Baulkham Hills Council in north west Sydney was experiencing a large volume of employee relations enquiries that were overloading their internal telephone system. Queries about industrial relations policies and procedures, employee entitlements and management guidelines created a lot of work for Council’s Organisation Development Team, and wasted a lot of paper.
The solution is called ERIC, or Employee Relations Information Centre, a 542 page electronic document containing all Council’s employee relations information.
Introduced in April 2002, ERIC combines the Shire’s industrial relations policies, internal procedures, employee entitlements, management guidelines and forms in one Adobe document, which is stored on all employees’ desktop computers. As a result, ERIC has reduced the number of enquiries referred to the Organisation Development Team, allowing the Team to focus on core duties. Employees can also search for sensitive information without having to consult other Council staff, providing a higher degree of confidentiality.
ERIC was developed in house using existing equipment, information and software, requiring no major Council funding.
Council’s IT Trainer guided the project, while its Human Resources Officer taught employees how to use the package. The only cost to Council was updating computer software from Adobe 4 to 5 and relocating a number of computers so outdoor employees could use ERIC. By providing on screen access to employee information, ERIC also supports Council’s ‘paperless office’ policy.
For further information contact the Manager Organisational Development, Ann Metham, email ametham@bhsc.nsw.gov.au, or telephone (02) 9843 0113.
