1.
What is an HRIS system and what does it do?
Since the emergence of computers and their growing role in many companies, many business functions have been transformed. With many companies focusing on more revenue driven areas such as marketing and research many companies are shifting their attentions to find a better way of monitoring their human resource management. Many in turn have transformed their human resource management functions from manual workflow to computerized workflow. Because of the way computers work they have made the task of analyzing the enormous amount of human resource data into a simple task. In short a HRIS system is computer software and hardware designed to help maintain and retrieve human resource records better and faster than their human counterparts. Today Human resource management faces several challenges such as information storage and retrieval (how to manage large quantities of paper?), training (how to develop training programs that fit the new digital economy?), performance tracking (how to track employee performance companywide?), hiring and firing (how to deal with application tracking, black listing and other reports) and cost reduction (how to lower the cost of maintaining a large human resource management system).
What can HRIS integration can do for a company?
Recruiting – An HRIS system can’t go out and find you the right candidate externally but what it can do is allow you to look from within your own work force for any job openings by allowing you to review the talent you already have. This allows the recruiters the ability to understand internal applicants in greater detail than external candidates, including performance history and learning details to assess their fit for open positions.
Career and succession plans – With a lower work force pool companies require the tool and technologies to store career and succession plans for their workforce more than ever. Integrating these plans with performance management tools is crucial to support employee growth within a company. Compensation - Annual salary increases has been a fixture in our work lives and requires a tremendous amount of time and effort in order to gather all the information needed to assess the correct salary increases. Incentive compensation is also a great way to drive sales in order to meet company performance targets. While this process has generally been handled manually, it has also seen a great deal of change for companies with an integrated HRIS system. Companies with an HRIS system can quickly bring up year over year changes in an employee’s performance and the impact that compensation has on performance.
Reports and metrics - Executives want answers to strategic questions, such as: What revenue increases have resulted from a performance management process and allocation of compensation increases? How has customer satisfaction increased because of an increased investment in agents? And how has employee turnover decreased because of a renewed focus on people? Making sure this information is updated and getting this information fast can be the difference between success and failure. Core HR information - This includes basic data, such as name, age, department and supervisor. This data could include other employees in the department and how they relate, contribute and support each other in the workplace.
2.
Types of HRIS
From simple to sophisticated software, HRIS are used by many small, medium, and large companies around the world. The functionality of HRIS may be categorized in 2 areas, each of which has different but transformational potential:
1. Process Technology – provides support for basic transactions. These functions include managing payroll, personal/organizational data and routine administration and are aimed at reducing costs and achieving HR operational efficiencies through automation.
2. Human Capital Functions – aimed at supporting people management
