The situation of environmental sanitation in African countries over the past few years has not been a healthy one. Waste Management, a major component of Environmental Sanitation, has been a major headache of successive central government and local authorities. While the growth of towns and cities have resulted in increased population coupled with increased socio-economic activities, there has not been a commensurate increase in essential logistics for effective and efficient waste management services delivery.
Studies shows that all over the world, about 2.6 billion people are living without access to improve sanitation services whilst at least 40% of Africans do not have access to basic sanitation and hygiene services. For example, even in the 21st Century, Malaria, which affects 3.5 million people yearly, continues to be the leading killer of children in Africa!
It is in these aspects of waste management and environmental sanitation that Zoomlion Ghana Limited is working with the requisite expertise, technical and managerial competences as well as resources to support government, and local authorities to clean up cities and towns, improve the environmental quality and consequently give tourism, both internal and external a huge boost. In short Zoomlion Ghana Limited is in the business of promoting a green, clean and healthy Africa and beyond.
Requirements
With over two hundred administration staff based at its head office in Accra, Ghana, Zoomlion’s main aim was to introduce a system or policy to assist in the reduction of employee tardiness.
As with the majority of forward-thinking companies in Ghana, adopting stricter attendance rules was never going to be simple and changing some employees perceived acceptance of lateness and poor timekeeping was a process that would take some time.
Management began researching a suitable solution: a Client/Server based system with biometric terminals, a proven track record and local referral sites would be perfect. Multi-user capabilities were a must, along with complete scalability. Zoomlion is a company that is ‘going places’ and the chosen system must be capable of being expanded across the region and maybe to other African countries.
Solution
Once again, timeware was able to demonstrate that each of key requirements could be satisfied.
For such a large number of staff, two timeware biometric terminals were proposed. This reduces the ‘booking’ time as staff arrive at the start of the day and return home at the end.
timeware 2012 running SQL 2008 was installed on the customer's server with ten client connection spread across various departments. Connection speed was extremely fast with booking information being available on-screen within five seconds of the staff member arriving for work!
Planning and preparation was equally important:
On the timeware attendance module the policy commissioning was completed over a two week period as technicians obtained schedule work pattern information from relevant Zoomlion staff and began configuring the timeware system.
The timeware absence management module was implemented in full. Zoomlion can now allocate the correct number of holidays based on the employee’s role within the business and monitor sickness and planned leave effectively. Agenda based reminders highlight unauthorised absenteeism and lateness so that line managers can immediately identify offending staff.
Connecting to additional locations in the future is also simple using a VPN link for the biometric terminals and remote desktop connection (RDC) for remote PCs.
Comment
'The implementation of Zoomlion’s timeware workforce management system went very well. As with all installations, a project manager was allocated to oversee the work. This practice ensures that one person follows the whole project and are responsible for each and every aspect of the job!
Following five days user training for four staff, the system went live and the company has reported to me that they have now virtually eliminated all employee tardiness!’
Lordson Abasa-Addo
www.visisureafrica.com
9 September 2013
"KEEPING AFRICA GREEN, CLEAN AND HEALTHY"