Woodward

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WOODWARD

Turning an HR nightmare into a dream experience

Woodward, a global company, builds fuel controls for aircraft engines. All 1,400 employees at its Rockford-area Illinois plants must attend annual classes on how to treat each other respectfully.

The pain of paper

Woodward did not use online registration the first year of the program. Instead, HR handled the process via a combination of paper, email and phone calls. Marsha Opperman, an HR administrative assistant, says the process was a real pain. What she hoped would be a relatively quick process took as long as two weeks of manual organization. Because the classes were held in the summer, Marsha had to work around substantial vacation absences, as well as medical leave and sick days. “There were people I had to re-schedule three or four times,” she said.

'A godsend'

The next year, Woodward used ABC Signup to register its employees, who are called members. Each person could view a list of available class dates and times via the company Intranet. “Members chose their own time compatible with their schedule, so it saved hours of work,” said Opperman. “It really is a godsend to me.” ABC Signup’s auto-generated reports and rosters also saved time. HR no longer had to type lists and other information required before and after classes.

Flexible enough for many uses

When Woodward chose ABC Signup, the company only thought of using it for the civil treatment training program.  Within a few weeks, however, HR began using it for other programs, such as registering members for information sessions on the member appraisal process.  “I didn’t expect to find other uses,” Opperman said, “but once I began working with ABC Signup, I started thinking of all the things I had upcoming that it would be wonderful for, such as information sessions for the benefits program, or enabling members to sign up for company gatherings.”