HR Administration & HRIS Week 08

HR Administration & HRIS (Week 08)

• HRM administration handles 65% to 75% of HR activities, which are transactional.
• This involves record-keeping, updating policy materials for self-service portals, generating internal reports, and complying with external reporting mandates.
• HRIS are vital in managing complex transactional requirements.
• The employee master file is a crucial database for all employee information, required before other HR modules.
• HRIS enhance HR administration efficiency by improving data accuracy, reducing multiple inputs and redundancies, minimizing human error, and lowering costs.
• Speeding up report building and improving reporting reliability are key benefits.
• HRIS improves service to internal customers and supports strategic goal achievement.
• They also support global reporting requirements and secure data distribution.

HR Administrative Approaches

• Self-service portals are electronic access points to HR information via company devices or internet.
• Shared Service Centres (SSC) are technology-enhanced HR groups focusing on delivering excellent service to internal customers while promoting cost efficiency and continuous improvement.
• Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO) involves contracting with vendors to perform HR services.
• Offshoring extends outsourcing by contracting with vendors outside a nation's borders for cost savings or other advantages.

Theory and HR Administration

• Resource-based view: Organizations are bundles of resources (physical, organizational, and human capital).
• Physical capital includes technology, locations, assets (e.g., plants, money), and raw material access.
• Organizational capital encompasses formal reporting structures, coordinating systems, and internal/external relationships.
• Human capital includes employee experience, capabilities, relationships, and insights.
• These resources help organizations achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
• Transaction cost theory: Organizations choose whether to purchase goods/services in the marketplace or produce them internally based on transaction costs. Internal or external costs associated with the transaction are evaluated.

Self-Service Portals

• Employee self-service (ESS) portals allow employees to access services and information electronically, with a single sign-on.
• Manager self-service (MSS) portals provide comprehensive information about subordinates, enabling managers to perform administrative tasks electronically. These may include budgeting, reporting, policy, and procedure development.

Sample Employee Self-Service Functionality

• Provides functions for communications, benefits, personal data, and development.
• Self service functionality includes reviewing company communications, accessing company policies and procedures; researching and viewing plans, enrolling in programs (medical, dental, insurance), adding/deleting dependents, retirement/investment info/records, updating personal data (contact, address, telephone, degree, graduation date and W-4), accessing and submitting timesheets; vacation, sick days, and travel expense reports; training courses; and internal/external job applications.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Service Portals

• Advantages: Faster, higher-quality service to employees and managers, simplified routine inquiries, increased employee satisfaction, increased employee control over access activities, improved productivity, fewer transactions for HR employees, and lower HR costs.
• Disadvantages: Increased security vulnerabilities, increased chances of misuse of information by others, concern over violation of personal privacy, and possible misperception of HR work burden.

Shared Service Centers (SSC)

• Shared services, a collaborative strategy focused on concentrating staff functions, promote greater efficiency and service to internal customers.
• Viewing themselves as independent business units offering products, SSC's need to demonstrate value by establishing measures demonstrating customer satisfaction, productivity, cost controls, and quality.

Advantages and Disadvantages of SSCs

• Advantages: Timely, high-quality transactions; customer satisfaction improvements; efficiency and standardization; facilitating the development of quality measures, and responsiveness.
• Disadvantages: Costs that overshadow long-term quality, lack of synergy, potential power shifts between departments, and depersonalization from technology.

Outsourcing and HRIS

• Outsourcing involves contracting with vendors to perform one or more HR services or activities.
• Essential components of outsourcing contracts include specific pricing, performance expectations, associated measures, and terms/conditions.
• Essential for organizations is to be protected against unethical or incompetent providers.

Reasons to Outsource HRIS

• Discrete HRO: specialized external firms dealing with individual HR functions.
• Multiprocess HRO(Comprehensive/Blended): external providers handling multiple, related HR functions like recruitment, selection, and retirement plans.
• Total HRO: external vendors managing all or nearly all HR functions.

Evaluation of Outsourcing

• Advantages: Cost-savings, improved performance, flexibility, and focused core activities.
• Disadvantages: Loss of control, diminished strategic advantages, less internal expertise, potential job losses, management costs, and potential mismanagement costs.

Offshoring

• HR outsourcing with vendors outside the country, enabled by broadband and internet technology and fuelled by global competition.
• Primarily used to reduce costs and increase profits.

Types of Offshoring

• Offshore ownership: establishing a subsidiary, joint venture, or acquiring an existing firm in a foreign country.
• Offshore outsourcing: traditional contractual relationships with existing foreign firms. Ownership is riskier.

Things to Consider Before Offshoring

• Necessary employee knowledge, skills, and abilities (e.g., language)
• Information and communication systems compatibility
• Government regulations and legal employment requirements
• Political stability and facility & employee security
• Cultural differences

References

• Human Resource Information Systems (5th edition), Chapter 6

This quiz covers essential concepts of HR administration and the role of HRIS in enhancing HR activities. Topics include transaction management, record-keeping, report generation, and the significance of self-service portals for employee data. Understand how HRIS improves efficiency and supports strategic goals in HR management.