This week's People Management Superhero is Adam Czarnecki, Human Resources, Health & Safety, Information Technology Manager at GreatWest Kenworth in Calgary.
About Adam
Adam Czarnecki is a Certified Human Resources Professional (CHRP) and a recipient of the HRIA Award of Excellence. He is a member of the Senior Management team of a heavy duty truck dealership group in Alberta where he is responsible for Human Resources, Health and Safety and Information Technology. He is an HR Instructor at the University of Calgary, Mount Royal University and Chair of their Advanced HR Curriculum Committee.
Adam is an avid contributor to industry webinars, conferences and expert panel discussions related to Human Resources, Trades and the Alberta employment pool, including a role as technology columnist for HRIA’s quarterly magazine, HUMANCapital. He is also an HRIA Member of the Board and holds a Bachelor of Social Sciences Degree from the University of Calgary with a concentration in Crime and Deviance.... A proud geek and a blogger.
Q: What makes you a People Management Superhero?
I try to use technology in order to make my life, and my organization’s work easier and more efficient. So I enjoy any chance I get to introduce a new opportunity with technology. For example, Avanti’s workflow productivity tools provide a way to automate a lot of the processes for me and my managers. This will help us keep on top of, and be able to create, better communication between the employees, the managers, and myself.
To keep on top of technology trends I turn to the Twit.tv podcast and my LinkedIn news feed. In addition, I’m currently an instructor for Human Resources Information Management as part of the Human Resource Management Certificate program at Mount Royal University.
Q: How does Avanti help you take care of your employees?
Avanti’s Self-Service Portal is an incredible tool. Especially with the recent updates and new features that are available. This means less questions from employees to managers or my team, which yields more time for us to be able to do other things. Another benefit is less paper for everything. Ultimately what I’d like to see one day is to have Avanti’s Self-Service Portal actually replace our company intranet.
Time & Attendance is another big one, as it enables our employees to punch in/out from any computer terminal. It also provides a huge reduction on time entry data errors and enables us to see trends in the data much quicker, and employees can stay on top of their time. Overall it’s provided us with better communication across the organization and visibility into what everyone is doing.
The workflows are another tool where people are notified automatically about dates, anniversaries, expired certificates, benefit information, and those kinds of things.
Q: Is there something you can now provide to your team that you couldn't before implementing Avanti?
The ability to do performance reviews online. Before I was looking at a way to do this across multiple spreadsheets and Excel files, but with Avanti making these available through Self-Service, this will cut down on a lot of paper and filing. From a workflow perspective, an employee and manager can complete this task independently and then I don’t need to file anything away because it’s all made available online through Avanti's Self-Service Portal.
Q: As you look at the year ahead, do you have any new initiatives that involve Avanti?
Phasing the implementation/introduction of some of the new Self-Service Portal features. Scheduling is something that’s on the horizon for this year, as well as appraisal history, discipline history, company documents, and employee documents. I'd also like to collaborate with Avanti on the development of HR metrics within the dashboard reporting.
Q: What is the single most important thing you do that makes a difference to your employees?
Providing our employees with the best tools and technology to do their jobs. Without the right tools, it falls apart from there. In addition to HR, I also manage IT and Health & Safety. So I do understand the relationship of having the right tools and having the proper equipment. If the devices and programs that employees use aren’t user friendly, intuitive, or easy to use, then the adoption of those technologies suffers.
An immediate benefit to the user and the ability to make a process more efficient directly impacts how the technology will be adopted.
Q: What tips would you give to others who might be struggling with their people management technology?
People will only adopt technology and new initiatives if they see the immediate benefit to themselves and if they can see how it will help them do their jobs better and more efficiently. If they can’t see that right away, regardless if the technology will benefit the overall company in the long run, it will ultimately fail. As long as the immediate benefit is realized by the employees, then any kind of initiative that you are implementing will be a lot more successful.
Q: What is at the heart of making GreatWest Kenworth a great place to work?
We hold our employees to a high standard of professionalism. When we ask our employees, ‘Why do you like working for GreatWest Kenworth?’ the answer is, the people. We’ve gone through a lot of cultural changes in the last 10 years. Going from the stereotypical trucking industry ‘rough around the edges’ type of company and evolving into a professional organization, and through renovating our locations and updating our processes and systems. Health & Safety is another big change over the past few years. It’s embedded in our culture, our people are more engaged and they understand how important workplace safety is every day.
Look at Adam's super transformation in The Little Book of People Management Superheroes.
Are You a People Management Superhero?
Do you make a difference in your organization through your people management solution? We would love to hear how.
Visit avanti.ca/superherobook
