We're all familiar with the term agile project management. The Project Management Institute defines agile project management as project management with a sense of ownership, the ability to drive something forward, and ready ability to move with quick easy grace. It is also associated with easy changes of direction called for by today’s business environment. With all that said, probably very few of us are good at truly being agile. In today's organization and especially healthcare, we're used to standards, conformity, policies, and procedures. We are used to following directions and avoiding mistakes.
In reality, our organizations are changing so quickly that between the time we have a project approved and the time we can start the project, requirements or needs may have evolved. This demands us to not only be adaptable, but also to be willing to let go of what the project's goals should be and to embrace what they could be. A recent project brought this back to mind as we changed payroll systems for our organization.
Our goals were to have a more robust and interactive payroll system for our staff, timekeepers, and managers, and relieve the biweekly burden on our payroll staff. We wanted to give the staff more options of when to receive their pay, more freedom to change banking and tax information, and more visibility to their own information such as paid time off and other benefits. We chose the largest payroll system used throughout the US and that should have meant that, with initial roll out, all of the goals were met.
Now comes reality … Initial log in information to the new payroll system was sent to our staff's organizational e-mail. To our surprise, about 30% of our staff have never logged into their e-mail or log into it so infrequently that they didn't remember how to get to the information. Once they did get logged into the payroll system, the vendor failed to mask salary information and so many timekeepers now had view access of salary information of other staff, managers, and directors. Staff had problems swiping in on the new time clocks with our current badge stock. The vendor failed to load all master files and so some staff didn't exist and had to be manually entered into the payroll system.
That was initially quite messy, but in an effort to be agile, we worked with the staff who couldn't get logged in and funneled them to the vendor who was able to assist. The vendor did get the salary info masked, but it was quite eye opening to the timekeepers that their managers and directors were not making the huge salaries they had imagined, especially in relation to the job responsibilities. The badge swipe issues were resolved with time clock configuration changes and new badge stock with a larger bar code. Printing the new badge stock gave our human resources department an opportunity to standardize badge content and to update all contractor badges as well. Eventually all master files were loaded and now all staff can clock in.
Nine months of planning and six months of installation couldn't prepare us to avoid all the issues that came up. It took dedication and determination to move beyond our original goals. Looking back, there's a sense of accomplishment that our team was able to successfully implement this system and are already looking to embrace what more the system can do. We are stronger, more connected, and work together better since we let go of what should be to embrace what could be.
Author
Rebecca S. Blevins, PMP, RHIT, CTR
Information Services Project Manager
Ephraim McDowell Health