When HRIS Hits the Fan

It’s almost predictable. Even after the most flawless HRIS installation, something will “hit the fan.” HRIS hits the fan when its original formatting intersects with the growth of the business. All HRIS systems are scalable enough to evolve with the business’s growth. However, not all Human Resources are prepared fully for that transition.

bringing HR and business data together

 

HRIS presents challenges

Human Resources have consistent complaints about HRIS performance:

  • Too much time wasted on data entry
  • Redundant data verification
  • Employee complaints
  • Sluggish performance
  • Increasingly difficult to access


HRIS is not the real problem

In most cases, the HRIS technology is not at fault. Rather, some short sight in thinking, planning, and implementation sets you up for pain and suffering. But, you may have what it takes:

  • It takes a qualified Human Resources professional to build a relationship with an HRIS vendor. You must understand the vendor’s product deeply and broadly, and you must know the vendor’s other products and those of other vendors. The industry has reached the stage where you have to master the options.

  • It takes the practical ability to reassess your HRIS product, its benefits and features, in light of your developing business needs. You must review the original implementation, determine the adequacy of your internal technology, reconsider the efficacy of the training, and reconsider the resources you have invested in the program.

  • It takes a qualified “fitting culture”. HR decision-makers have two significant tasks:

1. Restructure the office’s structure, process, and flow to favor the HRIS reality.
2. Recruit and staff to the new reality. You can design an HR function easier than you can fix a tenured HR clerk.

  • It takes constant quality communication to inform, engage, and educate. The sooner you can raise the system communication to encourage interactivity, the better you can make the system a partner in training and development.

  • It takes open ears. The vendor invites your feedback, so it is incumbent on you to listen to your internal customers as to what is and is not working for them. Your HRIS system must satisfy everyone throughout the organizational spectrum.

  • It takes mutually cooperative technologists. You must deal daily with your organization’s IT leadership, and it is likely to resist outside direction. Given that IT leadership can turnover, you need to manage and monitor the relationship with your HRIS vendor.


When HRIS hits the fan

A key problem starts with your perspective. If you brought your HRIS onboard with a focus on the past and what needed to be changed or fixed, your system will not look forward in the way you want. You are smarter to select a system from a place where you can see the future. You want the system and the provider who can see what you see as well as see around corners down that future road. That ability to see the future separates the best providers from the pack, and it adds value to your decision-making.


Image from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20131028062534-131079-the-datafication-of-human-resources

 

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