Human
Resource Management Information System
Accountable
for a human resource management information system and want some
practical suggestions to reduce information management costs?
An effective human resource management information system must provide
answers to questions
such
as:
- What positions are available within the company?
- What are the responsibilities for the position?
- What skills and experience are required?
- Who does the position report to?
- What is the pay rate for the position?
- What positions are filled?
What is
position information?
A position represents a job within a company or division e.g.
- Informatica developer;
- Payroll supervisor;
- Project manager; or
- Sales representative.
Position information requirements include things like:
- Position type;
- Responsibilities;
- Classification e.g. is it salary based, hourly
paid, part time or full time;
- Account and budget information e.g. what
general ledger account should be charged for employee's salaries for
this position;
- Position reporting structures e.g. the
report-to position;
- The pay rates and pay steps established for the
position type and the changes to these pay rates over time; and
- Position effective date.
What
human resource management information system employee data is
managed?
Companies may want to track things such as:
- The
various employees who filled a position over time e.g. an employee may
fill a sales representative position in one sales division, be
transferred to another sales division, and be replaced by a second
employee;
- The staffing firm that proposed the employee;
- The union responsible for the position;
- Benefits e.g.
- Benefits available for employee; and
- Benefits paid to the employee;
- Payroll information e.g.
- Requested deductions;
- Gross amount paid;
- Amount deducted; and
- Payment details such as direct bank
deductions;
- Address information; and
- Contact information e.g. phone numbers and
emergency contact information.
What are
human resource management information system challenges?
Human
resource management systems are frequently the system of record for
employee information. However, they are usually implemented as
stand-alone systems that do not communicate well with other systems,
which need employee data e.g.
- Order management;
- Shipment management;
- Billing management; and
- Work order management.
If
every application captures and stores employee data, then there is a
lot of redundant processing. This increases the information management
costs e.g.
- There is cost associated with synchronizing
data between systems;
- There are additional data quality issues and
costs as different systems may capture data using different rules; and
- There
are additional data movement costs as it is necessary to load data
warehouses from multi sources and to sort out which data is the correct
version and the most accurate version.
What is a
better way to manage this information?
Maintaining
human resource data in a variety of individual databases is less
efficient than storing it in one database and having all applications
access the data as needed. Alternate options to individual systems
include:
- Enterprise resource planning (ERP), many
companies
have invested in ERP systems, which handle human resource management
and other business functions.
ERP should be
evaluated to ensure that they meet business information management
requirements.
Click here for more
details on enterprise resource
planning
- Redesign,
some companies have made investments in an enterprise data model and
new management information systems to access common data.
This
option is not as costly as it might appear since much of the analysis
work will be required even if an ERP option is selected. Companies
should complete a cost benefit analysis to compare the cost of
re-design with the cost of ERP.
- Master data management
(MDM) is becoming a common, but expensive, means of ensuring
synchronization of key data among applications.
Click here for more
details about master
data management.
Companies
should complete a cost benefit analysis to compare the cost of MDM with
the cost of re-design or ERP.
Summary…
A human resource management information system provides data to many
corporate
management information systems and needs to be managed to avoid storing
redundant data.
There are several options for ensuring
efficient information management and these options should be explored
to determine cost benefits on a case-by-case basis.
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