DART Garners Award At A Region Best Human Resources Departments Ceremony

Wilmington -- The 2010 Human Resources (HR) Department of the Year Awards dinner and presentation was held on November 18, 2010 at the Crystal Tea Room in Philadelphia. The HR Department of the Year Awards recognizes Delaware Valley human resources departments, who have demonstrated service excellence and measurable success for their organizations. The Rosen Group of Voorhees, NJ is the premier corporate sponsor for the HR Department of the Year Awards along with other sponsors including the Philadelphia Human Resources Planning Society.
Awards for excellence were given in several categories and the Technology award was given to the Delaware Transit Corporation (DTC). The DTC HR Department was also recognized for being a HR Department of the Year nominee.

The DTC HR Systems and Technical Team work to ensure data integrity, increase performance, and streamline processes. The following award winning technology enhancements were successfully implemented which also capitalized on the products that DTC already owns, and provided costs savings.

Electronic Drivers License Verification; The electronic license validation was necessitated because it is important that DTC have safe and valid drivers on the road. Driver information from the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records were updated periodically and it was realized that DTC could have drivers with suspended licenses. These issues gave the DTC Systems team an opportunity to improve and sync driver information with actual data from the DMV. DTC decided to tap into the DMV system to validate and sync our employee records. On the basis of this information, reports to the DTC Safety Department were generated to warn them of potential unsafe drivers and suspended drivers. The Safety Section uses this information for driver education, training and certification. The report is also used to inform the department about potential license renewals that might need to be addressed.

Query Folder Access; With the need for end users to run reports from their desktop, the HR Systems team worked with departments to identify the reports needed, wrote queries, tested, setup security, and trained end users. The reports were written with prompt fields so the end user can change the criteria as needed. The value gained was that end users can now run the reports themselves and DTC could capitalize on what it already owns.

Succession Planning; The HR Systems team put together an analysis of what PeopleSoft had to offer for employee succession planning and identifying DTC future personnel needs. A Succession Planning demo was created with a systems standpoint. A committee was put together with a representative from each department who would work within their department to identify the key positions, answer a series of questions, reviewed the job description, and provided the specific competencies of the job. Those competencies were setup in HR PeopleSoft.

Health & Safety Module Implementation; To aid the DTC Safety & Security team, the Health & Safety Module was enabled to record and track incidents, injuries, illnesses, and accidents. The module also tracked physicals, dangerous occurrences, and workers compensation claims management in HR PeopleSoft while reducing costs of manual spreadsheets. The entire Safety Section will now have access to all data that will be up to date, and the capability to run reports. HR PeopleSoft will also track vehicle/equipment and all individuals involved in incidents/accidents for statistical reporting. The value gained is the ability to track vehicle/equipment repair costs associated with an incident/accident, gain time by not having to manually track all information in excel spreadsheets and utilize what DTC already owns.

DTC Executive Director Stephen Kingsberry offering congratulations to the HR team for their award said, This award for the systems and technologies we have implemented is more evidence of the DART First State commitment to manage ourselves more efficiently and cost effectively. By improving our systems internally we are also able to provide even better and safer transit services for the riding public.