Using HR Analytics for Workforce Cost

Management [Case Study]

During the Fort McMurray wildfire crisis, the City of Edmonton’s HR team used analytics for workforce
cost management, especially related to overtime by emergency response teams. Read their HR analytics
case study.

In May 2016, wildfire broke out in Wood Buffalo Municipal District near the City of Fort McMurray,
Alberta, Canada and became possibly the costliest disaster in Canadian history. As the fire grew to nearly
2,000 square miles (approximately 590,000 hectares) in size, more than 80,000 residents were forced to
evacuate. The City of Edmonton responded to this unmatched crisis by putting “all hands on deck.”
Edmonton Fire Rescue Services sent firefighters and equipment to help fight the blaze.  Edmonton Transit,
the Animal Care and Control Center, and other special services also assisted with the effort. In addition,
our Emergency Support Response Team opened up a Reception Centre, which provided a range of services
and supplies to nearly 25,000 evacuees.

As a steward of public funds, it’s critical that we stay on top of costs and use best practices for workforce
cost management. With so many regular City workers putting in extra hours, sorting donations for
evacuees and manning the evacuation centre, we knew there would be a spike in overtime for the month of
May. We immediately looked at how we could track the overtime due to Wood Buffalo versus regular
operational overtime in our people strategy platform, Visier.
Prior to the fire, we used Visier to give us an accurate picture of our overtime situation on a monthly basis.
When the fire broke out, we started loading work order numbers along with our regular employee data to
identify the overtime hours due to the Wood Buffalo wildfire response. This is the first time we’ve had an
HR analytics tool available to help us separate overtime due to a major event from overtime for regular
operations.

Prior to having our people analytics solution in place, gathering this kind of insight would have been very
difficult. Our HR team would have needed to pull reports and then work through the data on spreadsheets.
It would have been a time-consuming and error-prone process.

Whether employees signed up for shifts at the evacuation response center, the donation collection depots,
or maintained municipal services, all City employees responded to help our neighbours through the crisis.
We didn’t know how long this crisis would last and needed everyone to perform their best in order to
properly support both the evacuees and the rest of the community. We are happy to have Visier available
to help management understand the impact the Wood Buffalo wildfire relief had on our operations.

Municipal employees responded to the fire in Slave Lake in 2011 as well as the flooding in Calgary in
2013. As the capital city, we will be called on to help again when a large emergency response arises in the
province. Now we have accessible data to predict the overtime hours that we would accrue so we can
prepare for these costs. We will be better able to answer time-sensitive questions about the impact of
overtime for each department and job role, and therefore better understand where we will be experiencing
the greatest increase in costs.

Challenges
To take on the challenges of a fast-growing City and workforce, the City’s HR team needed to
provide up-to-date workforce insights to enable fact-based decision-making. Because the City’s
population is growing at an unprecedented rate, the City needs to ensure it can expand its key
infrastructure and services with the right skills and talent. The City tracks data related to a wide
variety of job functions—everything from garbage collection to firefighting and financial planning—
so it needs to monitor workforce capacity and other critical HR topics in an efficient way.

Until recently, the HR team was parsing together monthly reports with data pulled from PeopleSoft
and other systems. Not only was this time consuming, but the static spreadsheets and reports did
not give the City’s leadership team the ability to drill down into key issues, such as talent
acquisition, worker safety, and employee retention.

The HR team also needed to modernize its practices for workforce capacity planning. Once a year,
they would assemble a printed binder that covered headcount by dimensions such as age, gender,
and tenure, as well as the City’s wide range of job categories. This process was lengthy and
because it was done on an annual basis it was out of date as soon as it was printed.

“We want to be able to put data into the hands of our senior management team as well as our HR Business
Partners and enable them to have the information they need to make decisions. Visier allows us to do that.”

Kirsten Anderson, Acting Director, Workforce Analytics and Business Solutions

Solution
The City’s HR Research, Statistics and Reporting team sought a better way to leverage data to
make workforce decisions and plan for the future. They began searching for a people analytics
solution that would help the municipality link HR practices with strategic objectives, such as
implementing cost control measures for overtime, building a solid recruitment pipeline, and
retaining in-demand employees.

The City of Edmonton went through a rigorous RFP selection process, and had a number of key
technology requirements. The solution had to be SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). With a SaaS
model, the City could reduce or eliminate expensive upgrade costs typically associated with HR
solutions, ensure ongoing technology support and always have the most up to date version of the
application in place.

The City also needed an HR Management system-agnostic solution. Having started a

modernization program for all of its HR technology systems—covering everything from learning
and development to performance management to safety management—the City wanted to ensure
the people analytics solution it selected could bring in any data, from any source.
Data visualization of breakdown of actual total cost of workforce by compensation type. *Fictional data
used for customer privacy.

Capabilities
After a rigorous search for the right vendor, the City selected Visier. The City began the rollout of Visier in
December of 2014, beginning with senior HR managers, followed by other HR positions.

The City’s HR team is using the solution—which comes pre-built with hundreds of workforce metrics,
analytics, and visualizations, covering a wide range of HR topic areas—to analyze over three years of
employee data. Once the roll-out is complete, the solution will also be used by the City’s approximately 200
senior leaders, such as the City Manager, General Managers, Branch Managers, and Directors, in addition
to the HR team.

“Visier could unify all of our data, from any source, which was a big win for us. With other vendors, we
would have to potentially pay tens of thousands of dollars to try and integrate new types of data when it
came time to implement a new system. With Visier, we can procure other systems and bring in their data
for analysis.”

Kirsten Anderson, head of the City’s HR Research, Statistics and Reporting team.
The City has replaced static reports with interactive visualizations that let teams drill down into
workforce data, enabling the City’s leadership to make decisions based on accurate, up-to-date
insights into critical workforce trends.
“A key decision criteria for us was the intuitive nature of Visier,” explains Anderson. “Part of our
vision is to put data-driven insights into the hands of every manager and HR practitioner, many of
whom are new to analytics. It was critical that the solution we selected be easy and intuitive for all
users, not just the analysts.”

Visier enables the HR team to quickly answer complex questions because the solution is powered
by in-memory technology, which can process very large numbers of employee records without the
need to create a data warehouse. This means the City’s HR team can instantly answer questions
on-demand and stay on top of trends as the City’s workforce rapidly changes to meet evolving
demands for skills and labour.

Benefits
With a self-service analytics-based planning function in place for HR, the City of Edmonton
can optimize workforce spending, as well as make better decisions about critical workforce
issues.

The right workforce—now and for the year 2020

Before the City had an analytics-based planning solution in place, it was relying on headcount
numbers to make workforce capacity decisions. Now, instead of simply looking at headcount net
change, the City can instantly ask more multidimensional questions of its data.

This gives the organization better visibility into how many people are new to their roles and
whether there are any shortfalls in capacity due to ramp up time. The City can use metrics that
combine several different data sources to deliver the right kind of insight to make decisions related
to hiring, promotions and training

Better decisions about workforce safety

The municipality now has the information it needs to efficiently identify the root causes of safety
incidences. Before Visier, the HR team used to report this information via static spreadsheets and
documents. Leaders could see the total number of incidents, but could not drill down into key
areas such as job function, age, or tenure.

With Visier, they can now look at safety incidents through different dimensions, providing a clearer
view of what action is needed to address potential issues.

The City anticipates that this will not only support the important goal of maintaining worker safety,
but also contribute to cost savings: the City pays lower premiums on workers’ compensation
insurance if they improve their safety performance.

With a people analytics solution in place, the City of Edmonton’s HR team is transforming itself into
a fact-based discipline, helping the City build a robust workforce through a period of rapid growth.