BRIDGING THE GAP WHEN “IT” IS FROM MARS & “HR” IS FROM VENUS: FIVE HRMS REQUIREMENTS THAT WILL SATISFY ALL
We’ve all heard the saying “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”, but when it comes to standardizing on a global human resource management system (HRMS), the same could be said for an organization’s Information Technology (IT) and Human Resource (HR) departments. In order to close the gap between these two departments and create a happier co-existence, IT and HR departments should heed the advice of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus author John Gary, and learn how to communicate more effectively to ensure the needs of each are taken into consideration and that an emphasis is placed on creating a peaceful union of organizational equals.
Let us start with the following assumption:
HR understands what communication is necessary and the manner and timing with which it must presented to achieve strategic outcomes, while IT understands the security imperatives and has the ability to understand the capabilities of the underlying toolset to achieve these outcomes.
The HR Mandate
As organizations strive to build and sustain a high-performing, satisfied workforce, they place an even greater emphasis on the effectiveness of the Human Resource department. Today, the HR department is viewed as a critical contributor to an organization’s bottom line, facilitating the organization’s ability to attract top-talent, reduce turn-over and control the high cost of benefit enrollment and utilization. However, to be truly effective, HR needs to have the right combination of people, processes and technology in place to achieve success in this area. With the help of HR technology, organizations can now provide a number of strategic functions designed to automate a range of functions, including employee assessment or satisfaction; time-to-fill or cost-to-hire statistics; employee performance index; revenue-to-employee or productivity-to-employee metrics; turnover rate; etc. While few will dispute the value of an organization’s HR Management Software, the road to adoption can be quite challenging, and requires careful consideration and cooperation among all stake-holders, especially IT.
The IT challenge
While companies increasingly rely upon technology to streamline their business processes and create a competitive edge, they are quickly realizing that if they are to truly optimize their IT investments they must first work to align IT with their business goals. This is particularly true with Human Resource Software, which needs to be treated as more than just mere infrastructure or ‘back office’ applications, given the major impact an HRMS has on an organization’s overall business strategy, competitiveness and profitability.
Five HRMS Considerations Designed to Bridge HR and IT
In order to make the most of their HR technology investments, organizations must be sure to communicate the over-all goals and objectives of the HRMS and solicit input from both HR and IT. Careful consideration must be made to ensure that the solution can improve the organization’s business processes (not just recreate old paper processes); create efficient workflows with approval mechanisms, provide compliance reporting; and integrate all of the major components of HR, including compensation and benefits administration, recruiting and training administration, and strategic measurement tools like Metrics, Performance Management and Succession Management.
To ensure a long-term, successful co-existence among HR and IT, organizations should speak in terms that each department will understand and jointly select a solution capable of supporting the unique needs of both. More specifically, organizations should adopt an HRMS capable of supporting the following five criteria:
1. Scalable Infrastructure: Meets Current & Future Needs
To ensure the longevity of the HRMS, organizations must look for a solution that is capable of meeting the current and future needs of human resources, while reducing the involvement of the IT department. The HR system needs to be scalable and highly flexible so that once IT deploys the system, HR can use it to support the needs of its existing employees and extend the system to include new employees (as the company grows--either organically or through mergers and acquisitions), benefits plans and/or business processes. The solution should also be capable of supporting multiple language profiles so that all users/locations can leverage a single, global HR platform in order to achieve an accurate picture of the company’s HR goals and objectives, on a global scale, without having to seek additional IT support.
2. Strong Reporting & Query Capability: Ensures Compliance & Internal Requirements
The HR system should also have the ability to support various HR and compliance-related reporting needs, including Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), Military/Veterans (VETS), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), Wages and Filings (W2’s and 1099’s) etc. To ensure the long term success of the system, IT teams should look for a solution that combines data from multiple systems, has built-in report writer features, offers native language and SQL query capabilities to ensure easy access by any level of user, and supports unlimited security profiles capable of defining the fields, tasks and actions that are permitted by each user. In doing so, HR professionals can easily add fields and tables to reflect the changing business and data needs of the organization, securely locate & disseminate information to appropriate and authorized stakeholders, generate sophisticated reports that comply with internal and external regulations and provide sophisticated HR-related metrics and data to senior managers for decision making and goal alignment.
3. Workload Automation: Organizes Tasks & Improves Process
In order to support today’s “do more with less” work ethos, it is also important to look for an HRMS that supports what is commonly known among IT departments as “workload automation”. Long recognized by the technical staff for its ability to seamlessly incorporate event-driven activity with calendar and scheduling functions, work load automation allows HR teams to organize daily tasks, prioritize work, and improve their process efficiencies. Leveraging automatic, user-defined ‘triggers,’ HR teams can set up email based alerts, notifications and reports that allow them to focus on more strategic tasks, improve communications and respond faster to employee requests and organizational changes.
4. Tight Integration & Import/Export: Reduces Redundancies, Improves Accuracy
Some other important HRMS considerations - ones that are especially important to IT folks involve the tight integration of (and turn-key interfaces to) other HR-related systems such as single sign on, email server integration, active directory, LDAP, third party payroll services, benefit carriers, or other internal legacy systems and the ability to import data from other source systems. This is particularly important as Human Resources professionals strive to create a central point of access capable of streamlining their HR processes. The system should also enable them to eliminate redundant data entry functions, increase data integrity (by having the ability to import historical data from outdated legacy systems) and more importantly, provide additional analysis and reporting to other team members as needed. Lastly, organizations should consider HR software that is capable of easily exporting HR-related data to other software utilities such as Word, Excel, etc. In doing so, HR teams can provide additional analysis and reporting across the organization using existing systems and popular formats without the need for additional IT involvement. With improvements in architecture and with the proliferation of Web 2.0, traditional imports and exports can be reduced to Web Service requests that allow the posting and exchange of information to become seamless and automatic. This kind of advance allows the manager and employee to be managing data without worrying about the administrative task of running an import or export to manage the integration of systems.
5. Advanced Workflow: Eases Use & Promotes Self-Service
The final, and perhaps the most important consideration, involves the system’s advanced workflow functionality. Leveraging user-configurable menus and role-based forms, HR teams can automate time-intensive and multi-step/multi-person processes such as life change events (name change, new dependant, etc.); new hire activity, terminations, training, etc. As a result, HR professionals will enhance their productivity, reduce their training and administrative expenses, ensure faster and more accurate transaction processing and lower the cost of collecting and delivering HR-related services throughout the enterprise. IT and HR departments alike should look for a solution that is capable of being deployed online, with Employee Self-Service (ESS) and Manager Self-Service (MSS) portals, to encourage easy and secure access among employees, to document company procedures and workflow, and to ensure compliance with mandates such as Sarbanes/Oxley. By selecting an HRMS that supports advanced workflow capabilities, HR and IT groups can optimize and extend the technology platform to drive bottom line efficiencies and profitability.
Put simply, if an organization is to build and sustain a high-performing and satisfied workforce, then a fruitful relationship between HR and IT must exist. So instead of thinking in terms of Mars versus Venus, IT and HR should consider these five easy requirements and use them as a means to openly communicate their goals, objectives and system requirements. In doing so, and by giving proper consideration to people, processes and technology, you and your organization will be well on your way to a long-lasting, satisfying marriage of HRMS equals who are working together to meet a mutually satisfying goal.
About the Author
Shafiq Lokhandwala is CEO at NuView, Inc., developers of an award-winning, Human Resource Management System (HRMS) for global companies.
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