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The Children’s Center, a pediatric hospital in Oklahoma is realizing major gains across their organization by deploying mobility across their scheduling operation. They took part in a Customer Connections webinar to interact with other clients and prospects about how they have succeeded and realized:

• Reduction in schedulers burden
• Higher employee engagement through SMS inclusion
• Better long term vacation planning

To watch the webinar please click here.   What’s Next?

• Continue to browse our resource center
• Read Mobile’s 21% Impact on Employee Productivity
• Download the Unchain Your Team Whitepaper
• Download the 6 Ways Your Employees Can Leverage Mobility and Their Existing Behavior to Become More Efficient Presentation

From September 2010 HR Executive Magazine and Online Article:Small Screen Wonders by Larry Stevens HR Applications for mobile devices can help improve productivity. But what do you give up for the small screen? One would think that a company like Ecolab, a global $6 billion provider of cleaning, sanitizing and food-safety products, would have completely automated its workforce-management processes some time ago. However, most of its employees spend their days on the road — and that’s played havoc with attempts at automation. Most of the company’s 26,000 employees — spread throughout every U.S. state and more than 100 foreign locations — work out of their vehicles. Many only see PCs in their offices a few times a week, at best. Even managers may not be able to access their PCs every day. As such, the St. Paul, Minn.-based company’s systems for mobile workers were “pretty much manual,” says Director of HR and Payroll Services Marla Haley. Workers would call in or hand-deliver written time-and-attendance information to their managers, who would — sometimes hours or even a day later — enter the data into a spreadsheet. That data would eventually find its way to the corporate database. The process was a millstone around the company’s neck. “It was slow, error-prone, ripe for abuse and used up too much of managers’ time,” says Haley. Ecolab’s solution was to use Vortex’s Mobile Employee Connect and Mobile Manager Connect to provide workers with direct access to the company’s time-and-attendance database through an application on their BlackBerry smartphones, which have been the standard communications device for the company’s mobile associates for a number of years. Managers can now get real-time access to that data either via their PCs or BlackBerrys. In addition, workers requesting time off can now do so via their BlackBerry apps. The information is transmitted directly to the corporate database, which automatically determines the worker’s eligibility for the leave time and, if the worker has accumulated the sufficient time, forwards the request to the manager. This reduces what had been a five-to-six-step manual process — which could take days — to a one-step, fully automated process that’s ready for the manager’s OK within minutes. For the full article please click here

What’s Next?

• Visit our Mobile Employee Connect and Mobile Manager Connect Product Pages
• Read Mobile’s 21% Impact on Employee Productivity
• Download the Unchain Your Team Whitepaper
• Download the 6 Ways Your Employees Can Leverage Mobility and Their Existing Behavior to Become More Efficient Presentation
• Request a Demo

Manager access to mobility is one of the most logical first steps for most organizations when mobilizing their operation. On a retail floor, a hospital unit, within a manufacturing facility, in the field or even within an office environment – managers are most effective if they are able to disengage from their desks and access critical information at their fingertips. Aberdeen Group was the first of the analyst community to take a closer look at mobilizing HCM, in their survey they identified 4 main areas that managers were most focused on mobilizing. Of note the impact of mobility on the manager use was impressive, organizations with managers who used mobility had a 13% increase in year-over-year productivity compared to only a 6% increase for those not using mobility.   Top 4 Use Cases Deployed via Mobility for Managers of Successful Organizations

1. Schedule information – reviewing and adjusting managers’ most valuable assets in real-time
2. Requisition approvals – manager self-service functionality to eliminate bottlenecks
3. Applicant information / workflow – employee data so that a manager can position the best employee for the best job to maximize results and productivity
4. Learning content – assist in on the job training for staff and managers

A Whitepaper Looking At How Mobilization Can Change Organizational Behavior VP, West Sales and mobile and social media guru Paul Malin walks through many of the key challenges and benefits of mobilizing your operation. The immediate impact and the long term gains by mobilization are clear, proven and relevant.

Consumerization of the smartphone in North America has become a driver for businesses to leverage mobile solutions to communicate real-time information to their staff and drive productivity. Some organizations were quick to realize the benefit of mobilizing workforce management and focused on 4 primary areas early on. In 2010 Aberdeen Group did a comprehensive study of many of the winners in the race to mobilize WFM – one of the key questions was what activities are being prioritized first. Priority being one of the keys to a successful mobile strategy we felt it was appropriate to identify these. 4 Most Popular Activities Being Mobilized in WFM Today

1. Schedule Viewing – Simply put an employee should be able to access their schedule without running to a back room and jotting down upcoming shifts on a piece of paper they stick in their pocket and hope not to loose!
2. Schedule Editing and Optimization – The ability for a manager to edit the schedule on the fly from their device keeps them with their staff and stakeholders and not in an office pounding at a PC
3. Schedule Creation – Creating from scratch a comprehensive schedule is often best left for an office and 15 minutes of quiet time, while at the same time the gaps filled in the schedule can be closed and accounted for using mobility via communication with employees using SMS, automated phone or email.
4. Time and Attendance Records – Editing and closing payroll, not to mention punching in are all critical items that often can’t and shouldn’t wait for a clock or terminal

Learn how leading retailers are increasing the productivity of their managers and reducing turnover of the workforce by embracing mobile phone technology.  Axsium Group and Vortex Connect co-presented in 2010 to discuss the benefits and issues retailers face deploying workforce management functionality through the ubiquitous device. Click here to access the webinar

Recently one of our clients, the City of Nanaimo was featured in an article discussing how reaching and interacting with the under 25 workforce has been made easy using mobility.

“Managing a younger workforce is difficult and brings lots of inherent challenges – like whether people show up on time, or even come to work at all,” (Sandy Raddysh, manager of Aquatics) says. But there’s a plus side to working with this generation. “They’re very mobile, and very connected,” Raddysh says. “Everyone has a phone or access to a computer. What’s great is we can tap into younger people’s connectivity to manage our staffing needs.”

The article is no longer available online but for more information feel free to read this article about Grady Health also using Mobile Shift Connect to reach employees and capture tremendous ROI along the way