Honeywells Best Staffing Practices Pay Off

Honeywell, a $24-billion diversified technology and manufacturing leader,serves customers worldwide with aerospace products and services; controltechnologies for buildings, homes and industry; automotive products; powergeneration systems; specialty chemicals; fibers; plastics; and electronic andadvanced materials. Today, as one of the 30 stocks included in the Dow JonesIndustrial Average, Honeywell focuses on delivering unsurpassed customer andshareholder value through talented people and innovation. To Honeywell,optimally deploying human capital across the organization is the most importantelement to ensure not only success in innovation but execution across thecompany.

David McNulty, Honeywell’s Director of Staffing, said, “Hiring anddeveloping the best possible people is critical to our success. Partnering withRecruitsoft to implement a world-class, online staffing management system allowsus to attract the best candidates and build a pipeline of talent.”

Staffing Systems Analyst Lisa Arnold stated, “Human capital is the keydifferentiator to any great company. It is not only important to hire the bestpeople but the continued vitality of any organization depends on lettingemployees grow with their jobs. Recruitsoft helps us do just that.”

Honeywell believes it is critical at the point of hire to identify the rightcandidates for positions, and skills-based staffing is key to assessing theinternal and external talent pool. Honeywell’s employees are required tocomplete 40 hours of learning annually. Learning opportunities range fromclassroom and Web-based training to on-the-job assignments — all with thepurpose of advancing employees’ skills sets.

Arnold noted that Recruitsoft solutions play an important role in workforcemanagement across the company. “Training and skills deployment have animportant correlation with retention. As employees garner new skills and havenew employment interests, Recruitsoft solutions enable processes to help them tobe considered for other positions within our organization — and this will havea positive impact on retention,” stated Arnold.

Applying Honeywell’s Six Sigma Plus and Digitization Initiativesto Staffing Management
Many manufacturing companies during the late 20th century utilized Six Sigmaand its principles to optimize assembly line production. Today, all Honeywellemployees are taught an innovative system called Six Sigma Plus, which isdesigned to eliminate variability and has saved the company $3.5 billion since1995. In various departments across the company, Six Sigma Plus programs work toenhance customer value and reduce waste, leading to an increase in overallproductivity and profitability. Honeywell expects digitization, referring toWeb-based tools, to deliver more than $1 billion in cumulative savings over thenext three years. In line with these objectives, Honeywell decided to evaluateWeb-based staffing management solutions that would improve its processes whilesimultaneously cutting costs, increasing productivity and improving customerservice. Honeywell receives approximately 10,000 résumés per month and priorto implementing Recruitsoft, utilized BrassRing’s Talent Gateway postingsystem.

“As part of Honeywell’s Six Sigma program, the Recruitsoft implementationis expected to generate productivity improvement opportunities that reducemanagement costs by at least eight percent per year,” stated Arnold. Shecontinued, “Recruitsoft has streamlined our processes and we expect them tocut costs and help our internal customers succeed.”

PeopleSoft Integration and Reporting
Honeywell’s solution selection process took roughly four months, was led byKathleen Karneth, Staffing Systems Consultant, and evaluated eight providers.With sites in 95 countries, Honeywell required a global solution as well asintegration with its PeopleSoft Human Resource Information System. Under its SixSigma Plus focus, integration would not only help avoid unnecessary duplicationbut also ensure that information is shared among systems and ensuredata-integrity compliance to reduce administration and increase productivitywithin the Human Resources department.

“Tracking and reporting on EEO data within the application was extremelyimportant to us as a company,” said Arnold, adding, “Recruitsoft hassuccessfully uploaded over 22,000 job templates to help ensure that the data istracked accurately and it has been successfully integrated with our PeopleSoftHRIS.”

Other key requirements that Recruitsoft met included:

1. Workflow-enabled solution that would allow for more consistent andreal-time processes

2. A more effective means of finding qualified candidates faster

3. A skills-based staffing solution that also used prescreening questionsand had search functionality

4. A solution that empowered and engaged the hiring managers

5. An improved requisition management process and an automated approvalprocess

6. Built in pre-screening and qualifying assessment tools

7. The ability to track candidate sources and decrease candidateobsolescence

8. An automated employee referral system

9. Solid company financials

Said Arnold, “There are so many products available, but, in my opinion,Recruitsoft is indeed the best choice for Honeywell. Not only because it is anexceptional product, but because of its people, whom we consider true partners.The professionalism of Recruitsoft’s implementation consultants, sales teammembers, account managers, customer support specialists, and technicalconsultants all contributed to making our project a success.”

A Successful Implementation Across the Board
Recruitsoft worked closely with five internal Honeywell teams to manage theimplementation that was completed in four months. Phase one, which includes theU.S., went “live” on April 29, 2002. The teams developed included the CoreTeam, Process Team, Content Team, IT Team and Roll-out Team. David McNultychampioned the effort with Lisa Arnold, serving as the project manager, andKathleen Karneth as the business process lead. Each of the five teams hadspecific responsibilities and deliverables, which were based on Recruitsoft’sACE™ Staffing Best Practices.

Because Honeywell has nearly 400 locations in the U.S. alone, Arnold and herteam chose to manage the implementation project virtually for convenience,cost-savings, and to obtain valued input from representatives across the entirecompany.

Arnold stated, “The virtual implementation was a huge success. Throughoutthe process we used Webex sessions, e-mail, and conference calls. Many peoplewanted to know if it could be done successfully, virtually — and it can.”

McNulty noted that Recruitsoft’s consulting team delivered ahead ofexpectations and on budget in the face of a very aggressive timeline toimplementation. “Our Recruitsoft team took ownership, got involved, and was asinterested in the success of the project as our own employees. Together with aknowledge base and implementation toolkit, the Recruitsoft consulting teamhelped us tackle difficult change management issues and facilitated a successfulimplementation and integration.” Arnold also referred to Recruitsoft’scustomer support team as “top-notch” for Honeywell’s internal and externalusers.

With Recruitsoft: The Benefits
Within the first month, over 18,000 external candidates applied through thesolution. Integration with Honeywell’s employee data in the PeopleSoft HRISwas successful. “In line with our goal of creating an easy environment forinternal talent deployment, Honeywell has transferred 65,000 employee profilesto the Recruitsoft solution,” stated Karneth. Profiles include pertinentinformation on employees such has contact information, experience, education,awards, certifications/licenses, and training.

Honeywell has also automated its employee referrals with Recruitsoft’ssolution, greatly reducing administrative processes and benefiting Honeywell’s400 recruiters and 5,000 hiring managers. Prior to utilizing Recruitsoft,Honeywell’s employee referral system was entirely paper-based.

Honeywell recognizes the importance of a self-service model for recruitingand staffing, and, in addition to the Recruiter WebTop™, has also deployedRecruitsoft’s Hiring Manager WebTop™. Arnold stated, “Today, hiringmanagers are more engaged and we are very pleased with the results of theeLearning tool and really like that our hiring managers can use it for ongoingtraining.”

Honeywell’s staffing management professionals are also utilizingRecruitsoft’s configurable workflow. A workflow specified for universityrecruiting has been designed to ensure that recent or soon-to-be collegegraduates are identified as viable candidates and are screened and qualifiedmore quickly.

Additional benefits Recruitsoft brings include:

1. Real-time process improvements and tracking of important data andinformation such as EEO

2. A means of reporting on important metrics including time to hire, costper hire and productivity increases

3. Significant improvement in the approval process to create and approve arequisition, allowing recruiters and staffing managers to find qualifiedcandidates faster

4. A highly improved screening and assessment process based on skills

5. The tracking of candidate sources and reduction of advertising costs andthird-party recruiters (Honeywell expects agency fees to decline steadily eachyear)

6. Reduction in candidate obsolescence as a result of configurable workflowand collaboration

Arnold reports, “We have worked with Recruitsoft to map our businessobjectives and though we have only been live for a short time, we have alreadyseen cycle time reduced. As such, we expect the right candidates to be deployedacross our organization faster, at the right time. We feel that time tocontribution and productivity will be positively impacted throughout Honeywellas well.”