Monroe Bank Improved their Entire HR Function Without Spending a Dime

As part of the 2010 Indiana State Human Resources Conference, FlashPoint asked HR professionals across the state to tell us about the innovative HR-related programs they have introduced at their organizations. I had the opportunity to collect these innovative ideas and present them at the conference where attendees were invited to vote for the idea they considered most innovative. While a winner was selected (to be highlighted here soon), FlashPoint thought that all the ideas deserved a little more attention. Now I get to share the details of these exciting and innovative programs. My hope is that these “mini case studies” will inspire you and your organization to be innovative!

Innovative idea submitted by: Virginia Whitham, VP/Director of Human Resources

Organization: Monroe Bank

Monroe Bank, a division of Old National Bank, was founded in 1892 as a community bank. With primary offices located in Bloomington, Indiana, they also serve Central and South Central Indiana with locations in Monroe, Jackson, Lawrence, and Hendricks Counties. This traditional community bank provides a variety of financial services, including: personal checking and savings accounts; business account management services; commercial, mortgage, and personal loans; personal and corporate trust services; and, investment and brokerage services.

Joellyn: Can you briefly describe your innovative HR-related program?

Virginia: Monroe Bank wanted to fully utilize the company’s intranet website software. Most organizations have an intranet which integrates with in-house products. Tracking of personnel items, outside of payroll, was done manually by HR assistants. In the last couple years we’ve reduced our department and have limited administrative support. Therefore, I had to find a way to automate our processes without adding to the bottom-line. There was no budget to expand our ADP products or to purchase an HRIS system. Instead, I’ve made full utilization of our intranet software working with IT to learn how to program our HR intranet site to host forms, processes, lists, question and answer sections, meeting requests, and our annual review process. There was no additional software expense as the resource was right in our own backyard. I invested my time, which was well worth the end result—more efficiency.

Joellyn: Why did you develop this program? What problem/situation were you hoping to address?

Virginia: I needed to address the reduction of administrative support in human resources. There was too much paperwork and not enough administrative support to do data entry and tracking of numerous personnel forms, meetings, and employee relations events. Automating our annual review process allows me to export data into Excel and generate reports by department, category, and overall results.

Joellyn: Why do you consider it innovative?

Virginia: I consider this innovative because I used internal resources that were already available. I took the time to think outside of the box, and learn a new skill myself, including how to do some very simple site programming. There was no additional software expense. We already had the technology and IT professionals willing to do some basic training.

Joellyn: What impact have you seen? How did the program address your problem/situation and how has it improved the company and/or the HR function?

Virginia: This resulted in increased responses to requests, quicker turn-around, better documentation, and better tracking of personnel issues. In addition, I now have the ability to export data into Excel for reports and data mining and have achieved overall stream-lining of the administrative work. It has improved efficiencies and our ability to manage personnel data. We have more time to address issues rather than chase paper.

What idea does this inspire for you and your company? Each month I’ll highlight another HR-related innovative idea. I invite you to subscribe to FlashPoint’s Blog so you don’t miss similar posts.

Joellyn Detjen is marketing manager at FlashPoint and helps tell the company’s story.

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