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.