The Reach of Distant Learning
Impacting the Learning Practices in Households
An international cement company with operations in over 30 countries faces the challenge of increasing productivity and competitiveness. In the home country the company had 15 cement plants, 211 ready mix plants, 67 distribution centres, and a headcount of 5,000 people, including the corporate offices. Before the Internet era, a company with offices and plants in multiple locations usually had commercial packages, spreadsheets, and in-house developed programs for the same purpose, and all must feed the accounting month-end cycle. The payroll was exactly the case. This study is prepared to describe how the project of improvement obtained additional benefits beyond the business expectations.
Executive Summary
The company set a global strategy to simplify its operations relying strongly in revamping and expanding its information technology infrastructure (see #1 in following post on Design Principles). Human Resources launched several projects aligned with the directive, among which was the unification of the payroll applications. The new system worked based on parameters, and parametrization was a lengthy and meticulous process because each parameter should comply with terms and conditions specified in the labour contract language. The first three cement plants would be implemented one at a time; afterwards, the implementation team would split to do three cement plants simultaneously. The rest of the facilities would be implemented gradually since they are smaller and less complex.
Findings
Each cement plant processed two types of payroll: The workers’ payroll for unionized personnel, and the employees’ payroll; each payroll was processed weekly or fortnightly, respectively. There are more differences between the two types of payroll than their frequencies. The employees’ payroll considered hiring terms and conditions per person due to individual work contracts, while the workers’ payroll had all workers under the collective work contract managed by their union.
The employees’ payroll was complex because the hiring terms and conditions were as diverse as were the individual transactions per payroll period. Additionally, executives’ payroll was managed separately, as a different company, to avoid exposing confidential information by mistake. The employees’ payroll calculated each payslip as a tailor-made suit every time.
The Human Resources Department set the goal of optimising the payroll process by implementing the same system nation-wide (see #2 in following post on Design Principles). Due to legal regulations the two types of processes prevailed because the law considered them as two different compensation schemes, thus each needed undivided fiscal attention. The project offered important benefits like: Shorter process run-time; check points for quick partial re-processing runs—previously, every re-processing run was done from the beginning compromising punctuality; standardized month-end accounting interface; customisable management reports (see #3 in following post on Design Principles).
Discussion
During the 1990s the Internet was an incipient tool for everyone, individuals and companies alike. The pioneers tried the online environment even turning established ways of doing business into technological challenges. The company’s CEO was prone to use information technology whenever possible, so IT became a strategic tool that developed several competitive advantages for the business to the extent of the company being referred to as cyber-cement by financial periodicals (Dolan, 1998).
The company had been operating for 90 years which explains why aspects of its internal dynamics seemed particularly rigid. For example, the working conditions agreed upon with the worker’s union, a topic that brought up an unforeseen difficult situation. The company’s Labour Department was reluctant to accept the slightest modification to the established procedures. The attorneys in that department argued that any payroll-related modification might put the company at risk of a nation-wide strike should the worker’s union disapprove the changes.
According to the Human Resources Department all the changes were positive, and the reluctance of the Labour Department was hard to understand until, after several meetings, the Labour Department’s attorney explained their deepest concern: The new system will not require the worker’s physical signature on the payslip to attest receiving due payment for the period. In fact, among the features of the new system was the electronic signature of the payslip, and the corresponding worker’s payroll history. The information would be password protected, and the person would be able to access information whenever needed, and from wherever there was an Internet connection (see #4 in following post on Design Principles).
The electronic payment module had captured the interest of personnel that travelled often —employees and executives—, who were usually troubled when the payday occurred during a trip, and the deposited amount did not match. They had to wait to be back to review the information on their payslips. Online access allowed them to request clarification, if needed, and electronically sign the payslip. A few months before workers started being paid through bank deposits, an important progress with the union aimed to increase worker’s security by not having workers leaving the plant carrying cash on pay day.
Implementation
It took several meetings with the Labour Department to finally convince them to support the project in front of the union, and in order to achieve that the Human Resources Department researched instances when the electronic signature was regarded a valid resource by the International Labour Organization keeping the employer out of trouble. Appendices A and B contain citations of examples of such documented cases.
Once the Labour Department felt confident, the meeting with the union’s leaders took place. Human Resources outlined the project explaining how the workers would benefit from the new system emphasising two aspects in particular: The access to the worker’s information and its security; and the increasing use of technology not only by the company but everywhere, and how this trend could be positive for the workers and the business.
The union’s leaders received the information not hiding some scepticism about the innovative features described. All workers would be trained in site to access the system using public workstations placed conveniently throughout the plant. Direct access to the remote help-desk support would be available via the telephone next to each workstation (see #5 in following post on Design Principles). The payslip would be printed using the public workstation in the Human Resources area, which had the printer assigned to the module. All sounded right but what if the worker was unable to print the payslip? Would the worker go home without the payroll document?
Conclusion
The Labour Department did not know that Human Resources had an additional plan to make sure the union accepted the idea: Each worker would have a one-time-option to acquire a desktop computer at an incredibly low price —IT helped obtaining a massive discount from the account representative which made the workers’ payments symbolic, and they would pay in instalments. The goal was to facilitate the workers access to their payslip from home (see #6 in following post on Design Principles). The fact that computers were being increasingly useful at home mostly for the kids’ homework made this a great supporting argument.
The plan itself totally surprised the Labour Department’s attorneys. In addition, being optional instead of imposed, the plan made the union not only to accept it but to adopt the project altogether. They valued the plan as a way for their workers and families to learn and develop basic computer skills. About the new payroll system, they asked to attend the training sessions to learn more about what their workers would get.
The Continuum of Innovation is detailed in the following post on the topic.
References
Dahlman, C., Mealy, S., & Wermelinger, M. (2016). Harnessing the digital economy for developing countries. OECD Development Centre Working Papers, (334), 1-79.
Dolan, K. A., (1998, June) Cyber-cement. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com
/forbes/1998/0615/6112060a.html#678be2c85811
Lipton, S., & Matyas, S. (1978). Making the Digital Signature Legal and Safeguarded. Data Communications, 7(2), 41.
Appendix A
Harnessing the digital economy for developing countries
This report makes a call for why the digital economy matters for developing countries and what they need to consider when developing a national digital strategy. The world is undergoing digital revolution with significant implications for global economies and livelihoods. This revolution is predicated on the ever-increasing pace of technological innovation and diffusion. Digital technologies and their attendant applications are reshaping whole domains of human activity, and are spreading across the world faster than previous waves of technological innovation. The digital revolution is thus too important for any country to overlook. As outlined in Section II, the digital economy can be harnessed for inclusive and sustainable growth: digital technologies make life easier for citizens and consumers, raise the productivity of workers and firms, and help governments extend key services to those who need them most. However, this does not just happen randomly: governments must engage in strategic planning to maximise the development impact of digitalisation and ensure that its benefits are evenly distributed. (Dahlman, Mealy, & Wermelinger, 2016)
Appendix B
Making the Digital Signature Legal and Safeguarded
The need, use, and legal significance of one’s signature on documents or instruments must be viewed from a perspective embracing several branches of the law. Many of these bodies of law presume a paper-based society. If such transactions were to be implemented exclusively via an electronic communications system, it would be necessary that the system provide a capability for the transmission of “signed” messages. One possible method for obtaining digital signatures is to make use of a “public-key cryptosystem.” Protocols for implementing digital signatures will require an initial written agreement between the parties in question containing a complete description of the procedure being agreed to and the bit-patterns which are needed as part of the validating process. This event will have implications about the Statute of Frauds, the Law of Acknowledgement, the Law of Agency, and the Uniform Commercial Code. (Lipton & Matyas, 1978)