Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) mean to improve Human Resources administration, reconfigure productivity, increase efficiency, drive operations metrics, and increase employee retention. Because HR has new duties – talent identification, job analysis and performance analytics, and organizational development – the risk of problems amps up the potential for a fiasco. Inadequate planning may be the number one cause of failure.
Who bought the program?
Admitting that most Senior Executives are never satisfied, HRIS installation failures indicate your need to plan long and deep. It is not easy to sell executives on the need for HRIS in the first place, so those “buyers” will monitor every crease in the outcome.
Who are the stakeholders?
The Human Resources manager who wants to install HRIS must recognize that the decision touches a flock of internal customers: employees, supervisors, payroll, finance, and operations. Too many HRM decision-makers think of HRIS as a payroll system on steroids. When you add this to their typically shallow IT knowledge and experience, you see the problem.
What does HR really want?
It is also understandable if the Human Resources office is primarily interested in their first level of needs. They will be happy if the program does what they need and does not conflict too much with the old way. In the meantime, they miss out on the strategic value of the data to productivity, talent management, succession planning, revenue projections, P & L, and more.
How deep is the planning?
A key metric for HR is that installation requires a year of advance planning. This represents more of a sea of change than anticipated; as such, it deserves comparable planning that steps-up to the challenge.
- You are the customer. The HRIS vendor must meet your needs and you need to know that there is no one-size-fits-all installation. Push back when the vendor demonstrates a this-is-the-way-we-do-it attitude.
- Form an installation team early. A true team is collaborative and should pull in all business needs, strategic goals, operations processes, marketing metrics, and so on. Obviously, the team cannot work until you have the buy-in of every member, securing and molding that commitment is a leadership issue.
- Make your IT director take the lead in terms of technical needs and timeframes. Having done so, IT must understand that their presence and expertise is collaborative. IT’s pragmatic needs can support but not redirect the program.
- Eliminate bad processes. You do not want the HRIS to carry forward any weak performing programs or processes, or the weakness will become institutionalized. Operations, shipping and handling, and customer service especially, need to clean their systems house before becoming etched in stone. Even though departments like human resources and accounting feel they follow industry best practices, they need to look at their systems and their relationship to other corporate functions.
- Make the vendor work. Include the vendor’s rep on your installation team, and make him or her work at the collaboration. The team facilitator must manage the vendor’s participation in order to understand everything your team needs and to work at the customization required to fill those needs.
Planning for implementation makes all things work better. And, because HRIS is a long-term commitment, the planning must understand and meet the challenge.
