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by Nancy Rodriguez, July 7, 2019

It is important to have an HRIS (Human Resource Information System) that would meet the demands of your organization and the needs of your employees.  

HRIS systems allows for the integration of your HR functions to increase effectiveness and decrease the amount of time spent on routine activities that can be manage by the HR software.  Implementing a new HRIS system takes time to properly develop and implement.

 Here are some steps you can take to make sure you have a successful implementation.

Plan, Identify, and Define Objectives

It is important to know what you want this new HRIS system to do. Setting up clear objectives and goals would help determine. What are some of the thing you hope the new system to do that your current system cannot deliver.  For example, having your Applicant Tracking System all integrated within the platform to have a seamless onboarding experience. Asking these questions from the start would help you define your objectives of the HRIS, identify the problems it should resolved, what are some of the functions you hope the HRIS can perform and will help you develop your Request for Proposal and to assess your prospective vendors.

Establish your HRIS budget

Start discussion earlier in the year and create an estimated budget, discuss these with stakeholders to secure buy in and start a cost/benefit analysis and let them know which features are the most critical for the team and for the organization. Do employees need access to the system where they can make changes to their information or make requests? Are there additional costs involved such as training?  Once stakeholder buy in is secured then add in the communication all others who will be using the new system.

Make a Request for Proposal (RFP), interview vendors and then select an HRIS platform

Evaluate each vendor and do your research by connecting with others in the industry. Do a thorough research of best vendors within your industry.   Ask the vendors for a presentation of their product to everyone on the team. Ensure that the vendors have aligned their systems’ capabilities with your expressed current and future plans while staying within established budget and timeline for implementation.  Does the new system integrate with the tools you already have, is there any additional hardware needed what is the support and training that would be provided?

Create your Project team

It is important to identify early on the implementation team those within the organization those externally and ensure you have support from a diverse range of perspectives upper management levels to ensure all needs of the implementation are met. Establish dedicated resources such as IT, consultants, etc. and the various functional roles of the project team and who would be responsible for each of the phases of the implementation.  Does the team have the set of skills required for a successful implementation that are not currently present, do you need to outsource the skills? Assigning a project leader who has the competency to seek the project through is very important.

Implementation Kick-off

It is important to having the go live broken into multi-phase to ensure that sufficient time and resources are allocated at each phase, and more effectively implement the process without much interruptions.

Phases may include IT and connectivity, security, systems integration, data migration, hr workflow, testing of the data, super user training and. Automated processes, final pre-live testing, post life evaluation and support, managing transition within the organization.

Communicate to All employees the HRIS Rollout

Establish a communications plan for companywide messages as you move toward your rollout date. Your plan can include specifically timed and focused messages to super users Identify and promote internally information on technical support an end user training.

Identity Challenge and provide support.

Once your HRIS system is fully functional, have additional resources in place to support. Have a communication system in place to gather feedback from super users, stakeholders and end-users. Continue wok with the vendor, internal and external resources to make any necessary technical adjustment.  Training is important to the success of the new platform.

Evaluate the Implementation Success

Test the post-live performance of the system to ensure it meets the objectives to perform the functions and solve the problems initially identified.  Continue the communication and ask for feedback from the employees and see if they have run into any issues with the new technology.

There should be regular meetings to monitor the progress of the implementation and see if there are additional outstanding issues that need to be resolved. Implementing an HRIS system is a very complex process but if plan effectively the results will lead to higher productivity and the outcomes align with the expectations of the new technology.

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