The Canadian Forces’ HRMS system ensures privates and generals from Canada to Afghanistan are paid on time and correctly
It’s 3 a.m. at the Department of National Defence headquarters in Ottawa. The military’s HRMS system springs into action as data arrives, beamed in from a tent half-a-world away. A lieutenant in the Canadian military on a mission in Kabul has been promoted to the rank of captain at 11:30 a.m. Afghanistan time. An operator in a nearby tent keys the woman’s new rank into the system and that information is sent via satellite to the military’s HRMS in Ottawa.
The next time the military runs payroll, the captain can be confident her pay will include the raise that comes with the rank. It’s all part of the unique payroll world of the Canadian military, an organization with payroll needs far removed from those of most in the private sector.
Capt. Youri Rousseau, the military business support manager for the Directorate Human Resources Information Management in Ottawa, says things like time and attendance and overtime are non-existent for regular forces. Regular forces — full-time members of the army, navy and air force — are paid a salary depending on their rank and job title. That pay includes work on weekends, overtime and anything else the military requires them to do.
“Military people are on service all the time,” he says. “They could call me anytime of the night to do something. There is no overtime, so it’s very simple in that manner. The only time your pay rate changes is when you get to the next rank or if you change occupation.”
The Canadian military uses a homegrown payroll system — the central computing pay system, also known as CCPS — to issue paycheques, pay stubs and deposit money into accounts.
But the bulk of work is done in the military’s PeopleSoft HRMS package, which feeds payroll information to CCPS which then issues paycheques. The military has one massive database of HR information on its forces in its HRMS, a far cry from what was happening the early 1990s.
“Back then, there were about 16 different (human resource management) systems used across the Canadian Forces,” said Capt. Rousseau. “The navy had their own system, the army had a system, the air force had a system, the military police had a system and so on.”
In 1995 the decision was made to integrate the 16 systems into one, and the military chose to go the same route as the federal government and implement a PeopleSoft HRMS. The military is currently running version 7.5, though a move to version 8.8 is being contemplated.
But though things are much easier and organized now than they were with 16 separate systems, the military is still ironing out some wrinkles. Capt. Rousseau said PeopleSoft and the military’s home-grown payroll system don’t always communicate well. That’s because the payroll system will sometimes reject information sent from the HRMS because of a clunky interface built by the military.
There have been instances where an earlier promotion was missed on the system and when a second promotion was given, the payroll system kicked it back because it looked like the soldier had shot up two ranks at one time.
“We’re doing work now to redesign our interface so that we only send data and not business rules and that the pay system just takes it for what it is,” said Capt. Rousseau. “It doesn’t review it or reject it or anything like that. But I think that’s something that every business goes through. We’ve seen the lessons learned from that first interface and we’re going to redesign it in a better way.”
The military is in the midst of designing another interface between PeopleSoft and the pay system for reservists. Reservists, who were added to the HRMS in 2002, are paid in an entirely different manner than regular forces and they have a separate payroll system to boot.
The payroll system for reservists is more complex than the CCPS because most reservists aren’t full-time soldiers. They’re paid based on the number of days they work but there are still no hours to keep track of, just full days and half days. Anything more than four hours is considered a full day of work.
“So now we’re designing an interface to talk to their pay system so that they don’t have to record HR data in their pay system because now it’s kind of duplication,” said Capt. Rousseau. “They have a pay system in which they input names, addresses and all that and the clerks on the admin side are putting the same information into the HR system so it’s going to stop that.”
Heavy customization
One of the biggest challenges during the initial PeopleSoft implementation, completed in 1997, was the amount of customization needed to get the software to do what the military needed.
“It’s not made for national defence, it’s made for private business so we needed to do a lot of customization,” he said. “For example, we need to create organizations and disband them extremely fast, whereas most organizations create a section or department and it stays there for a long time. When we have a small mission in East Timor or Bosnia, we just create an establishment and we destroy it after. So we need to create it, task people to fill positions and then six months later empty the positions headed back. So we needed to customize a lot to arrange it our way.”
Right now the HRMS has about 130,000 records in it with 12 million data fields. Capt. Rousseau said there are about 60,000 regular forces, 35,000 reservists and 30,000 civilian employees listed on the system.
About 5,000 people — from a civilian clerk in Winnipeg to a soldier in Kabul — have access to enter information on the system, but that number is expected to rise to 12,000 by the end of 2003 as more users are trained. Training is a constant challenge with any HRMS system because if people aren’t entering data, or are entering data improperly, the information gleaned from the software won’t be very valuable.
A 2001 report by the Auditor General of Canada said the military needs to improve training of users on the PeopleSoft system.
“For example, they do not enter qualification data into the system consistently or in a timely way. Instead, users have developed parallel and duplicate systems to gather personnel data but have failed to enter those data regularly in the corporate system. We asked the Department (of Defence) what percentage of military personnel had successfully completed specialty courses and at what qualification level. While the PeopleSoft system is able to track this information, the data either had not been entered or were not accurate. We had to compile the data manually by contacting individual units,” the report stated.
Capt. Rousseau said that training is his “nightmare right now.” In the past, the military used to make a copy that resembled the HRMS as close as possible and ghosted that image onto laptops and then traveled around the country to train users.
“But this year, we put a copy of our training database on a big server and we’re using that and we’re doing Web-based training instead of computer-based training,” he said.
Every military classroom across the country is able to plug in through the military’s intranet, and a dozen consultants will be fanning out across the country in the fall to train 5,000 to 6,000 users.
Capt. Rousseau said PeopleSoft 8.8 will be a huge improvement over version 7.5. The new version is Web-based and uses a Web interface, something he said would make life a lot easier for the military.
“Because when we do updates or changes, there will not be a need for human intervention at each base to modify the configuration because it’s going to be on the Web and it’s going to be automatic,” he said. “If we change it centrally, it’ll be changed everywhere automatically.”
Right now the system is being used in the field in the Golan Heights (between Israel and Syria), Afghanistan, Bosnia and all across Europe. The military’s help desk runs extended hours to help with troubleshooting from various time zones. It purchases satellite bandwidth from private companies to upload and download information from some remote locations and uses normal communications lines where possible. The system has worked well, but the satellites tend to be a bit slow in relaying information.
“But they are happy because they can do the transaction over there instead of waiting to come back or instead of asking somebody else to do it back home,” said Capt. Rousseau.
The navy has even installed satellite equipment on ships for the system, something that has made sailors who enter information into the HRMS extremely happy. That’s because the clerks on ships used to be stuck on board while the ship was in port because it was the only time they could connect live to the system.
“When they go to a port like San Diego, let’s say, every sailor will go and party and drink and the clerks stay behind to do the transactions,” said Capt. Rousseau. “That was a bit of a pain for them because they never had any leave. Now they can do the transactions at sea and then they can take leave like everybody else.”
The next time the military runs payroll, the captain can be confident her pay will include the raise that comes with the rank. It’s all part of the unique payroll world of the Canadian military, an organization with payroll needs far removed from those of most in the private sector.
Capt. Youri Rousseau, the military business support manager for the Directorate Human Resources Information Management in Ottawa, says things like time and attendance and overtime are non-existent for regular forces. Regular forces — full-time members of the army, navy and air force — are paid a salary depending on their rank and job title. That pay includes work on weekends, overtime and anything else the military requires them to do.
“Military people are on service all the time,” he says. “They could call me anytime of the night to do something. There is no overtime, so it’s very simple in that manner. The only time your pay rate changes is when you get to the next rank or if you change occupation.”
The Canadian military uses a homegrown payroll system — the central computing pay system, also known as CCPS — to issue paycheques, pay stubs and deposit money into accounts.
But the bulk of work is done in the military’s PeopleSoft HRMS package, which feeds payroll information to CCPS which then issues paycheques. The military has one massive database of HR information on its forces in its HRMS, a far cry from what was happening the early 1990s.
“Back then, there were about 16 different (human resource management) systems used across the Canadian Forces,” said Capt. Rousseau. “The navy had their own system, the army had a system, the air force had a system, the military police had a system and so on.”
In 1995 the decision was made to integrate the 16 systems into one, and the military chose to go the same route as the federal government and implement a PeopleSoft HRMS. The military is currently running version 7.5, though a move to version 8.8 is being contemplated.
But though things are much easier and organized now than they were with 16 separate systems, the military is still ironing out some wrinkles. Capt. Rousseau said PeopleSoft and the military’s home-grown payroll system don’t always communicate well. That’s because the payroll system will sometimes reject information sent from the HRMS because of a clunky interface built by the military.
There have been instances where an earlier promotion was missed on the system and when a second promotion was given, the payroll system kicked it back because it looked like the soldier had shot up two ranks at one time.
“We’re doing work now to redesign our interface so that we only send data and not business rules and that the pay system just takes it for what it is,” said Capt. Rousseau. “It doesn’t review it or reject it or anything like that. But I think that’s something that every business goes through. We’ve seen the lessons learned from that first interface and we’re going to redesign it in a better way.”
The military is in the midst of designing another interface between PeopleSoft and the pay system for reservists. Reservists, who were added to the HRMS in 2002, are paid in an entirely different manner than regular forces and they have a separate payroll system to boot.
The payroll system for reservists is more complex than the CCPS because most reservists aren’t full-time soldiers. They’re paid based on the number of days they work but there are still no hours to keep track of, just full days and half days. Anything more than four hours is considered a full day of work.
“So now we’re designing an interface to talk to their pay system so that they don’t have to record HR data in their pay system because now it’s kind of duplication,” said Capt. Rousseau. “They have a pay system in which they input names, addresses and all that and the clerks on the admin side are putting the same information into the HR system so it’s going to stop that.”
Heavy customization
One of the biggest challenges during the initial PeopleSoft implementation, completed in 1997, was the amount of customization needed to get the software to do what the military needed.
“It’s not made for national defence, it’s made for private business so we needed to do a lot of customization,” he said. “For example, we need to create organizations and disband them extremely fast, whereas most organizations create a section or department and it stays there for a long time. When we have a small mission in East Timor or Bosnia, we just create an establishment and we destroy it after. So we need to create it, task people to fill positions and then six months later empty the positions headed back. So we needed to customize a lot to arrange it our way.”
Right now the HRMS has about 130,000 records in it with 12 million data fields. Capt. Rousseau said there are about 60,000 regular forces, 35,000 reservists and 30,000 civilian employees listed on the system.
About 5,000 people — from a civilian clerk in Winnipeg to a soldier in Kabul — have access to enter information on the system, but that number is expected to rise to 12,000 by the end of 2003 as more users are trained. Training is a constant challenge with any HRMS system because if people aren’t entering data, or are entering data improperly, the information gleaned from the software won’t be very valuable.
A 2001 report by the Auditor General of Canada said the military needs to improve training of users on the PeopleSoft system.
“For example, they do not enter qualification data into the system consistently or in a timely way. Instead, users have developed parallel and duplicate systems to gather personnel data but have failed to enter those data regularly in the corporate system. We asked the Department (of Defence) what percentage of military personnel had successfully completed specialty courses and at what qualification level. While the PeopleSoft system is able to track this information, the data either had not been entered or were not accurate. We had to compile the data manually by contacting individual units,” the report stated.
Capt. Rousseau said that training is his “nightmare right now.” In the past, the military used to make a copy that resembled the HRMS as close as possible and ghosted that image onto laptops and then traveled around the country to train users.
“But this year, we put a copy of our training database on a big server and we’re using that and we’re doing Web-based training instead of computer-based training,” he said.
Every military classroom across the country is able to plug in through the military’s intranet, and a dozen consultants will be fanning out across the country in the fall to train 5,000 to 6,000 users.
Capt. Rousseau said PeopleSoft 8.8 will be a huge improvement over version 7.5. The new version is Web-based and uses a Web interface, something he said would make life a lot easier for the military.
“Because when we do updates or changes, there will not be a need for human intervention at each base to modify the configuration because it’s going to be on the Web and it’s going to be automatic,” he said. “If we change it centrally, it’ll be changed everywhere automatically.”
Right now the system is being used in the field in the Golan Heights (between Israel and Syria), Afghanistan, Bosnia and all across Europe. The military’s help desk runs extended hours to help with troubleshooting from various time zones. It purchases satellite bandwidth from private companies to upload and download information from some remote locations and uses normal communications lines where possible. The system has worked well, but the satellites tend to be a bit slow in relaying information.
“But they are happy because they can do the transaction over there instead of waiting to come back or instead of asking somebody else to do it back home,” said Capt. Rousseau.
The navy has even installed satellite equipment on ships for the system, something that has made sailors who enter information into the HRMS extremely happy. That’s because the clerks on ships used to be stuck on board while the ship was in port because it was the only time they could connect live to the system.
“When they go to a port like San Diego, let’s say, every sailor will go and party and drink and the clerks stay behind to do the transactions,” said Capt. Rousseau. “That was a bit of a pain for them because they never had any leave. Now they can do the transactions at sea and then they can take leave like everybody else.”
