Santia

Through a number of process review meetings to investigate existing problems, the Ochre team set about getting to know how Santia work – what they currently do, how they do it, why they do it and who does what within the business.

What the team found isn’t uncommon in large organisations: inconsistencies between policy and procedure, unclear procedural timescales, a lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities, and undefined governance and compliance controls.

It became clear to all involved that there needed to be an overarching review and re-engineering of the full end-to-end HR and Payroll process maps. Specifically the review would focus on two key areas:

• Processing of bonuses and overtime – Santia and the Ochre team identified that there were many instances of unauthorised bonuses and overtime. With no clear process in place, it became evident that Santia’s Payroll team were the only people signing off overtime and bonus claims; whereas there needed to be a robust procedure established, and more engagement in the process between Payroll and authorised signatories.
• Expenses management – the Ochre team found that Santia were using an out of date expense policy and a process without formal checks. A common problem within many large businesses, expenses had become a matter of someone simply processing expense payments (in this case a purchase ledger assistant); whereas there needed to be clearer compliance measures, responsibility and ownership of the process.

In order to initiate change within Santia, the Ochre team quickly identified ways to deliver business improvements and shared these with Santia stakeholders. This stage helped to define roles and responsibilities and establish how new business processes would look to Santia’s people.

As a result of face-to-face meetings with Santia’s Business Unit Leaders, it was specifically agreed that the Ochre team would develop and establish a new weekly process for submitting and approving variable data, such as bonuses and overtime, in order to reduce overpayments and ensure governance around the approval of final pay runs. And having engaged with key stakeholders across the Santia group, the Ochre team also presented a clear plan for the transfer of the manual processing of expenses by Santia’s purchase ledger team to a self service model.

The project went live with the roll out of new policies, procedures, processes and forms. To tackle the issues surrounding the processing and payment of bonuses and overtime, and expenses management, clear governance and compliance controls also went live which strictly adhered to a published authority matrix.

More specifically:

Integrating a process for bonuses and overtime

• The Ochre team integrated a clear approval process for bonuses – a weekly process which makes the best use of Ochre’s automated and streamlined workflow. The process now ensures that bonuses and overtime are approved weekly by Santia’s Business Unit Leaders, with a final approval physically signed off at the end of the month by the Head of Sales or HR.
• The process has been complemented by the restructuring of HR and Payroll software, and the implementation of an interface between HR and Payroll systems, together with the Ochre team managing liaison with HRMC in terms of statutory reporting and submissions and the reconciliation of payments.
• In relation to overtime, the Ochre team also introduced a monthly schedule of activity so Santia are now able to forecast in advance, rather than only seeing the full picture after claims are submitted.

Redefining expenses management

• The Ochre team integrated new forms and a rewritten expenses policy.
• Go-live saw the processing of expenses migrated from Santia’s Caerphilly Head Office to Ochre’s Exeter base, where the Ochre team now check all expenses claims, rejecting claims and reporting on repeat offenders where necessary.
• The payment of expenses was also integrated into Payroll’s systems, rather than simply processed by the purchase ledger team, with a clearly defined timetable of weekly payment dates also communicated to all Santia employees.

Following go-live, the Ochre team have been continuously supporting Santia and carried out a review of the roll out, and the new processes and systems.

The team found that interactions between Santia teams have improved, with an automated interface between HR and Payroll systems enabling improved communication and the sharing of data and information. This has meant that Ochre have been able to provide analytical data to key stakeholders within Santia, such as reports regarding volumes of bonuses, overtime and expense claims, policy violations and expense claim repeat offenders.

The Ochre team continue to provide monthly reviews with stakeholders and Board members of Santia to update on progress and discuss issues. They are also supporting the analysis and review of current terms and conditions to enable a business transformation programme to standardise and reduce costs.