Learning from HRIS class

Time flies, it is almost the end of this class and for me the end of the HR Certificate Program. Fortunately I can say that along the entire program I developed HR skills that will help my professional development. I don’t think the learning road has ended, it is just starting… As a matter of fact I had a good work experience today, meeting with my HR team and discussing our plan for this coming fiscal year. I have to say that if had not taken this HRIS class my contributions in terms of technology solutions would not have been so powerful. A little more detail on this… I brought to the table the need for a Talent Management (TM) strategy as a critical function of HR. Because I’ve been doing all this research on TM solutions after each class we reviewed the topic, I was able to share my knowledge in terms of what TM solutions are available in the market. The relevant part of my sharing was the analysis of these SaaS options in the cultural context of my organization. After discussing why SaaS sounds like an advantageous option for us, we discussed alternatives like Taleo, Zoho, etc; At the end of the meeting we had talked about the importance and strategies of getting management buy-in in order to see tangible results from this discussion. I’m calling these vendors tomorrow to schedule demo appointments with them and ask them questions. I know I’m on the right track at work and I know this HRIS class taught me invaluable knowledge around TM suites, even more important is that this class motivated me to keep learning and goggling all that stuff that seems complex and threatening, but it is nothing to be afraid of, it is there for us to use it! It is Technology!!! Thanks Jun :D

Talent Management suite advantages

Extensive research has been done in talent management (TM) repercussions and it has been found consistently that it is a critical factor in driving a company’s performance. TM must be one of the priorities in Human Resources; however the reality is that this is true only for those organizations with a high level of maturity. It is good news to know that there is technology specialized in execution of TM best practices. Common challenges in this arena vary from distortion of a department due to seasonal hiring/turnover, to time-consuming recruiting duties, poor on-boarding strategies, or gaps in leadership chain among others.

Once the business goals and strategies are clear for HR people, they can evaluate different TM solutions based on the culture of the organization. There are several solid TM solutions delivered via SaaS which facilitates integration of TM pieces like Recruiting, On-boarding, Performance Management, Total Compensation and Evaluation. These TM suites offer lower infrastructure costs than on-premise options and the deployment happens faster than downloading a bunch of programs to our computers.

TM suites have advantages for all stakeholders, for example: the system is critical to manage a performance-driven culture, it helps to align goals from the top to all levels in the organization, it helps to fill the gaps in the leadership force, it improves recruiting process, it increases employee engagement, it helps to develop a talent pool used at the time of succession planning, it provides data, etc. After considering these advantages, are you going to move forward? I can’t wait to see those times when TM is not a luxury or rarity but a way to get things done at any serious place to work!

Cornerstone on Demand at Bill Kutik’s radio show!

I listened to Bill Kutik’s radio show with Adam Miller, CEO at Cornerstone on demand. They talked about the inevitable strong future of SaaS because of such things like shared infrastructure, faster implementation, lower maintenance costs, and so on.

I had checked this company’s website out recently and I feel this podcast was a good way to get to know a little more about them, especially their philanthropic side (Cornerstone on Demand foundation). I completely agree with the idea that talent management involves the entire employee cycle, from sourcing to on-boarding, to developing and even networking with alumni. If employees are the core of the business, why don’t look for the right ones and develop their skills to the maximum? Why the acquiring of TM solutions is so slow both in the profit and non-profit sector? I definitely, liked the company when they mentioned they have given their software and IT expertise to non-profit foundations to help them achieve their mission through empowering their people’s talent management!

Some factors to be considered when buying a Talent Management System

As part of our HRIS class we’ve seen how important is to get executive support to be successful with the acquisition and deployment of a talent management system. Currently, I’m supporting my HR team doing research about several recruitment solutions. Reading “Buying a Talent Management System, The 11 Key Steps to Success” a whitepaper written by Knowledge Infusion and Cornerstone on Demand, I linked all the steps in our charter assignment and these companies’ recommendations which are:

1.Establish objectives, respond to the question: What are you trying to accomplish?
2.Win executive support, this is critical to make the change happen or not.
3.Assemble a project team, define who is involved and include key parties in the org.
4.Define requirements, validate existing processes and leverage vendor best practices.
5.Establish a preliminary timeline and resource requirements, implement only what you need!
6.Prepare a business case, what will be the business impact?
7.Establish a budget, understand your budget process and consider direct and indirect costs.
8.Evaluate solutions, consider solutions based on the org’s culture and needs.
9.Select a vendor, ask questions! Involve HR and IT parties.
10.Negotiate the contract, don’t focus only on money, negotiate service levels too.
11.Begin implementation, be aware of your scope all the time, and communicate!

Wow! All these steps require strong Project Management skills. Actually, without experienced project managers who keep their eyes on resources, timelines and focus, the implementation would be a complete failure. I even got motivated to continue working on my charter… stay tuned!

Social Network Analysis

According to a white paper titled “Tapping the power of social networking to manage talent” written by Saba in partnership with Human Capital Institute, Social Network Analysis (SNA) is the mapping and measuring of flows of knowledge between people, groups, organizations or other components like computers linked on the web.

Why does SNA matter to an HR person? SNA is supposed to improve talent management and employee performance. SNA can be used to build Corporate Social Networking (CSN) which plays an essential role in mapping relationships at work. Once, HR understands those relationships, human performance can be motivated, shaped, manipulated, in order to achieve employee/business success. It is well known that the knowledge of who the agents of change are in a group is valuable; it is even more valued to take some action with that knowledge. Web 2.0 technology eases the analysis of networking and its impact on talent management, especially in mid to large size companies, where HR cannot get to know every employee.

Once a company implements and facilitates to its employees/customers/candidates an online place to share and interact with each other, HR can deploy an strategy to improve recruiting, on-boarding, leadership development, retention and evaluation. SNA results can be represented in flowcharts, graphs, roadmaps, and so on, which contain key connections useful to design and deploy engagement programs like mentoring or leaderships trainings. From a strategic HR perspective it was motivating to read how technology can be used to make more informed decisions when managing talent.

Recruitment solutions shopping

I'm looking for a recruiting solution for a small company. I have a few good options that I'll present to my colleagues in a few days. When I was looking for solutions, I found there are several companies that offer their talent management packages only to mid size or large organizations. The search is narrower when we are talking about 50+ employee companies, I understand why. Anyway, my archaic system is becoming less useful and it is ridiculously time-consuming.

During my research, I've noticed that it is not only the quality of the platform that you use to do your recruitment what brings success or failure to your process, instead the culture and management style at your company have the biggest impact in the implementation of a new system.

Recruitment is not an isolated event, it exists because of reasons like turnover, restructuring that creates new positions or eliminates current ones, etc... Recruitment is part of talent management and has to be addressed the whole phenomenon. Business success includes talent acquisition, management, deployment and it is very important to handle the talent pool and work on succession planning. I hope to convey this need to my team in a few days...

Learning 2.0

A few months ago, I was one of those people who refused online learning. I used to say I'm a classroom learner, I wouldn't take an online class. I've changed so much since I'm taking this HRIS class. Now, I'm all about technology!

I understand that you don't need to go miles away to be able to network with your classmates. You really get to know well your peers using all these Web 2.0 tools. Now, I even think it is more efficient to keep in touch with your colleagues and subject matter experts through virtual conversations and online knowledge sharing than other traditional methods.

Reading a blog, I found an article written by SABA (people management solution enterprise) about learning 2.0. This document mentions that informal learning is becoming more relevant in organizations and consists of a natural collective participation of sharing and acquisition of knowledge that occurs outside of classrooms.

Globalization is strengthening informal learning through Web 2.0 technologies. People are able to get the information that they want in real time. At the same time, there is an increasing need to be a better consumer of knowledge. There is more supply of information, therefore, it is more important to be selective and to have the motivation to go out there and do smart searches and contributions.

Social networking used to recruit talent

“Social networking: how it changed networking and the next generation of online tools” is the title of a white paper published by Taleo. The document made me think of the two sides that recruiters face looking for job applicants in the cloud, one side is the broad availability of candidates and the other side is the overwhelming from hundreds or thousands of unqualified applicants. We all know that there are millions of people looking for jobs, recruiters need to understand how to filter information in order to get the right candidates; fortunately technology helps.

Social networking is still growing, there are people who haven’t tried sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on; therefore, they won’t be found by recruiters using social media; there are traditional recruiting methods still in use, but for how long?. It seems like in the future almost everyone will be using social media and this technology will play an essential role in finding jobs/applicants. We as HR professionals have to be prepared to sort the huge amounts of information that we’ll be getting and we need to learn those technology applications that will make our work more efficient.

I recommend this white paper as a way to learn all those websites that people use; I found particularly interesting the fact that certain groups of people use some websites that are completely unknown by people with other characteristics. This knowledge might be useful when looking for candidates and at the same time we should keep in mind that we don’t want to violate equal employment opportunity regulations.

Recruitment solutions

I’ve been doing research on talent management technology and I’m glad Jun mentioned Mr. Ted which seems to be potential software to bring at work. My organization has 55 people and it has been challenging to find options that offer services to small companies. As I shared in class, my recruitment system is quite archaic and time-consuming; I think the lack of a serious recruitment platform gets pricey in the long-term because we use skilled people to do automatic tasks like reviewing and entering resumes manually.

People who are familiar with HR know that workforce is becoming more diverse and mobile. There is a current trend of changing jobs every two or three years, therefore, recruitment becomes a priority at work. Talent acquiring, deployment, management and evaluation are a necessity to be in line with business strategy. I need to bring change to my paper system. Some of the advantages of Mr. Ted are streamlining the recruitment process, identification of talent base, communicating open positions internally and externally, and so on. Mr. Ted offers integration with other HR software like payroll applications. At the end I need an integral solution, some kind of system that speaks to its various components. That’s my story… and this class has been a good start!

The ROI of SaaS

The ROI of SaaS is the name of the article written by Liz Herbert and Jon Erickson for Forrester, an independent research company. Forrester proposes a model to evaluate the long-term investment of SaaS; this model is called Total Economic Impact (TEI) and considers benefits, costs, and risks.

I learned about this article by the time we were talking about on-premise, hosted and SaaS technology in class, so I wanted to share with you that I found consistency between our discussion in class and the findings from Forrester. The main benefits of SaaS are fast deployment, better user adoption and reduced support needs. I am familiar with ADP because I use it to do payroll at work and I found it easy to use, whenever I have a question I call them and they are there, I have no complains; however I do not know anything about the cost.

Regarding implementation costs, SaaS costs are significantly lower than those for on-premise alternatives. Up-grades costs have to be factored in the analysis too; SaaS offers seamless and frequent updates as part of the subscription, while on-premise solutions put you on a place where you have to make decisions every time there is an update, does the organization need it? Can the company afford it? In my experience, what I see that happens is that these decisions are postponed most of the times and the employees end up working with old versions of the software.

The last category included in the TEI is the risk involved in the decision of taking the SaaS alternative. These researches highlight that moving to SaaS does not guarantee retirement of hardware or people resources and softer benefits around adoption, training, and scalability require planning and monitoring.

Definitely the answer to whether SaaS is a good investment or not depends on the needs of the company plus the analysis of benefits, costs and risks involved. Remember, it is very important to read the contracts and to ask questions like who is going to support me in a downtime?, when?, are there extra charges? Are there browser specs? etc…

Analytics in HR

After listening to Dmitri Krakovsky, VP of Global Product Management at Success Factors in one of Bill Kutik’s radio shows, I wanted to enroll in all kinds of math and business classes, from statistics to product development. Then, I realized I could start analyzing my work data at my associate level, without a degree in Statistics. The most important thing that I learned from that podcast is that everyone should understand the little or much data that they handle. Those positions where all the work the employee does is almost automatic are in extinction. Current and future jobs are requiring a more specialized skill set which includes analysis, innovation, and technology components. I think this is pretty interesting and beneficial for both the organization and the employee because this trend will bring more innovation and efficiency to the business model. At the same time, the burn out phenomenon will be less common and employee engagement higher.

With the presence of technology in HR we will be able to do more with our data; every member of the team would be able to get quick results from any combination of variables they might need. There is no point in accumulating information from customers, employees, products, and so on if we are not going to understand it. Different analyses will help us to develop talent, better products, improve customer service, and at the end of the day, all of this is transformed in more profit, better reputation, achievement of the organization's mission and vision.

Onboarding

In the 52nd Bill Kutik’s radio show, he is interviewing Mike Smith, Senior Vice President of Marketing at TALX Corporation which sells HR, Payroll, and tax outsourcing services. I checked their website out and found that serve small to large companies, even non-profit organizations. Since we talked about onboarding last class and that is one of the HR services they offer, I wanted to do some research on this to share with you guys.

Each time I read about an automated HR process I think of the way I do it at work, I always end up amazed at how technology eases HR processes and I hope one of these days I can bring some change to my paper files. The automated onboarding proposed by TALX is a web-based process that can start even before the new employee’s first day. When a candidate accepts an offer employment chances are that he/she is super motivated, oh wait, if the employer has a serious recruitment process this new hire motivation is an assumption. Therefore, it would be smart to send him/her some information to keep him/her engaged even before the start day and to save some HR time having him/her filling employment forms out electronically.

I definitely see the effectiveness of having the new hire entering his/her own information into the HR system instead of having one of the HR people entering the same data into the system from a paper form. Now that I know what a system of record is and its importance, I see that the very first time that employee information is entered into the HRIS is crucial because that same information can be used for payroll, benefits enrollment, and so on, it can be our system of record! Of course, we want to have the new hire information since he/she was an applicant, so, his/her data storage starts when we get the application and ends when the employee leaves the organization.

Outsourcing operations

I listened to several Bill Kutik’s radio shows and decided to write about the 51st one which is about business process outsourcing (BPO). Phil Fersht is the guest in that show and he is starting his BPO consulting business. He mentions the risks that companies run sending their operations outside and I agree in part because you have to understand the part of the business that you outsource and what you keep in house. Certainly, having friendly software that makes the company processes more efficient sounds like a better compromise. On the other side, I think that outsourcing your operations might help you to focus in improving and marketing your service/product.

Benefits administration is the most outsourced side of HR, in part because it involves specific knowledge of laws and regulations. Recruitment is also frequently outsourced because is very time consuming, but the company has to balance the fees and frequency of hiring when making decisions related to do business with staffing firms. That kind of business turns to be expensive if you have a high turnover because of lack of career opportunities in house, or lack of management, or competitiveness. At the end of the day, the organizational culture will determine who stays, who leaves and why.

The outsourcing industry has a variety of specializations and I think that the concentration of knowledge that they have adds value to the customer who might not have specialists in house. However, it’s not for every organization and definitely you have to know your business and part of that is using your resources as employees skill set to cut costs, improve productivity, climate and moral!

HR to the core: systems of record

Some of you guys know that I participated in last week's Knowledge Infusion webinar: "HR to the core, getting more from your system of record". The content of the presentation became much more relevant after yesterday's HRIS class where we discussed storage and management data. I'm going to share my thoughts on the information given by Jason, CEO of the HR Consulting Firm facilitating the webinar.

Once again, I heard about this shift in HR from a transactional to an interactional perspective; I guess this change is good news, but to learn about the admin HR reputation that HR has had over the years is also an eye opener. It sounds almost ridiculous to me that just now HR people are starting to be involved in their business strategy plan. My familiarity with academic Organizational Psychology makes me think that HR should have been included in the business core a long time ago; but we know that academia and reality don't always get along.

After the historical perspective, the facilitator explained the importance of having solid data. The core of HR is employees, we need to have their data and do great things with it. Unfortunately, not every organization has accurate data, when that is the case, their strategy doesn't have a solid base. How are they going to know what kind of training certain people need?, Who has a specific skill set needed to fill out an open position?, etc...

When there is a dependable and functional HR technology system and everyone understands the value of the data stored, that information becomes useful knowledge to make better decisions that affect both employee and employer. Otherwise, lack of HRIS understanding passes the decision making to IT or an external vendor. IT and HR should collaborate to achieve business goals.

It is more productive to have talented people working in a smart way than having them entering the same data more than once in different systems that might end up full of human errors or misused. Another advantage of having a clean and nice system is the capability to generate reports quickly that managers need to do their job, talent management.

I still deal with paper files at work… HRIS might help!

I’m glad one of our assignments in this class is to write a project to solve a challenge at work because I have a BIG one and it is related to lack of technology! Basically, we don’t have a modern platform and rely heavily in excel, pen and paper. So, I drafted the following plan based on the charter that Jun provided last Thursday. Please, feel free to ask any questions and/or suggest what you feel might improve my project and increase management buy-in.

1. Problem statement
Recruitment is very time-consuming for the HR team. This issue might be increasing our cost in the long term and affecting our capability to attract talent.

2. Customers
Job candidates, HR staff, senior management.

3. Business case
The recruitment workflow starts when there is an open position; then HR and the hiring manager revise the job description. Now, it’s time to post it, I log in several websites and begin my copy-paste. In the meantime, IT sets up a specific email address to get all the applications for the same position. Eventually, I’ll start getting resumes in my already created outlook folder. You can imagine the amount of resumes that I get, so I’d better print them out and enter them in my database on a daily basis. Although I only enter contact information and a mini summary of work experience, I still have to eye-scan each resume. I’m the first filter and I have to give the hiring team/manager a bunch of resumes to go through. After that, they let me know who to schedule interviews with. While I’m populating my file-maker database, I’m sending acknowledgment letters too. At the end of all this, my inbox is full again because people reply to such acknowledgments, the cycle never ends…

4. In scope
A better recruitment system would help my team to be more available to other needs of the organization, therefore offering better customer service.

5. Out of scope
The organization would benefit from a more efficient HR team that improves the capability to recruit talent through strategies like a faster and accurate recruitment process and therefore a more professional image.

6. Success metrics
a)Faster creation of the external talent database.
b)Immediate acknowledgment of application received.
c)Avoid offer rejection from the applicant due to long decision making process.

7. Deliverables
a)Communication plan: identification of agents of change in order to explain the benefits of a new system, staff meetings, supervisor meetings.
b)Training plan: IT and HR in collaboration to offer training facilitated by external and internal experts.

8. Resources
a)Functional/technical: Research of options available in the market to implement the new system. IT assess technical infrastructure needed and HR evaluates skill set requirements to migrate data to a new platform.
b)Sponsors: who is going to invest the money, time and effort necessary to implement the new system?

9. Core team
In order to implement a new system that complies with federal and state laws, as well as organization policies, is necessary the close collaboration of the IT and HR department.

Project Management Methodology

When Jun mentioned Project Management Methodology (PMM) I didn't know exactly what he meant, it sounded quite complex. So, I came home and googled it. I found lots of information related to PMM. After I researched the topic I learned that PMM is a holistic approach about how to achieve goals, therefore, a very well paid skill!

There are several methodologies to manage a project, they all have different names, but at the end all of them have a common purpose which is to accomplish a goal within a specific time-frame and budget.
A project begins with an idea that requires a lot of thinking, learning, organizing common sense, and so on. A PMM is like a vehicle to transform an idea into a product or service where all people involved are satisfactorily rewarded according to their interests.
The PMM used by the IST (Information Services and Technology) at MIT has a clear logic explained in 5 steps:
1) Startup (establishment of the scope, goals, and preliminary plan).
2) Define and confirm scope/requirements (confirmation of scope and clarification of business needs).
3) Develop plan and secure resources (kick off the project according to the stakeholders’ agreed upon roadmap).
4) Track, control, report and review (monitor progress, report status and solve issues).
5) Completion and assessment (conduct final project review and knowledge transfer).

After reading about project management, it did not take much time until I bought the idea of needing to have a PMM in order to plan, assess risks, evaluate pros and cons, communicate, and unify criteria towards achieving a common goal. As an HR player, my contribution would be to make all stakeholders feel engaged in the project. Based on my knowledge of effective performance management, I assume that the more engagement there is towards the same goal, the more likely the project will be to succeed. So, my work entails understanding the big picture and each person’s interests/motivations in order to communicate and align the project objectives among the team members, and to create milestones that lead to the same goal.

Advantages of technology implementation in the workplace

Technology helps not only HR but every team in the organization because it smoothes processes giving more time to people. When an organization becomes technology friendly, it broadens professional development paths for its employees. All of a sudden the staff has more time to invest in core tasks instead of time-consuming admin tasks. Also, HR becomes more available to serve the staff and to offer better customer service.

Employees who are looking forward to advancing their careers perform better and stay longer in a place where the obstacles are not directly related to lack of technology. Motivated employees will exceed their expectations when the job is challenging and allows them to be creative. A technological environment opens the opportunity to work on a more demanding position, which means a more fulfilling job for most people.

When technology is implemented in an environment where management is taken seriously, supervisors and managers have more opportunity to use their time in a smarter way. Managers become mentors and coaches who offer feedback to develop their supervisees taking advantage of tools like talent management software.
Another interesting aspect of technology from a stakeholder point of view is that it improves the image and reputation of the organization. For example a professional and functional website attracts potential applicants and customers; it is also a good way to communicate information and handle employees’ benefits enrollments or payroll in compliance with laws and free of human error!

The impact of technology on the job market

After reading several articles related to how the jobs will be in the short and mid-term term, I see that our best bet is on learning new technology. We all have heard, read or seen that companies are changing, they are becoming less protective of employees. Therefore, employees are changing too; they are more focused on their career progression within or without their current employer. From an HR perspective, this change means a big change in terms of talent management, total compensation, and so on.
Currently, it is up to the employees (interested in getting promotions) to expand their skill set either taking advantage of employer sponsored professional development or self-paid external education. The tenure privileges era is gone. Actually, even people who are not looking forward to growing their career because they are already satisfied with their current level will need to work on their skill set just to secure a paycheck since technology is substituting some of those jobs; for example, people who were laid off from a supermarket to be replaced by a man-made cashier. In reality, this technological trend will create more knowledge demanding but better paid jobs. At the end, the necessary specialization and competition that we have to face will help us to improve our quality of life and as a result our communities.