After five years of work and many millions of dollars, the Alberta Pension Services Corp. turned on its new pension administration system on May 30, 2016.
We provide administration services to 350,000 members and pensioners and more than 500 employers across the province. That includes seven different plans, each one with unique needs and different benefits and rules. We’ve always done a pretty good job of serving these employers and members. We do so at a competitive cost per member and we score high marks for compliance. But we’re slow.
Correction: We were slow. Our new technology gives us the gift of speed. We can now serve our members faster than ever before and pay them the money they deserve more quickly, without compromising accuracy and quality. That’s important, particularly given our growth. As baby boomers retire, our transaction volumes are growing in the double digits. Guiding people through the retirement process is one of the most important things we do. Now we can do it better and faster.
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Looking back at our previous administrative system, there was no doubt we needed to invest in technology. We hadn’t invested enough for more than a decade. Our members were doing their banking and paying their bills using their mobile devices but they still had to pick up the phone and call us if they wanted to simply change their mailing address. And even that small change might have taken us a week to process. We were a slow, paper-based, manual shop with cumbersome processes.
We decided to pack our bags and move to the land of simplicity. We spent the last five years choosing a vendor, painstakingly going through all the rules for each pension plan and cleaning up our data to ensure it was correct in the new system. It was a huge project. We had many issues, including software quality, project governance and scope and budget challenges. But in the end, we delivered within scope and budget.
It took us some time to get our project governance right, including board oversight, frequency of and participation at meetings, decision protocols and issue escalation. One of the most important ingredients of success for projects of this size is project governance. It’s important to have a strong project manager to guide the way, and we certainly had the best talent. Another key area was project scope. My advice is to define it clearly, state not only what the project is going to cover but also what it doesn’t include, and then stick to it. Scope creep is the biggest culprit when it comes to time and budget overruns.
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The greatest challenge wasn’t the technology itself, nor was it the project management. It was change management. People don’t like change. Our employees liked the idea of moving to the land of simplicity but weren’t fond of the idea of changing anything to get there. We met a lot of resistance, especially at first. When we started the project, employee engagement was dangerously low. Staff turnover was high. Communication was poor. People didn’t know why we were changing and there was a lot of fear.
So I put a change-management strategy in place. I communicated like crazy. I refer to myself because it truly was a chief executive officer-led communication strategy. In my opinion, the CEO must be the champion of such a large, transformational project. I started a weekly blog, held informal CEO sessions in my office, listened to people’s fears, frustrations and ideas and just really opened the doors for communication to improve.
I even started an entirely new effort called the summits. Every quarter, we close our doors early one afternoon and all head over to the movie theatre across the street. It’s my opportunity to address the entire organization and deliver the same message to everyone at once. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, so the summits include a lot of silliness, entertainment, homemade videos and skits, but there’s a clear corporate message as well. These quarterly summits have been extremely effective at helping us all remain positive through challenging times and getting people comfortable with, and even embracing, change.
All of this communication worked. Employee engagement increased by 18 per cent in that first year. Turnover reduced dramatically. People were on board with the change and we had many champions of our big project, not just one. People started joking that CEO stands for chief enthusiasm officer, and that’s OK with me. I believe the CEO must be the most optimistic person in any organization.
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We’re live with our new system now. I have great confidence it will remain a success. So far, the land of simplicity is a pretty pleasant place to be.
Karen Adams is president and chief executive officer at the Alberta Pension Services Corp.