-on to access their accounts and
personal services.
Of primary importance was the ability to delegate content
ownership to HR functional and business unit leads whilst ensuring
compliance to the corporate policies governing brand, look and
feel, quality etc.
GateWest provided vital enabling technology to underpin this
vision:-
a. Governance - Each area of the website required clear and
documented 'ownership' - these individuals would be accountable for
making sure the information kept on the website is topical. The
GateWest tool echo was used to delegate ownership to each of the HR
policy owners. Work flow and the ability to create goverance
policies was essential to ensuring that the content remained up to
date.
b. Duplication - All local Business Unit HR web sites were
switched off and redirected to the HR services web site. To ensure
any local business unit policies could be addressed, the e-CHO
Content Management tool was used to create Business Unit
communities where local custodians could also capture and manage
local policy. Through e-CHO, BAE SYSTEMS had the complete
management tool for all corporate and local Business Unit HR
information that could be easily structured and kept topical.
c. Ongoing Maintenance - Each HR custodian agreed to keep
the content topical (these principles were agreed by the HR
Directors) and abide by corporate policies. All content managers
were trained to use the e-CHO tool and within 5 weeks of project
inception, all HR content (over 400 pages) was accessable via HR
Services and content owners training.
Value Added by Gatewest
The new HR Services provided BAE SYSTEMS with key
functionality to support the HR Vision.
- Delivering all the functionality currently embedded within
and planned for peopleportal.
- Providing authenticated services only where necessary to meet Data Protection requirements, BAE Systems policies and information specific to an individual.
- Being re-designed to provide an intuitive portal meeting
future business requirements e.g. Corporate branding changes.
- A 'basic search' & an 'advanced search'. A basic search
to search all the information contained within HR services
website . The advancedsearch would use Autonomy tool within the
BAE SYSTEMS Virtual University (
see case study on
the VU) to search wider channels (such as Training, Best
Practice, news, eLearning, HR Conferences, Company briefs etc.
- The content being updated by both BAE Systems & Xchanging
staff - in line with the documented governance arrangements.
- Being accessable from outside of BAE Systems (ie individuals
at home etc).
- Integration to Business Unit websites.
- Providing an integrated link to BAE Systems website(s) -
Connectus (corporate Intranet).
- Displaying the number of visitors and from which site.
- Incorporating a 'Ask HRD' area, in which individuals could
ask any question and receive a direct response.
- Incorporating a FAQ's section (linked to the data held by the
Customer Support Team).
- Incorporating a 'news channel' section (automatically
populated with external HR conferences, news, case studies, the
share price etc from the VU's Autonomy Tool).
- Ready access to HR Performance metrics by Business Group etc
- Measuring usage and access trends - so reports could be generated highlighting number of visitors, unique visitors, location of visitors, time on site(s), most commonly visited pages, top exit page etc.