Turning Employee Recordkeeping Into Strategic HRIS

As a large company, you depend on your HRIS to keep your employee information organized and up-to-date. If you are only keeping employee information for reference purposes, you may be missing opportunities to use the data in strategic ways to help the bottom line. Here are some things some of the latest HR information systems can help you do:

• Utilize web technologies for employee self-service. Why have forms or staff to collect employee information, such as address changes, when you can give employees the ability to do it online?


• Competency management. Through the performance review process, your HRIS can track areas for improvement by employee or department. This is vital for internal training staff to be able to easily evaluate training needs by department or company-wide.


• Career Management. Also collected through performance review, skill sets can be made available on a company-wide basis for internal recruitment efforts, interdepartmental knowledge sharing and workflow efficiencies (less duplication of similar job tasks). This can also be helpful in establishing career goals and paths for individual employees.

If these look familiar, they should; they are some of today’s “next level” HR functions, and they are making their way into the core of tomorrow’s HR information systems. Most top-level HRIS vendors, such as PeopleSoft, have their own established process for these functional areas, so if you wish to evaluate a new system or a module within your existing system, be sure to evaluate the process used for collect and managing the data. This will go a long way towards helping you make the programs successful.

Link to listings of HRMS articles and vendors.