How To Select And Implement An HRIS You’ll Love

When it comes to making a decision about HR software, there are many factors to consider

HRIS solutions offer a large number of benefits for companies, including saving valuable HR time, attracting top talent, and even saving the company money. However, choosing the right HRIS for your company can be a long and costly process. But despite the time and money put into selecting HR software, a huge percentage of HR professionals still regret their decision. Part of the problem is that there are so many HRIS options available that it can be difficult to find the solution that best fits your needs.
 

In order to address the challenges associated with finding the right HRIS, Dave Rietsema, CEO of HR Payroll Systems, assembled a panel of expert HR practitioners. Mary Dale, vice president of human resources for Convivial Brands, Stacy Hostetler, Director of Talent Acquisition, Rodeo Dental & Orthodontics and Norm Johnson, director of human resources for Giant Communications. 

Dave Rietsema, says: “I read a white paper early in the year, that was frankly, kind of jarring. And according to Kelton Global, 85% of decision-makers regret their choice of an HCM provider. To me, that number is just shocking given all the time and money HR and other departments invest into these projects. And so clearly there are parts of this process that are broken and I wanted to assemble today’s panel so you can make the right decision for your organization.”0

“When it comes to making a decision about HR software, there are many factors to consider. Whether you’re just researching or there’s urgency behind selecting a new and better HR payroll software, it’s going to require you to change the systems that you’re using now. This endeavor takes careful planning to ensure the project is successful, which brings us to our first pillar – planning. Norm, when you worked for Golden Eagle Casino, you went from inputting employee data into spreadsheets to implementing an HRIS. Can you share what you did to prepare for this change and how that planning was beneficial for you?”

Norm Johnson, says: “Sure. So first I’d like to say that it is very difficult to work from one Excel spreadsheet, right? So I had a team of four people, all of us using the same Excel spreadsheet. So obviously because it is what it is, only one of us could be in the shoot at a time. So I would be in there trying to edit something when someone else might need it. And if I had saved it, but didn’t close it and left for lunch, then the rest of that team was kind of out of luck and couldn’t use it. Not to mention the document was enormous. So it had all of the information that an HRIS might hold. So that’s kind of when we made the decision that we needed an HRIS, we had to do something, and obviously you don’t want to do anything without planning.”

“So first I had to define what I wanted from the system, what I truly needed this system to have, and then kind of what I expected it to have on top of that. So I needed it to have a way for us to securely upload data, securely upload documents, control who can access those documents, right? Those are needs. Some expectations were I would like it to have an integrated ATS, an Applicant Tracking System and within that, I would like it to be able to integrate directly from that program. So when someone applies and goes through the process and are selected, their information automatically carries over into the system.”

“So I made that list of pros and cons to kind of prepare my search. But I also knew that all of that information in that Excel sheet would eventually have to get into the HRIS, so I began formatting it all so it would make sense to upload into another system. We also began digitally scanning all of the paper files we had and storing them on a secure drive.”

Dave Rietsema, says: “Got it. So a lot of preparation work to get everything ready for this new system. And Mary, your organization had a particularly challenging time with your existing vendor. And so you made the decision to switch to a different HRIS that was going to be a bit more responsive for you, at least the customer service. Can you tell me what the planning looked like for you at Metron?”

Mary Dale, says: “Yeah, so first we looked at what stakeholders outside of the HR department that would need to be involved in the process. And more importantly, in the selection process. So the IT team, the accounting team, members of the operations team. Then my HR team created a list of current bottlenecks or manual processes that we were looking to improve as part of this new implementation process. From there, we looked at our HR roles and one was to improve the talent attraction and applicant tracking process that was manual. We had multiple locations and people were all working off, you know, paper forms. And so we were interviewing or contacting the same candidates across the board, especially for locations that were close to one another. And so there were inefficiencies in that process, but it also made us look like we weren’t communicating internally to candidates who were applying for our jobs.”

“So that was one thing that was a goal to improve. We were also implementing a pay for performance model that would be tied to compensation, as well as our budget and the review process. And so we were looking for a system that would tie all of those things together. And then we had a really high volume of turnover – pretty significant. And so we were getting ready to implement a new employee engagement process and program, but we wanted a system that we could use data from to measure our progress. Was this new program working, was our turnover improving, and we wanted real time data. So those were three goals that we had. And so as we began looking at systems, we wanted to ensure that they had modules that certainly aligned with our goals and could improve some of our inefficiencies and remove some of our manual processes.”

“From there, we set up demos and attended different conferences where vendors were at. So we could take a very short look at their process. And then once we shortlisted the vendor process, then we began to contact other HR professionals in the community to actually see the systems in real life. Not in a demo site, not something that a sales rep was showing us, but something that other HR professionals could show us, the software in use and how those modules worked. And then we identified our budget, what time constraints we had, and what types of training that would need to be involved. We were in the midst of open enrollment, so how we were going to balance some other major projects and things going on, and then who would be the team that would work on that project. And lastly, what would be the return on investment for the product that we were implementing?”

Dave Rietsema, says: “Stacy, when you were at Solera, you were tasked with implementing the recruiting piece of an all-in-one HCM. What are some of the ways that you planned for the future implementation of the recruiting module, because I know that you owned that implementation piece.”

Stacy Hostetler, says: “I did. Yeah, it was very tricky, but definitely very challenging. You know, a lot of what Mary and Norm have said. A lot of disparate processes, a lot of disparate systems in many ways. Many areas of our business as we were spread out globally across 92 countries, how many of these countries or regions are working off of spreadsheets? So really tricky to pull what that needed to look like together. While we had North America running off of a pretty solid platform, we weren’t global. And so in order to really pull that all together, it was a matter of me having to go through that kind of research and discovery with those other regions and find out what it needed to look like for them.”

“And also meeting with their legal teams, right? Because regionally specific, it was very different. And some of those regions, EMEA, APAC, LATAM, not all the same as how we operate here in the US and so that definitely took some planning on our part. So working very closely with some key members of those teams in those regions, and really defining that process. So a lot of workflows came out of that. What does the approval process need to look like for job requisitions? Who needs to be engaged in that process? And with that, I think it was also a matter of now we have to pull the data in so that we could make sure it was fully aligned.”

“Norm mentioned too back to some of the pieces that he mentioned, where we had to make sure that some of these pieces were going to now all flow together ‘till we have ATS that’s great, but it now has to flow into the HRIS portion. So a lot of documentation being uploaded, a lot of these workflows needing to make sure that they stayed intact. So it was a lot of processes involved.”

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Author Bio

Dave Rietsema is Founder of HR Payroll Systems. Visit www.hrpayrollsystems.net Connect Dave Rietsema