Background
Civiteq had previously worked with The Highland Council to identify their strategy before embarking on technology change for their HR and payroll functions. As part of this, we delivered an options appraisal to help them make an informed decision on their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) pathway.
Following that engagement, the council sought our expertise for a new project to support them with their data and service design for their HR and payroll processes.
Our project brief and goals
We were asked to carry out two pieces of work:
1 – Service design – to map the council’s existing processes and how they should work in the future.
2 – Data and reporting review – to help the council understand their data landscape better.
The goal was to get the council to a point where they could make a firm decision on their technology solution for HR and payroll and their best route towards implementation.
Our approach
The focus of our engagement was on user centred design for the service.
Our work included:
- User surveys and interviews
- Workforce activity analysis
- As-is process mapping
- Collaborative to-be process mapping
- Pain point analysis
- Workshops
- End-user personas
- Change communications support
- Data review with recommendation report (including an information asset register)
- Updated options appraisal
“The data review helped us understand our data picture better, while the service design work was really positive because of the focus on the user experience. Civiteq worked with us to co-design what our processes could be like, so it was a very good, collaborative piece of work.”
Chris Donaldson, Strategic Improvement & Performance, The Highland Council
“We used our market knowledge and experience of working with other councils to help them see what their future could look like.”
Hannah Burgess, Senior Consultant, Civiteq
The biggest challenges
A significant challenge was the geographical spread of the council’s teams. We overcame that through remote working, which enabled us to engage with all the relevant users.
Our team also responded well to changes in scope. We came together to make sure what we delivered was tailored to the council’s needs.
Outcomes and benefits
Our data and service design work – together with our updated options appraisal for the technology change – gave our client clear recommendations to present to their senior leadership. They’re now in a stronger position with the building blocks to take them into their HR and payroll transformation. Plus, the council found our work on user personas particularly beneficial because it drove them towards a more “user-centred, empathetic design”.
Chris comments: “Civiteq’s collaborative working style was the key. They’re willing to listen and change course if needed or, equally, to suggest a better way of doing something. Their breadth of experience gained from working with similar organisations was very important, and their change management expertise was really valuable around how we engage with our diverse stakeholders.”
Hannah says: “We’ve given them the confidence their route forward is the correct one, and we’ve helped ensure their HR and payroll staff are on board with the technology change.”
Book a meeting with one of our team to discuss how we could support your technology change programme.