City of Edinburgh Council has signed a £10m deal with BT to modernise its human resources (HR) and payroll department with the introduction of electronic tools.

The e-HR system will streamline the council’s core HR processes, ranging from recruitment, health and safety and absence management, and enable managers to access information more easily while reducing paper transactions.

It also offers a self-service facility to staff where they will be able to conduct a range of transactions online.

It will go live in the first department this summer and be rolled out to all council departments by next year.

Andrew Unsworth, head of e-government at the council and sponsor of the e-HR project, has operated separate HR and payroll systems for the past 10 years.

‘This project will draw together a shared payroll and HR operation and introduce a self-service function that is more efficient and responsive to staff,’ he said.

Unsworth expects the project to deliver savings of £12m by 2016, with £1.5m saved per annum from 2009-2010.

‘We will create a shared service centre and new management practices on the back of the IT system,’ he said. ‘Savings will be realised because there will not be as many bits of paper being sent between the two offices, and less paper chasing.’

New management practices will take a similar approach to those used in the council’s customer services operation. For example, calls will be directed across the operational group depending on availability rather than calls going through to answer machines.

‘We will be able to do many things associated with best practice, such as monitoring calls. We will also have online recruitment, and staff can look at their pay bill or report sickness online rather than having to use paper,’ said Unsworth.

Two-thirds of the 20,000 council employees will use the self-service f unction. Unsworth says little training will be required because it is similar t o familiar services such as online banking.

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