A New Payroll Shared Services System

22/6/2013

Just recently, the payroll department for each affiliate Janssen, J&J Medical and J&J Consumer have been discarded to make the switch to a shared services payroll system. From what I have learnt in management accounting there are many benefits to shared services such as the improved quality management of standardised services and the focus on internal customer needs. Not only that, economies of scale can be achieved and there is also the reduction in the duplication of services.

However as a result of the transition from the old payroll system to the new shared services it meant that there was no proper system of payslip distribution. As the shared services team sits across the road each month’s payslips for all employees at Janssen (about 200+) were handed to finance to distribute to the rest of our departments. This proved to be a massive task as they were not all grouped in the correct teams and we did not know who the manager of each team was either. The process of distribution ended up taking almost a week as I had to firstly send a company-wide email asking for people to come collect it from me or they could have it posted to their addresses if they liked. For those who did not come to collect them I had to go find them in the building. Many people were also annoyed at this distribution system as it was messy, envelopes could go missing and the only way to reassure them was to communicate with the new payroll team that another system of distribution was necessary such as electronically via email.

However one good thing did come out of this task and that was I met so many new people from different departments and not only was that a lot of fun but I learnt more about what other people’s roles were as part of the organisational whole and it helped me relate names to faces when people requested work from me. All in all it was a great learning experience for me!

Lunch & Learns

13/6/2013

One of our commercial analysts gave a lunch and learn class where over a catered lunch, she talked about one of the many opportunities available at Janssen to do an internal audit for an overseas affiliate. She talked about her experience as an internal auditor which was less like investigating them and more like working with them to improve their internal processes and compliance. She detailed some of the benefits of taking up this opportunity such as learning efficient practices and processes from the audited affiliate and then being able to bring it to our firm and improve our processes. It showed how valuable it was to share information between overseas affiliates and the value it could bring to various J&J firms worldwide. Some of the topics we discussed included how we could implement electronic reconciliations instead of continuing to have paper backups. It was a great eye-opener and a wonderful way to learn about the opportunities that were available to employees at J&J.

This was one of our new initiatives following our Health Organisation Survey, to have more lunch and learn classes so people can share the knowledge they have learned. 

Induction Packs

4/6/2013

With new people constantly coming in I was asked to put together an induction pack for a new management accountant and this was a really good way for me to get to know the induction process from the side that’s organising it. It included communicating with IT to set up our new employee’s ID number, username, laptop, access to SAP and TM1 as well as the security personnel to order her security pass and nametag. It was also a good way to reaffirm what I knew about the company as I took her for a site visit around both Janssen and J&J Medical.

The induction process was a great opportunity to get to know our new employee and make her feel welcome to the team. If there was another opportunity to welcome someone else to the team I’d definitely do it again!

Role Clarity Meeting

30/5/2013

Role clarity is one of the issues we have been faced with due to the high staff turnover levels and it was at this meeting that my reporting and planning manager helped our team clarify our responsibilities for our monthly and quarterly duties. Having this meeting helped us to individually solidify what was expected from us so that no duties were left undone or wastefully duplicated. Another reason for this meeting was due to the lack of resources we currently have so some tasks of leaving employees had to be split, reassigned and due to us temporarily not have a financial controller who approves all our recs and monthly invoices it meant that we had to work around our financial director who is only occasionally in the office so this meant we’d have to manage our time effectively to get tasks done in time for him to sign documents during the time he was in-office.

This once again shows some of the difficulties associated with short-term employees and the constant turnover meant blurred responsibilities and inflexible working arrangements due to the lack of resources. 

GCC (Global Corporate Challenge)

22/5/2013

Vitality is our health department that organises health checks, vaccines, fitness activities, the gym and much, much more. This year J&J is participating in the Global Corporate Challenge where we create groups of 7, each get a pedometer and walk as much as we can everyday to compete in a race around a virtual world.

I believe this is one of the best initiatives and events for an organisation to participate in because it really gets employees energized, with a healthy competitive spirit to try and be fitter and healthier. Not only does it help people with their health, people work more efficiently when they feel fit and it also generates lively goss and stories about people’s weekend activity plans and strategies to beat competing teams. I was randomly appointed team captain and made plans to motivate my team making miniature jersey stands with everyone’s names and sending out a welcome email with details about admin issues. Being a team captain can sometimes be quite a job in itself because the majority of us are quite competitive and therefore enter in the number of steps we take daily but there are others who aren't as timely so it was my responsibility for chasing people up about it. However that once again was hard to go about because obviously their work takes priority number one so I thought just sending out a reminder to everyone would be a good idea and that seems to have helped instead of approaching an individual directly about it. It’s a lot of fun co-ordinating, it helps build our teamwork in finance and I personally love the challenge to try and reach 10,000 steps a day!

Learning to make Macros

17/5/2013

While updating the monthly Travel & Entertainment Departmental Expenses reports which are eventually distributed amongst all the departments at Janssen I found the work quite repetitive, tiring and completely mindless because it involved a lot of formatting and pasting special values. Manually it’d take a person a good half of their day and that's if everything goes smoothly and there are no variances in the reports. I found it quite tedious and time-consuming so my mind wondered aimlessly trying to find another method of approaching this task. My mind wondered to macros and I remembered the co-op excel training we had earlier on in the year and decided to have a go at it. After a two hours of fiddling with formulas and script writing as well as help from google I was able to come up with two separate macros for the formatting and pasting of special values. It took a while but I preserved and I was left feeling satisfied that I’d saved myself a lot of time in the future.

What I learnt from this was that even though at the beginning I thought they’d be no way I’d be able to write a macro because I had very limited experience, sometimes I just have to give it a go anyway, persevere through it and I might surprise myself in the end. Also, I learnt that sometimes it could be worth it taking a few hours initially to develop something that you’d be able to do next time in the press of a button so macros are definitely your friend!

Intercompany

5/5/2013

Intercompany has been one of my major tasks at J&J, recurring monthly with larger charge-outs on a quarterly basis. I work with my Management accountant manager to get these done and it involves  lot of communication between us and the people who need to get these charges out as well as between us and our intercompany partners in Manila who process these debit memo requests on our behalf. Intercompany charges refers to any charge that Janssen-Cilag has expensed for the purpose of another affiliate and hence the cost should not be borne by us and vice versa. Every month we have a deadline to send our team in Manila invoices to charge various affiliates and usually when someone in the business wants to charge another affiliate they came to me where I will draft a debit memo with the backup attached and send it to our intercompany team. If this deadline is missed then we make an accrual for it so our expenses will be correctly reflected in our books.

On a quarterly basis I will also charge out corporate expenses relating to people who do work for another affiliate but are working at Janssen and are in our payroll system. Each have their own cost centre and it involves me talking to that person’s assistant and agreeing upon the amount that is to be charged out and then approved by our Financial Director. Similarly charges that go out to the region are requested quarterly and are cross-checked with our regional partners in Belgium. The last component part of intercompany are Global Clinical Operations (GCO) charges which are expenses incurred for projects that have been undergone by Janssen. This is usually a large, significant amount and as I have learnt from doing this twice, it is of utmost importance that we have smooth communication between the finance team and the GCO team to ensure that the correct amounts are being charged out. We would have incorrectly reflected expenses and revenues for the month if these were not done properly and could have impacts on people hitting targets and performance levels. During this time, it is usually essential to have regular teleconferences with our intercompany team to identify any issues as soon as they arise and to deal with them quickly given the short time span we have to complete them. One of the skills I developed at this time was being aware of everyone’s availability and taking into account time differences between countries. When setting meetings I had to co-ordinate times between the two countries so that both teams could make it but at the same time make sure it did not clash with my manager’s calendar. One time I made it too early so it clashed with Manila’s lunch time and was these little things that I became more sensitive to. 

I also learned a lot about the process of charging another affiliate; to summarise we send intercompany a ‘Request to Charge an Affiliate’ with the appropriate backup. Our intercompany team raises a Sales Order on our behalf and sends the relevant affiliate a purchase order number for their approval. Once it is approved it is then recorded on both sides of our books. Likewise, when we receive charges from other affiliates we get sent a Purchase Order number and once it is approved by the relevant manager then that PO comes through.Some invoices can be seem deceivingly easy to draft up and send to intercompany as it requires approval from both parties and it is usually communicating the charge-out that takes the longest and occasionally makes the process very messy.

Another interesting issues that I came across when I was drafting corporate charges involves sensitive information. Many of those charges include confidential information such as the salary, bonuses and superannuation of the corporate person and this is more or less deducible from the debit memo. As a way of precaution because this invoice goes from many different sets of hands, amounts invoiced should only reflect total amounts which could include travel, entertainment and other various expenses relating to that person and we have to be careful that we do not explicitly say in the description of the invoice which portion of the invoice relate to salaries. In these cases I have learnt that it is vital to exercise prudence in your work and make sure personal information is not compromised. 

The pros and cons of miscellaneous work

25/4/2013

My role from the very beginning was never quite a defined one. There were things which I liked about that but at the same time didn’t. When I started work on the 2^nd of January it was year-end and the busiest time of the year. Everyone was in a state of constant flurry, usually staying to quite late and hardly taking any time off for a lunch break. No one really had any time to explain anything to me so I was often handed work that just ‘needed to be done quickly’. Not having a set routine in the early months of my placement and just getting handed tasks from various people meant that I did not really know what to expect for the next day and sometimes it was hard trying to see the value in what I was doing. For example, getting signatures from everyone on the team to make sure that everyone had read the transmittal letter for the quarter, updating calendars gathering documents from colleagues and documenting procedures. However it meant I had variety in my day and whenever I had free time it was good to know I could lend people a helping hand.

When the previous UNSW intern before me came back from his holiday and starting working part-time he handed over some of his tasks to me and these included things that would occur monthly such as Travel & Entertainment departmental reports, handling monthly lease plan, ORIX and cabcharge invoices, ABS surveys, putting together the monthly BS and aggregating recs. I felt I had more structure and routine to my day and I could also plan out what I needed to get done in advance. It was only then that I felt I could contribute more and be that much more valuable to my team and J&J.

As my team has become more solidified and settled with all our new employees a monthly timeline with everyone’s recurring responsibilities have been set out and for those who are interested to know some of mine include the following:

• Sending a company-wide email detailing the requirements of an intercompany charge
• Updating the whiteboard calendar
• Requesting Intercompany Sales Orders on a monthly basis (if the deadline is missed then I’d have to make an accrual)
• Take the GCO team (Global Clinical Operations who work on projects and internal orders) through the GCO chargebacks
• Prepare internal expenses to charge to affiliates, send GCO invoices and backup
• Prepare accrual for Regional cost centres
• Preparing CTMS report – GCO and MAO
• Raise SO request for regional/corporate cost centres
• Leaseplan accrual
• Source OOB (out of balance) report and review with intercompany in Manila
• Distributing cab-charges and updating the cab-charge tracker

Organisational Health Survey

16/04/2013

A favourable characteristic of J&J is their focus on continual improvement/development in terms of personal and career skills and the acknowledgement of employee feedback on the how the organization is functioning as a whole. This was reflected in our three hour finance team meeting which focused on the results of our organizational health survey at the end of 2012/beginning of 2013, but more importantly identifying the issues or areas that our ‘climate’ at J&J is lacking and developing initiatives/actions which we can take going forwards to improve that.

The organizational health survey involved employees perception of work aspects, asking questions such as ‘do you feel that the quality of your work relationships increases your commitment to a long-term career with J&J?’, ‘do you feel that your opinions are respected and you are comfortable communicating them?’, ‘I feel secure in my job’ and ‘Do you feel that Finance’s leadership is aligned with its employees on the importance of diversity’. The results of this survey showed that in most areas there was a deterioration of opinion in areas like teamwork, communication, manager relations and climate (a large cause of this could be because of the high turnover during the December quarter with many employees leaving before year-end and the high number of contractors hired) and to address these problem areas, our finance team split into two groups to come up with action items to improve.

1      1. Communication

We identified two channels of communication that we could target separately – formal and informal.One of the major areas of deterioration was ‘I believe that communication channels are open so I am informed and can respond adequately.’In order for people to connect and be at ease with each other we figured that the first step is simply to get people to connect and re-introduce ‘get-to-know-each-other’ sessions. For things like getting people to connect and be open with each other we needed to re-introduce simple things like ‘speed-dating’ and ‘learn and lunch’ where there’s an informal environment for people to interact. In my opinion I think it’s more important to know people on a personal level because that is what creates the foundation of effective communication and learning from each other.

2. Team Work/Inclusion

For people to feel part of a team we thought it was essential that people know each other and their defined responsibilities, have job clarity so you know who can help you, have training and induction ceremonies as well as finance wide catch-ups. We thought these initiatives will help people feel more involved and part of the team.

Though I did not partake in this survey it was interesting finding out what others felt about the work environment and it was also nice to know that the organization cared about people’s opinions. The bottom line of this is that what employees think and feel are critical to the operations of a business and regular feedback sessions such as these are vital to the ongoing function of the business and the happiness of employees. 

The Grad Program

10/4/2013

I hear quite a bit about the grad program since I work with two first year graduates and also a landed grad who finished the program this year. It sounds like a really amazing opportunity. The J&J graduate program is two years and you get to rotate between the three affiliates J&J Medical, Janssen and Consumer twice so you get one year in two different companies. Not only that but J&J fly the graduates to America, New Brunswick for training sessions with our parent company FIVE times in two years. Most of the times, the grads will take a few days off before and after to do some travelling and sightseeing since the opportunity is there. In America, they get to work with other overseas graduates and get matched with a room buddy who has a compatible personality to theirs according to the profile they submit. It sounds exciting and enticing!

The problem of short-term employees and high turnover

6/04/2013

When I first came in I was surprised to find out that my reporting and planning manager had only been at Janssen herself for three weeks and that she was still learning about the company. At the time I just thought it was your regular ‘a full-time employee has left and she has come to replace her’ but over the few months I have been here there seems to be a developing trend that one person leaves every few weeks. First it was the finance manager, then the management accountant manager, the management accountant, the SOX assistant, the commercial analyst, another commercial analyst and last but not least our financial controller! We also welcomed many new people such as our new rebates person, two new commercial analysts, a new systems processor expert and the grads also did a rotation so there were an additional two new faces. It’s almost safe to say that half the team came in after I did!

I found out through talking to people that one of the reasons for this high turnover was that may people were hired as contractors rather than full-time employees. I am not too clear as to the reason why but I’m sure J&J has its reasons. Contractors are hired for a definitive period, paid by the hour and do not receive the benefits that full-time employees receive such as sick leave and annual leave. If the company decides they want to keep them then their contract gets extended for a couple more months and if not then they leave. Some people have extended their contracts multiple times over a few years.

Having experienced this life cycle of employees coming and going all the time I discovered many issues that are accompanied with high turnover rates. Firstly information is often lost between people as handovers can be very brief or there may not even be time to do one in the case where an employee leaves before someone arrives to replace them. This then results in trying to reach out to people about the details of the new employee’s tasks and wasting a lot of time and effort to get their job done right. Not only this but a piece of culture is gone as traditions and events in the workplace are not handed down and forgotten. In light of the Agency Theory where employees are generally motivated by self-interest this incentive plan of being a contractor may mean that the organisation’s goals and their personal goals may not be perfectly congruent and may result in dysfunctional behaviour. The duration of their stay is stipulated in the contract so there may be hardly any incentive to put in a lot of effort towards the end of the contract. Of course this may not be the case for all people because in the end it really depends on a person’s individual personality.

However one up side to having a new team is that we can start off fresh again, challenge old ideas, be creative and innovative to come up with new processes, bring change to our team and influence the organisation in a better way.  

Having fun at work – Sweet Fridays

22/3/2013

Fridays are a day that everyone looks forward to and from the moment I step into the office  I can feel the light, airy, cheerful atmosphere that contrasts quite significantly from your usual Mondays back at work. So to take this opportunity the other UNSW intern and I came up with this idea of a ‘sweet Friday’ where either one of us or both of us would bring in a treat for morning or afternoon tea because we thought it’d be fun to celebrate the day that everyone looks forward to. 

I’m really glad we had this initiative because it also gave me a reason to meet new people and strike up conversations as I offered them food and got to know them. It hopefully made everyone’s day brighter and helps create a cheerful and relaxed atmosphere at work. I would usually do a round trip around the office to other departments besides finance as well, offering snacks and it was through this that I learnt more about the organisation, other people’s roles and it was through building these personal relationships that I was able to find out my ‘go to’ people if I was ever stuck on a task. For example if I was having issues with TM1 I knew exactly who to go to in IT that would be able to help me and most of the times if I just popped over and asked them for a helping hand they’d immediately come over to sort it out for me. It really helps to know people who are not just in your department but others as well to get a bigger idea of how the firm works as a whole and make new friends to make the whole experience all the more enjoyable and fun!