Put HR Under IT in the Org Chart (Part 1)

Greetings folks!

The following exchanges, part 1 and part 2 come from some classwork I was doing for my MBA curriculum. Most of the time in class I may put forth my ideas, though usually I look to follow the thought pattern proposed by the class text and the instructor.

First week of this HR class however, it became apparent to me that the textbook authors were enamoured of HR, overreached the realities of what an HR person or department could realistically accomplish, and really piled it high in trumpeting the value of an HR department.

The following became quite clear to me, and has generated some discussion in my class, some of which is incorporated into the Part 2 portion of this posting.

HR from my experience is given the following tasks (no I did not find this in the textbook, but from my experiences and discussions of those in the world of work):

1. Maintain knowledge of skills, wages, benefits in a geographic or competitive area


2. Maintain employee knowledge and skills (training) in task performance


3. Maintain employee knowledge and skills in company policies and procedures


4. Maintain and give access to Employee records and status of various employment related knowledge and activities in relation to employee


5. Awards, celebrations, employee/superior relationship problems

It is my perception that IT systems can do a better job at most of these functions than human HR department personnel. For the functions that IT is not better at, IT can interface with systems from vendors that can be more effective, cost and performance-wise than internal HR departments. The HR information can be made available on management control panels on intranets or SharePoint portal type systems.

Examples:

#1 above, some job sites make this type of information available already. It could be better organized and made available through an intranet or SharePoint part for a department manager who needs to do hiring, and tied in with corporate budgeting such that the hiring manager would know if they could act as a company to lag, meet or lead in pay (Dreher & Dougherty, Chapter 3, p. 40).

#2 Training can most often (and is already frequently) created by a vendor and made available through an interface in an intranet or SharePoint, again an IT function. In addition, employee skill inventories (Dreher & Dougherty, Chapter 6, p. 38) and record keeping for government bodies can be automated (like OSHA training requirments, technical certifications).

#3 Availability of policy manuals, employee handbook, etc and searchability of content is superior through intranet or SharePoint, again an IT function.

#4 Great for intranet/SharePoint portal (IT).

#5 Awards/Celebrations - Charismatic leader in tandem with tickler system (on intranet/SharePoint)

#5 Employee/employee or Employee/superior relationship problems - internal/external professional counseling (outsource).

HRM would under my model become Human Relationship Management or more likely Internal (Employee) Relationships Management, like CRM - Client Relationship Management or VRM - Vendor Relationship Management which are external relationships. There may still be an "HR" department, but it will be staffed with IT specialists/data entry personnel with HR "overtones" or training in the human element of a company.

I realize and fully recognize the need for "humanists" in a company, especially a large one, and I think that current HR practices miss the mark and potential of the department to optimize human relationships within a company. Then again, I am a computer geek and have not really been inside of an HR department or its inner-workings in order to see what type of positive affect and how it has a positive affect on an organization. I may be missing the mark. Still it is obvious to me that most of the functions of HR as I have outlined them above are better suited to information technology solutions.

References

Dreher & Dougherty. (2001). Human resource strategy: A behavioral perspective for the general manager. New York: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved April 21, 2008 from University of Phoenix, Resource, MBA/530 - Human Capital Development Website: https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/content/eBookLibrary/content/eReader.h

Portions credited, cited or referenced are copyright their respective copyright holders. The rest is (C) 2008 - Aaron L. Richards of Richards Media Net LLC - Great opportunities for Media Technologies!

A vision from a man who grew up in the Internet Age, writes computer software and develops Internet systems for a living, and has visions of the future that keep him up at insane hours of the night.

Put HR Under IT in the Org Chart (Part 2)

Debbie L. wrote (Comment shortened for brevity):
... If I understand your premise, the majority of HR issues can be handled through IT functions. ... however there will be a great many HR folks who would disagree. From the HR perspective, there is very little black and white. Almost every issue has shades of gray and requires individual perspective, consideration and decision making before application. How would you propose the IT functions handle the shades of gray?

I know that many HR folks would disagree, in fact I appreciate your perspective and asking questions. Most specialists feel that the nature of their work has aspects which would keep it from being automated by computers or IT based systems. If you think about it, the utilities such as electric, phone, gas and water once employed thousands of bookkeepers to do the billing for these companies. They would take the meter readings from the meter readers, pull old records from the previous month, subtract last months reading from this months reading, calculate the billing amount for the month, type out and send a bill. Many of the utilities would just estimate the monthly charge, and do a meter reading 4-6 times a year. "It used to take more than 20 full-time workers to read roughly 140,000 gas meters in the Brockton region," he says. "With new technology, that work is now done by just one person." (Zimmerman, 2004) Now 99% of the bookkeepers are gone.

This example sounds very mathmatical, very calculating, which is supposed to be the forte' of computers. Very black and white.Lets look at something much more people oriented - how about telephone operators? Person to person communications - lots of shades of gray there, right? "One startling example: In 1972, telecommunications companies and other businesses employed 394,000 telephone operators. Today, that number is 52,000, an 87 percent job loss" this information comes from Readers Digest at http://www.rd.com/money/work-and-career/computers-making-some-jobs-obsolete/article27800-1.html (2004). Also from the same source, Readers Digest, "with self-serve gas stations, ATMs and e-tail sites, productivity is on the rise throughout a broad array of service industries. That means the need for new workers is on the decline" (2004).

How about something a little closer to home? Perhaps the elimination of middle management through computer technology: "the explanation for the 1990s downsizing was either new technology or redesign of the organization. Some middle managers and supervisors were replaced by new computer systems that provide surveillance of clerical workers and data entry jobs. These same computer systems also eliminate the need for many middle-managers responsible for collecting, processing and analyzing data used by upper-level decision makers." (Perrucci & Wysong, 1999). This sounds a bit like it could resemble the tasks of an HR department to a degree.

To be fair, I could not find any websites that said that HR departments were being replaced by technology, in fact quite the opposite:

"Myth: HRMS Software will eliminate HR jobs

Reality-Very seldom does anyone actually lose a job when HRMS software is implemented. Staff members who slave over the filing cabinet retrieving and restoring files will lose those mundane duties and gain time for proactive tasks such as reporting and planning.

In larger HR staffs in a manual environment, there may be an overstaff situation to compensate for the lack of automation. In this instance staff members are often reassigned from the filing job to a role that was not getting done before. For example, many former file clerks who have quit the filing habit have become employment specialists and focus their talents on recruiting, taking advantage of the applicant tracking capabilities of the recently implemented HRMS software" (Witschger, 2000).

My argument is that computers do handle shades of gray quite well. Consistently, fairly by looking at the same criteria in the same way every time and not showing partiality due to personal relationships, politics, pressure from staff, etc. I am not saying that people won't influence the results that computers give out, they will. It would be a different type of influence.

I believe that a well setup and programmed system would be more legally defensible, as all steps and reasons for a decision could be documented and traced, it would be consistent in the application of rules from situation to situation, and it could handle a greater volume of work, online 24/7 and reduce "overstaffing" as the quote above calls it.

References

Perrucci, R. & Wysong, E. (1999). The New Class Society. Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved April 22, 2008 from http://books.google.com/books?id=nzxc7AnUJAgC

Witschger, J. (2000). HR Software Myths. Retrieved April 22, 2008 from http://www.techlinks.net/CommunityPublishing/tabid/92/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/3021/HR-Software-Myths.aspx

Zimmerman, S. (2004, September). The Job Snatchers. Readers Digest. Retrieved April 22, 2008 from http://www.rd.com/money/work-and-career/computers-making-some-jobs-obsolete/article27800.html

Unless otherwise credited, cited and/or referenced, (C) 2008 - Aaron L. Richards of Richards Media Net LLC - Great opportunities for Media Technologies!

A vision from a man who grew up in the Internet Age, writes computer software and develops Internet systems for a living, and has visions of the future that keep him up at insane hours of the night.