HRIS operations can be looked at as behaviors. Systems are supposed and expected to act in certain ways, and there are penalties to pay when they do not behave correctly. Most of you have a story about your employee data operation’s behavior before and after your HRIS installation. What’s your HRIS story?
The rationality of machines
Each step in an information process starts when another ends. Inputs gather and adhere to new steps until they become part of the outputs. As this combination of inputs and outputs grows, the “intelligence” multiplies.
“Wired” to respond to stimuli, humans grow in their ability to evaluate stimuli and act on them. Likewise, software becomes more “intelligent” as it and its designers learn to build in action selection, the ability to select among a map of paths to promote status or flow.
The story before HRIS
Human Resources began as and largely remains a bookkeeping discipline. It records, counts, averages, and forecasts. It counts employees, hours, and processes payroll for their labor performance.
The largest part of HR relates to processing the data, and before the introduction of HRIS programs, it was mostly manual. Process-centric, it appeared process-heavy, non-strategic, and an unproductive labor burden.
The execs with vested interest in personnel functions accepted this “necessary evil,” so long as these functions assured agency compliance and management of the risk attached to human behaviors.
Until company growth demanded it, office managers or payroll clerks could manage these processes. However, with company growth, the processes grew in volume and complexity. And, volume and complexity lead to more labor at the same time.
The typical story then was of the understaffed Personnel Manager who labored to satisfy the CFO with reports of cost savings, guarantees of agency and safety compliance, and assurances of a non-problematic and productive workforce.
The story after HRIS
Processes that kept Personnel aligned with Accounting easily fit into early versions of programmed spreadsheets. A convenient calculator and spreadsheet mechanics promised little import or potential to users.
Some pioneers, however, pursued breeding and integrating the capabilities, and HRIS evolved from convenient payroll processing well before the internet. Corporations expanded information technology because of its values to finance and operations. Innovative software providers introduced programs to help sales and marketing; others designed work to support research and engineering.
Smart corporate decisions drove providers to simpler and stronger integration of purpose and system. And, in time, HRIS providers would compete to serve all corporate needs: personnel management, employee recruiting, performance assessment, enterprise resourcing, customer management, and more.
As HRIS capacity grew, it became a major corporate partner, providing the data for and means to major decision-making. As its expertise has deepened, it has freed HR leadership to devote more and better time to strategic planning and development.
What’s your HRIS story?
If, at age 60, you are still in HR leadership, you have either grown with the advances in HRIS, or you still struggle with largely manual processes in organizations so small that HRIS may not be cost effective.
If you are 40 to 50, your role has coincided with the advances in IT systems, the internet, and the Cloud. That gives you options to expense full commitment or leverage your position for HRIS customer concessions.
If you are 30 to 40, you have not known Human Resources without HRIS. It shapes your personnel staffing, job descriptions, and functional reports. More important, it affords you the time and wherewithal to influence and fulfill organizational goals.
If you are 20 and interested in an HR career, you will follow a career path that has been fully redesigned in the last 25 years for the first time since its launch after WWII and subsequent geopolitical upheavals with irrevocable effects on social legislation and contemporary demographics.
