HUMAN RESOURCES SOFTWARE PITFALLS  

HUMAN RESOURCES SOFTWARE PITFALLS

HRIS Pitfalls

Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) Caution

Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) can be a productive solution to manage your most valuable assets: your employees. There are many great HR software solutions available in the market today, which is good news and bad news for companies searching for a new HR or payroll system. With so many vendors in the field, the chances are good that there is a solution that fits your needs. However, the crowded market means that companies will need to do their homework and apply a methodical software selection approach to choose the best system. Part of the research should be focused on not just software requirements and system functionality but also an awareness of some of the gotcha’s and lessons learned from other trailblazers and implementers.

Some of the pitfalls in selecting and implementing HRIS are common to many software selection projects. However, since many implementation failures can be attributed back to a failed software selection choice, the issues reviewed in this article can provide advance caution and advice to software selection project teams.

Scope Creep

It is critical that your organization document goals and prioritized requirements prior to commencing an HR software selection process. This task ensures that requirements are not driven by what the software can do but rather what the company most needs. These key requirements are then broken down and amended with detailed functional as well as technical specifications. A functional requirement is a feature set or functionality that the system performs with or without user interaction such as the ability to send email notifications to employees for recertification. A technical requirement is specific to the technical aspect of the system, such as the required operating system or database. Then there are requirements such as 24/7 uptime, service level agreements and future version upgrade requirements which are considered non-functional but essential.

Although it is important to thoroughly understand your organization’s needs and requirements, the risks increase as the number and complexities of the requirements increase. To mitigate this, if your requirements are extensive, segment them or break them into phases. What are the most critical functionalities that you need to have working from day one? Can you live with a system that just collects employee data for Phase One? Can Open Enrollment be scheduled for Phase Three since it occurs later in the year? Is time reporting so critical that it needs to be tackled first?

It is also important to be able to discern between the nice to haves and the must haves. Prioritize your requirements as critical (must have), work around (system can handle part of the requirement but some work around is needed), nice feature (it would be helpful but not necessary).

Timing

Plan ahead. If you are looking at HRIS applications for your open enrollment process, plan it at least six to eight months ahead of time. Be aware of other projects which compete for time and attention within your organization. Change management is critical and normally underestimated in an HRIS implementation. It is easily controlled if you plan ahead of time. However, if your users are inundated with other changes, HRIS projects are often slated low on user’s priorities because they are not considered critical to revenue generation.

Timing also refers to project time line and duration. Many projects can get sidetracked because of holidays and vacations. Asking employees to reschedule family vacations or even training is not uncommon but can cause resentment and low team morale. If other team members have to pick up the slack, it could even have a wider effect.

Data Quality

Any system, be it HRIS, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), is only as good as the data it processes and reports. If you are converting from a legacy system to a new HR or payroll application, make sure you convert all the data you need, not just from an operating standpoint but also from a legal perspective. Data conversion often involves data cleansing as well. This is the perfect opportunity to remove unnecessary data, eliminate duplicate data, implement standardization, and identify additional information needed. This latter activity is often ignored. Legacy systems are often limited in not just functionalities but also data. For example, your legacy system may not have been able to store skills, licenses or certifications. This information was typically stored in the employee paper file but the new system can track and manage these employee accomplishments with its additional fields. Capture data from paper files, spreadsheets, and other shadow or disparate systems and consolidate them into your data quality and conversion plan.

Management Support

The most important factor to the success of any HRIS selection and implementation project is senior management sponsorship. The message from the top has to be strong and convincing. Benefits must be clearly communicated to employees by the project team and line managers, however, the magic pill is support and enforcement from the company's leadership. Support is not just grandstanding and motivating speeches. Support also comes in the form of making sure resources are available for the project, allocation of bonuses or incentives for project participants, and recognition of the team’s hard work. Positive reinforcements must also be accompanied by enforcement of responsibilities and accountability. All employees are not just encouraged to use the new HRIS; they have to in order to process their benefits or even their time keeping. No other forms of processing should be accepted. There should be no exceptions even for managers and officers.

In summary, remember that HRIS systems are unique in that they usually affect every employee in the company, whether you implement self-service capabilities or not. Besides payroll, to your employees, human resources is the most critical software application in your company because it affects them directly. With the addition of self-service HR and time keeping, all employees have direct access and interface with the system. Make sure that processes are streamlined and the system is easy to use and you will maximize your opportunity to achieve a positive user experience.

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