Features HR-systems: myths and reality

The first prototypes of modern HR-systems appeared in the 80s of the last century. Even then, in large enterprises used "samopisnye" programs to automate routine processes of personnel records.

Practice shows that the main reason for "discontent" user information system - in this case, human resources - lies not in a selected system, and in that:

 Firstly: the preparation stage to the selection and implementation of HR-system has not been given enough attention;

 secondly, the system originally anticipated "miracle" to create that it can not in principle.

Miracles do not happen

We must not forget that with the introduction of "harmony" information system of personnel management processes by themselves do not will find and will not be more effective. In order to obtain the expected effect of the introduction of the system must exactly match the "standards" of the company operating in HR-processes.

This can only be achieved, if we go "on the contrary", first defined by targets and necessary for their implementation of the system functionality and then carried out directly by the choice of the system, which would correspond to those tasks. In other words, the sequence of actions is as follows:

 acting in the company's HR-processes and corporate accounting standards are described and regulated;

 based on the description of business processes are designed the same for all divisions / subsidiaries of the standards movement and reporting;

 formed the requirements for the information system, based on real operating enterprise business processes and the flow of information algorithms;

 determined the technical requirements necessary for the implementation of these functions in the system;

 System requirements are ranked by importance to ensure effective service HR-processes;

 It is used to select the system on the basis of compliance solutions on the market formed requirements.

Evaluation of the existing systems for compliance with best carried out for each of the functional blocks (personnel administration, payroll, recruitment, training, and so on. D.). In this case, the extent to which each of the requirements can be assessed on a scale of 0 to 10, taking into account the "weight" of each of the comparable functionality. This multivariate analysis allows us to ultimately bring the most objective integral assessment of the extent to which each of the proposed enterprise systems requirements. As practice shows, at this stage, more than 50% is eliminated from the list of the systems in question - due to the lack of significant features or, on the contrary, by virtue of manifestly excessive functionality.

To gain a deeper understanding of the past primary selection system requirements, you must look at how this or that function is implemented in a specific information system. This information can provide manufacturers considered IT solutions. Ultimately, selected and implemented the system functionality which best meet the objectives in the field of HR-management, decide who it is supposed to.

Supply and demand

The evolution of domestic personnel technologies, in my opinion, reflects the colorful transformation as usual for another 5-10 years ago, "Personnel Department" in the "Service personnel management." Personnel records even mandatory now, but only one of many components of the activities in the field of personnel management. On the agenda today, HR-managers are complex and multi-faceted issues of motivation, career planning staff, formation of personnel reserve, training and development, and so on. In other words, the "music book" management, rather than accounting processes. Accordingly changed and functional information systems.

At the stage of "fitting" and evaluate functionality offered by information systems for HR-tasks of the enterprise is very important to initially "to agree on the terms" with their developers. What I mean? We must realize that the "high tech" is not omnipotent and the possibility of too limited. For example, in one of the projects on the selection of personnel information system for a large holding, studying the specifications of different systems, we stumbled on this here is an interesting functionality - "the formation of the basic provisions of the personnel policy in the form of local normative acts of the enterprise." It should be understood that any, even the most sophisticated IT system, to formulate a personnel policy of the enterprise can not. And in this case, it is meant only the necessary document templates. No more.

So let's try to understand what is really "know how" and "can not» HR-systems - from the standpoint of automation of accounting and settlement and administrative functions.

Automation of accounting and settlement functions

Due to long-term "automation stories" processes such as personnel records, payroll, management staffing, etc. -. Today implemented equally well in virtually all HR-systems on the market. For example, the accounting personnel quality are all systems - including through detailed formalization and regulation of this process within enterprises, at the legislative level. Therefore, when choosing HR-solutions for the automation of accounting and settlement functions, the main should pay heed to such factors as the cost of implementation and further support solutions, story introductions, "name" and reputation of the manufacturer, the professionalism of the team implementers, prospective plans for development of the system.

Another important criterion is the system of choice for the automation of accounting and settlement functions - its performance and scalability. This option is of particular importance if the implementation will take place in the company, employing over a thousand people. You must be sure that the expansion of the state system, without compromising speed, will be able to accurately perform calculations - such as wages.

Despite the overall "beautiful" picture, and in this area still have the "white" spots, the existence of which is useful to know.

For example, the vast majority of HR-systems (of course, if it is not a specialized or customized solutions) do not expect the full implementation of the calculation function piecework wages. In fact, none of the existing HR-solutions does not allow to take into account all the nuances and the multifactorial process of calculating piecework pay particular company. The reason is simple lack of uniform standards for the calculation of piecework payment, for which in each case requires a large amount of input information. Therefore, even companies with strong personnel systems continue to rely piecework wages using proprietary software. If we talk about the Western system, in which this feature is also rather poorly developed, simply because Russia is such a remuneration system is uncommon.

Automation of management functions

With the automation of administrative processes, the situation is somewhat different. Very often, the expectations of the management of functional HR-making does not correspond to reality and, by the way, that he "mythologized" most. Moreover, it is necessary to understand that the existence of a system model of a process, for example grading system, by itself does not mean that its implementation will lead to the emergence of the company grading system. If this process the organization has not been delivered, its automation or does not lead to any result.

The need for automation of managerial HR-tasks emerged not so long ago, so we can say that this direction is still in development. By the choice of systems for the automation of administrative activity should be approached with extreme caution also because the management functions are specific to each organization, and therefore need to focus on the best match of an existing company data analysis algorithm and stored in the system.

Critical assessment of HR-capacity solutions for the automation of management functions will help to avoid further disappointment. Thus, meeting the description of what the system is able to evaluate "the effectiveness of motivation", remember: the system can not make decisions, nor do they have a deep multivariate analytics.

Recruitment. We must be prepared for the fact that to date no "typical" system does not implement this function at the level required recruitment agencies. The fact that the existing personnel system carries out the selection of candidates for positions on the basis of requirements. If, however, you must "find" the person on a large number of non-formalized parameters concerning not only his job, but also, for example, his personal qualities, experience in the specific organization, specific skills, the availability of certain certificates, industry experience, and so forth., The implementation of such operations are usually associated with a number of difficulties, except for special customized solutions.

Training. Keen interest in ongoing training of staff and corporate training scale dictate new requirements to software products. Even today, large enterprises are required HR-systems that can administer the complex program of staff development and track their performance. Moreover, analysis of personnel training process costs must occur in different sections so that you can understand, such as how many cost falls on the training of certain units, and how much to training on a specific topic or to work with a particular organization.

Most HR-systems allow you to store large amounts of information about the providers of training - up to training courses and schedules the company's history of interaction with them. Data on training individual employees are also stored in the system, however, as a rule, ready-made solutions do not allow "pushing a button" to display the complete information on the training of the staff member - where he studied, the program of this course, learning outcomes, cost and so on. . to get a complete picture - in the weak integration of archived data - you have to work with different archives, because it does not always provide the ability to work with multiple databases simultaneously. The reason is that this problem is relatively new.

Personel assessment. In one form or another staff evaluation unit today is present in virtually all HR-systems having a functional automation of administrative processes. It should be understood that the date of its functionality is usually limited to the fixation events. The system allows you to record the results of assessment activities, but the tools of their organization, planning and analysis as well as assessment methods, so far developed relatively weak. Meanwhile, these tasks now coming to the fore. It is obvious that the development of a small business certification program is quite cope HR-department. However, to evaluate the 3,000 employees it is necessary to plan the most efficient use of time and human resources.