November 6, 2000

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Picture This: Self-Service HR At Sony

Entertainment company to use authoria software to give employees access to HR information

By Diane Rezendes Khirallah

More on human resources:

Deals Put Online Employee Services To Work (10/23/00) InternetWeek: PeopleSoft Preps Portal Apps (10/2/00)

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n any given weekday on the studio lot at Sony Pictures Entertainment, gaffers going to and from work sites are more likely to be carrying electrical cables than PC cables. That's because gaffers--along with other production crew members, actors, and on-set support staff--have no computer access.

But that could soon change, thanks to a company mandate to make human resource information available to all of its 3,500 U.S. employees via an online self-service application. Sony has contracted Authoria Inc., a provider of HR portal software, to set up the service.

For most companies, employee self-service means an online portal that's delivered to the desktop so staff can look up benefits and get answers to HR questions. But analysts say a trend is emerging in which companies make HR information available to employees, wherever--and however--they do their jobs.

Last week, Sony began setting up kiosks around its studio lots and production areas--from the set of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, The 6th Day, which recently filmed in Los Angeles, to the offices of the Ricki Lake Show in New York. For technophobes, the company operates a call center where employees can get the same information, around the clock.

Gary McNeil, director of marketing and sales operations at Authoria, says such access has become standard. "Once you go beyond around 2,000 employees, [companies] want both a call center and employee self-service," he says.

For Sony Pictures, the move reflects a cultural change that's forcing the company to articulate its HR policies more clearly. With easy access to the policies, it hopes to eliminate a common practice that HR professionals call "answer shopping," in which employees keep calling until they find answers they like. Sony executives expect the portal will save money, though they didn't specify how much. The savings could be significant: A recent survey by Salomon Smith Barney found that companies spend an average of $1,700 per employee per year on HR communication.

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