Newsletter in SAP® HR (June 2005)

164 subscribers receive this issue of the English AdManus Newsletter (554 already subscribed to the German Newsletter).

1. Tips in mySAP® HR

Get a free sample copy of HR Expert
HR-Expert is published by Wellesley Information Services. HR-Expert comes up monthly and gives world-class information on SAP HR. The authors (also from AdManus) introduce solutions and potential for optimization which you can definitely reproduce, because it always contains a detailed description with screenshots.
HR-Expert does not contain any advertisement. The regular price for one issue is more than 50 USD; hence this offer is worth real money. We benefit a lot both for ourselves and our clients from HR-Expert.

Please see yourself and get an impression of this high quality journal. AdManus readers can send an e-mail to special@hrexpertonline.com. You’ll get an answer with the URL to download a free sample copy of HR Expert (issue April). We hope you will find this issue beneficial to the work you are doing in the SAP HR area.

Table of Content:
1.Use Standard Utilities to Transfer OM Data Between Clients and from Legacy Systems
2.Locate Unoccupied Positions Without Vacancy Processing
3.Save Time by Using CATT to Upload HR Data Automatically
4.Indirect Valuation Modules - Customize Your Wage Calculations
5.Use a Custom Program to Run Your Process Model on a Repeating Schedule

What is SAP CATS for?
SAP CATS is a cross application SAP component with various benefits. More precisely: the Cross-Application-Time-Sheet is a highly flexible tool to transport time management data into different SAP modules to assign a price tag to the hours worked. The personnel input into products and services plays a considerable role in the calculation of costs, so that the measurement of the personnel factor is not only important but essential, because: „You can’t manage what you don’t measure“. Please read the whole article about SAP CATS ...

What to enter in IT 7 with an employment %age above 100%
If the working time of an employee is not exactly 100% of that defined through the work schedule rule, the flag "Dyn. daily work schedule" always needs to be set for the time evaluation to get the correct results. While this is done automatically for employees with an employment %age below 100%, you have to set both the flag "Part-time employee" and "Dyn. daily work schedule" manually for employees with a percentage above 100. As this can easily be forgotten by the user, we recommend using a BADI or function exit to set it automatically.

2. What’s new in Human Resources?

New trends in recruiting
The magazine "Human Resources" (www.hrmagazine.co.uk) featured two interesting articles on new trends in recruiting:

Cultural profiling
(Matt Farquharson: "Know thyself", Human Resources, May 2005, p. 36 - 41)

In order to reduce costs caused by hiring the wrong staff more and more companies (e.g. KPMG or Aegis Media) set a great value on the measurement of the candidates’ cultural compatibility with the organisation. Thus, assessments tools must deliver more than just data on the skills or IQ of a person. But modern assessment tools being are able to produce cultural data on candidates is just not enough. First of all, hiring organisations must understand there own culture. So, the first step should be to get a cultural profile of the company - broken down to the level of departments. The article describes one example, where the insurance group Royal SunAlliance used the cultural assessment tool C-Sort delivered by Hay Group. The tool uses a list of 56 attributes which the employees are asked to order according to how they perceive that they are currently encouraged in their organization and according to how they think they should be encouraged. The reward of getting the cultural fit right in recruitment is high: improved retention and job satisfaction lead to better productivity and lower costs of staff turnover. However, there are also some dangers to deal with: focussing too much on cultural fit, you might end up with everybody in your company thinking and acting exactly in the same way. Moreover, culture isn't everything. The competencies of the candidate are still as important as ever - so you shouldn't hire based on cultural fit alone.

Speed recruiting
(Amanda Nottage, "First impressions", Human Resources, May 2005, p. 46 - 47)
Most people have heard about "speed dating" or "speed networking". Both are meant to save time and create more opportunities than other procedures to find somebody matching one's own expectations or requirements. With research suggesting that employers and candidates decide within the very first minutes or even seconds whether they'd like to work with each other, it seems only natural to use this concept in recruitment as well. That's exactly what is happening now. Organisations such as Reed Graduates set up speed recruitment events for their clients. The candidates have 10 minutes to present themselves with each employer and ask any questions. Of course, no contracts are signed after these ten minutes. If the first impression is good, there will be a second meeting to get into the details. Nevertheless, there are already some companies that want to increase the efficiency of their recruitment process. Goldmann Sachs and Deloitte, among others, are giving speed recruitment a try.

3. News from AdManus

Different Presentation of our annual customer survey
We acquainted about the results of our annual customer survey 2004 in our last Newsletter. Our customers’ overall impression of our service in 2004 was 1.6 (on a level of satisfaction from 1=very high to 5=very low).
So far we published the single results of every AdManus member on our website. These results lie between 1.4 and 1.8. From now on we won’t publish the differences on the website anymore, but tell them to each client who participated on the survey.

As our client you can have trust in

• our ambition for a high satisfaction value with all AdManus consultants,
• a process of change to be set in motion, as soon as the satisfaction value falls short of a certain level and if it has happened twice, the consultant will be excluded from the network.

4. Book Recommendations

HR Personnel Planning and Development Using SAP
by Christian Krämer, Christian Lübke, Sven Ringling (Wellesley Information Services and SAP PRESS®)
Get a free sample of chapter 8 „Skill Management“ of this compelling new reference book that gives you a comprehensive view of the most important personnel planning and development functionality within SAP: click here for free download of chapter Skill Management(2 MB)

HR Strategy – Business focused, individually centred
by Paul Kearns
In "HR Strategy - Business focused, individually centred" Paul Kearns gets the priorities right: HR must contribute to the business goals. An HR strategy must clearly define how a significant value can be added through its implementation and how the strategic business goals depend on the HR strategy. Paul Kearns shows how to create this added value through HR. This is definitely a no-nonsense book about Human Resources - it gives any HR manager the opportunities to think about the added value of his or her department before somebody else does it.
Here you can find a detailed recension, the table of content and how to order the book HR-Strategy – Business focused, individually centred.

5. German Language Lesson

For 3 years now, we encourage our German subscribers to improve their English with a small lesson containing vocabulary from HR-related topics. Now we give you the chance to learn some German HR-vocabulary as well. In this issue, the subject of the lesson is "Organisational Management". You find it via this link: Language Lesson