THE SUN, January 20th, 2003 - Petaling Jaya : Westport’s new Human Resources Information System (HRIS) promises to increase productivity for the company.

The system, which was implemented last March, increases transparency and consistency across the board over the implementation of human resource policies.

The greater control offered by the new system over the management of the incentive structure is expected to boost staff and, indirectly, terminal productivity.

Relevant departments can access the HRIS from their own locations and view their employee details, behaviour records, past performances appraisal records, training and development history, and other information to assist them in managing their employees effectively.

“The HRIS is a great assistance to all managers. Tedious efforts involved in extracting information from personnel files is now a thing of the past. Every department can now access directly into the system and obtain the information it requires,” said HR executive Joanne See.

“The HRIS is like a CCTV on the desktop. The managers can monitor various issues such as training and development activities as well as disciplinary and performance records from their workstations. Surely since they could better reward the more productive staff, the productivity of the unit increases,” she added.

The HRIS has only a single database allowing users to generate over 50 different human resource management reports that are crucial for decision making.

The work on HRIS, however does not stop with the currently available modules. Today, a new payroll module will be incorporated into the system.

“With over 1,300 employees in our container department, the biggest problem used to be administering the leave benefits of these employees. Numerous manual entries had to be made into different documents,” said HR manager S. Mahadevan.

“Now, with the HRIS, only one entry needs to be made into the system and reports in various forms could be extracted. It has helped us reduce the human errors and the number of people in on this function,” he added.

Beginning April, Startag card that serves as cashless, time attendance and the panel clinic card for Westport staff, will be integrated with HRIS.