Haldimand County

In late 2000, several small counties in Ontario, Canada merged to form two larger counties, Norfolk County and Haldimand County. Haldimand County selected StarGarden at the time because it was able to provide the functionality needed to pay employees working in a variety of roles and union groups. It had been thought that the functionality needed would require an expensive HR/Pay enterprise system to deal with the complexity problems. Each role and each union added a layer of complexity in determining the benefits and deductions that their old system could not cope with. Not only was StarGarden able to handle the complexity but StarGarden was also able to meet the aggressive timeline and budget that other companies could not.

The Challenge

Now eight years later, Haldimand has continued to expand their payroll. As all their unions are set to renegotiate agreements in 2008, the complex calculations are going to continue to grow. The HR department will be handed revised union contracts with myriad new rules and regulations for who gets paid what, when and under what circumstances.

Being able to view unlimited amounts of employee information is one of the best aspects of working with StarGarden

Heather Scott, Haldiman County

To further complicate this situation, union contracts that expire before negotiations can be completed will require that payroll calculate retro payments back to the date of contract expiration. Not only will the HR department have to set up all the new rules in their system, they will have to maintain the old rules for awhile until retroactive payments can be calculated and processed.

The Solution

Handling complicated, messy calculations is what StarGarden is known for. Haldimand will be able to rely on the web-based HR/Pay version 4.0 to manage both the new rules and the old payroll rules for retroactive pay. It will be relatively painless to set up the new rules so that union workers will transition to their new pay and benefits package quickly. The payroll team will be able to manage transition seamlessly and spend more time on strategic activities rather than fighting fires with workers upset about their new pay structures.

As StarGarden is a position-based system and each position has set of HR and payroll rules, government organizations like municipalities and counties don’t have to limit resources to a single job definition. People and positions are identified separately and unite when a person performs a certain job under certain parameters.

Handling complicated, messy calculations is what StarGarden is known for. "Functionality doesn’t have to cost a fortune."

Marnie Larson, Stargarden Group

Having software that can’t deal with complexity means staff has to do the work that a smart system should be able to do. Productivity can grind to a halt and the department becomes burdened by the complexity which will only continue to grow. StarGarden frees resources to become more strategic and able to meet the needs of the customer base and the organization.

“StarGarden’s HR/Payroll gets the job done in a fraction of the time that legacy systems can and can do more than the HR and Payroll modules in standard financial packages and enterprise systems.” Says Marnie Larson, COO of The StarGarden Group. “Functionality doesn’t have to cost a fortune. But you have to know how to design for it. StarGarden HR/Pay has been road tested and improved for over 20 years.”

The Result

Handling complicated, messy calculations is what StarGarden is known for. Haldimand will be able to rely on the StarGarden system to assist with pay changes when the county’s agreement with its union is up for renegotiation in 2008. “Being able to view unlimited amounts of employee information is one of the best aspects of working with StarGarden” according to Heather Scott. “We found the time to set up the modules and then put in the data the way we needed it. Now we can build our own history for analysis purposes.”

Adds Heather “I am really glad we followed StarGarden’s recommendations with investing the time to add our history in to the database.“

“We look out for the long term interests of all our clients,” says Larson. “Helping them prepare for the future is part of our client promise and partnership focus. The StarGarden system will be able make the changes for Heather and her team and it will be a lot less time intensive for everyone.”