The HR Advisor
November, 2009
HRIS (aych-ar-iy-es ): 1. noun key to alignment with corporate objectives.

by Diana Matwichuk, CHRP Candidate

Becoming more strategic is a top priority in many organizations. Purchasing an HRIS is often a reflection of the belief that aligning HR with the corporate objectives can help to achieve those objectives.

If an HR function is maintaining duplicate data or relying heavily on paper-based procedures and not producing data analytics on which strategic decisions can be made, it's likely that these processes are hampering alignment with corporate objectives, whether it is due to inefficiencies or the absence of data and functionality. Inefficiencies sidetrack or slow the attention being paid to achievement of corporate objectives. And the lack of readily available supportive data for decision-making, or any related automated functionality, can cause inordinate effort to be spent obtaining and preparing that data.

The right HRIS can make significant contributions in the following four areas:

Talent Tracking

Knowing the talent demographics of employees is key to establishing training programs, succession planning, and organizational management. Tracking that talent in an HRIS so that it reflects core competencies, becomes particularly useful when aligning HR initiatives with strategic direction.

For example, if your corporate objective is to provide exemplary customer service, imagine how useful it would be to know the proliferation of bilingual workers, and those employees who had been formally trained in customer service. Taking the example one step further, imagine that reports could be easily generated in an HRIS and provided to senior management to support strategic decisions regarding corporate expansion.

Tracking talent can also be useful in pandemic planning and related reactive measures. Competencies that are required to fill a particular role at short notice can easily be identified and replacements found elsewhere in the organization.

Position Management

There are many aspects of position management that can be handled effectively by an HRIS: assigning positions to employees, tracking FTE's for budgeting, attaching rates to positions (and dynamically sharing that data with payroll), preparing organizational charts on the fly, and filling vacancies to meet position competency requirements.

Compensation Management

If your compensation policy involves a link to employee and/or corporate performance, having the contributing data in that algorithm available in an HRIS can significantly reduce the effort involved in compiling proposed salary increases or performance-based incentives for management approval. Salaries, performance appraisal data, and even valuations that have been defined for job classifications, can be extracted from the HRIS for review and calculations.

It should also be possible to compare your HRIS salary data against external source survey data in electronic format. This comparison may help you identify how you compare in being a leader in attracting top talent, and if this is a corporate objective, being able to produce the comparative results in an automated fashion will provide timely feedback on your efforts.

Reporting

An HRIS carries endless amounts of data that help you achieve corporate objectives.

Trend analysis provides supportive detail for changing company policies. For instance, trends in health and safety data can help to avoid incidents, which negatively impact WCB rates and produce unwanted publicity, both of which would divert attention from achievement of corporate objectives.

Similarly, lost time analysis can uncover situations of employee burnout or time theft which could point to the need for changes in position management and staffing. Are vacancies being filled efficiently so that employees are not overburdened while covering for a vacant position? Discovering such trends could justify the development of HR programs that will in turn facilitate the achievement of corporate objectives – in many areas of the organization.

In Summary

When considering the implementation of an HRIS be sure to factor in the value that will be realized through aligning HR initiatives with corporate objectives. And since those HR initiatives often affect many areas of the organization, the value is widespread.

Avanti provides a complete HRIS, Payroll, and Time & Attendance solution. For more information contact Avanti at 1.800.660.0464 or email info@avanti.ca.