HR & People engagement is the part of Human Resource Information System (HRIS) is a software or solution for the data entry, data tracking, and data information needs of the Human Resources, payroll, management, and accounting functions within a business. It is useful for all processes that you want to track and from which you hope to gather useful and purposeful data.
Normally packaged as a database, hundreds of companies sell some form of HRIS and every HRIS has different capabilities. Pick your HRIS carefully based on the capabilities you need in your company. As HRIS has become increasingly sophisticated, the choice has become enough to practically paralyze an HR department.
Watching a technology company, where computer experts exist, go through three different HRIS systems in ten years before finally settling on their current system, was an education in their complexity. This is why choosing an HRIS is a major undertaking for a business.
Expected Functionality of Better HRIS Choices
Typically, the better Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) provide overall:
Management of all employee information:
Data such as names, titles, addresses, and salaries are a basic start. Salary and position history, reporting structures, performance appraisal histories, and other critical employee information.
Company-related documents:
This includes such items as employee handbooks, emergency evacuation procedures, and safety guidelines.
Benefits administration:
You will want benefits administration including enrollment, status changes, and personal information updating. In an ideal system, you can allow employees to look up and review their own information, including vacation tracking.
Complete integration with payroll:
This integration will also include other company financial software and accounting systems. When these are connected, you can ensure that paychecks are correct. There is never a disconnect between what the official pay rate is and the information that payroll has. If the systems don’t integrate, it’s easy to update a salary in one system and not in the other.
Applicant tracking and resume management:
When your system is seamless, the recruiter can click a hired button and all of the information from the applicant is transferred to the employee side of things. This saves so much time because your data entry and paperwork practically disappear.
If an applicant puts in his own information when applying, you can ensure accuracy. If the offer letter is generated out of the same system as the payroll system, the salary will match perfectly and there is no misunderstanding.
Performance development plans:
It’s not just enough to have plans if they are recorded in a central system, then they can easily follow the employee from position to position. Senior leadership can run reports to see where people are and what their individual bosses are planning in terms of succession planning for their futures.
Disciplinary Actions:
It’s important to keep track of who has been suspended, demoted, or had other negative actions taken against them noted—even after the employee leaves your organization. When a company calls and asks for a former employee reference, it’s easy for an admin in the HR department to look up and report back whether or not the person is eligible for rehire.
Training records:
This is especially critical in a company where certifications and licenses are required. In other companies, training records may not have that level of importance, but you may still find that having the information is useful as you develop your employees, a key factor that they want from work.
In summary, the HRIS that most effectively serves companies tracks this information:
- attendance and PTO use,
- pay raises and history,
- pay grades and positions held,
- performance development plans,
- training received,
- disciplinary action received,
- personal employee information, and occasionally,
- management and key employee succession plans,
- high potential employee identification, and
- applicant tracking, interviewing, and selection.
