Human Resource Information System
• HR Departments require large amount of detailed
information
• Quality of personnel management department’s
contribution largely depends upon the quality of
information held by it
• Information requirements may include :
Duties and responsibilities of every job in the
organization
Skills possessed by every employee
Organizations’ future human resource needs
Current productivity of human resources
Identification of training needs
• Human Resource Information System
(HRIS) is a systematic way of storing data
and information for each individual
employee to aid planning, decision
making, and submitting of returns and
reports to the external agencies
• Information is needed for internal control, feedback and corrective
actions, and for statutory obligation
• HRIS is utilized for :
1. Storing information and data for each individual employee
for future reference
2. Providing a basis for planning, organizing, decision
making, controlling and a host of other human resource
functions
3. Meeting daily transactional requirements such as marking
present/absent, and granting leave
4. Supplying data and submitting returns to government and
other statutory agencies
• A HRIS should be designed around a database
consisting of employees and position records
• The access to the database could be in batch
mode or through online transactions, with ad hoc
enquiries being satisfied by a report writer
• A number of standard reports, such as age
analysis, absence reports, salary review reports
and employee profiles could be used to facilitate
the functions
Applications
• Personnel Administration
• Salary Administration
• Leave/Absence recording
• Skill Inventory
• Medical History
• Accident Monitoring
• Performance Appraisal
• Training & Development
• Human Resource Planning
• Recruitment
• Career Planning
• Collective Bargaining
Necessary Capabilities of a HRIS
• Any HRIS has three major functional
components
– Inputs
– Data maintenance
– Outputs
Input Function
Database
Input activities
Data collection •Entry Acceptance data to
procedure •Edit data maintenance
•Validation function
Message table Acceptance or Edit/Validation Edit/Validation
(optional) error notification criteria (optional) table values
Direct user access
Data Input Function Components
Data Maintenance Function
Data Maintenance Database
Data collection Activities
procedure •Update To output function
•Create
Reports
•Derive
Components of Data Maintenance Function
Output Function
Turn around
Disk
reports
Output activities Output dissemination
Output request • Select
procedures procedures
• Process
• Report
Ad hoc
Report library Data
reporting
Output Report Function
System Functions
Mandatory system functions
• In a networked-PC environment, an unlimited number of users each
having potentially different security groups should be allowed
• The security of the human resource information system is critical
• The super user should control the access to the software and
various segments of the database
• A leave clerk should have access to leave data in the enquiry mode
• Personnel manager may be given the authority to delete all the
records on the database
• Security provisions control access to individual employee records
based on criteria such as organizational level and/or job grade
• User-driven ad hoc enquires must be made available to
format and select data from the database
• One of the weaknesses of database management
system is that the query facility can only be driven by
someone having a detailed knowledge of the database
structure and the query language
• A human resource information system must be capable
of giving the users a simple query facility
• Other facilities should include options to output data to a
terminal and/or creating American Standard Code for
Information Interchange (ASCII) files for porting data to
other systems
• A human Resource Information System
should be a part of management
information system (MIS) with interfaces to
other sub-systems
• Typical sub-systems that interact with the
human resource data include production
planning and control, cost, corporate
planning, etc.
Steps in implementing an HRIS
• Inception of idea
• Feasibility study
• Selecting a project team
• Defining the requirements
• Vendor analysis
• Contract Negotiations
• Training
• Tailoring the system
• Collecting Data
• Testing the system
• Starting up
• Running in parallel
• Maintenance
• Audit
Benefits
• Higher speed of retrieval and processing of data
• Reduction in duplication of efforts leading to reduced
cost
• Ease in classifying and reclassifying data
• Better analysis leading to more effective decision making
• Higher accuracy of information/report generated
• Fast response to answer queries
• Improved quality of reports
• Better work culture
• Establishing of streamlined and systematic procedures
• More transparency in the system
Limitations of HRIS
• It can be expensive in terms of finance and manpower requirements
• It can be threatening and inconvenient to those who are not
comfortable with computers
• Often the personnel designing HRIS do not have a thorough
understanding of what constitutes quality information for the users
• Computers cannot substitute human being. Human intervention will
always be necessary. The quality of response is dependent upon
the accuracy of data input and queries fired
• In many organizations, the system is operated in batch mode with
the records being updated once a week. Online facility in multi-user
environment needs to be developed so that the reports generated
are not out of phase with the realities
