Time is a commodity that respects neither rank nor status. Everyone has the same number of hours in a day. Just like a soldier who entrusts his life to his commander, pledging to obey orders – in a similar way, every manager holds the same trust with the time of colleagues in his or her care.

For the new human resources management system (HRMS) being introduced this July, many HR practitioners, managers and public officers will find new features that make doing specific tasks easier, faster and better, often with fewer clicks. This is a big deal. In every instance that a feature is introduced to shave off time, we are demonstrating that we value and respect your time.

Vital is a heavy user of the system, with 40 to 50 agencies contracting us to process transactions using the previous HR system, PM2S. A team of over 100 officers in HR Services uses the system every day to process appointments, contract renewals, promotions, leave applications, retirements and resignations for the Public Service.

It is estimated that in the first rollout in July 2011, 8,000 manhours in processing time can be saved annually because of the new features. Now, multiply this by all the years in the future. These enhancements come in various forms, including reducing manual data entry, automating notifications and reminders, cutting processing steps and eliminating multiple overnight runs.

The features sound simple but impact officers in significant ways. As part of an inter-agency group, the HRMS team looked for opportunities to review the most mundane, most tedious part of day-to-day tasks to be automated in the system. This is respect for officers’ time. For the significant number of seniors in the organisation, the minutes probably matter even more.

The more manual the process, the more it is prone to human error. Not only do time savings get officers home at a decent hour, they also reduce transcription or typographical errors as well as lapses in follow-up. An 80 per cent process reduction by automation or removal can be thought of as doing an afternoon’s work in an hour. At the individual’s level, this is a big deal.

We say we battle the law of large numbers and Murphy’s Law each day. These enhancements are part of a longstanding Public Service tradition of continual improvements in what we do. More importantly, they express the Service’s core value of excellence.

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Vital, a department under the Ministry of Finance, was launched in July 2006, as part of the Singapore Public Sector’s effort to aggregate common administrative services for the whole of Government. The suite of services includes finance services, human resource services, payroll and claims services, learning and development services and travel management services.