INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME IN MANAGEMENT FOR

EXECUTIVES 2016-17
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT, LUCKNOW
Group Project
Information technology in Human Resource Management

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

COURSE NUMBER (IT05101)

PRESENTED TO
Prof. Bharat Bhasker

Prepared by Group XX
Anurag Sharma
IPMX09001
Anusar Gupta
IPMX09002
Brijesh Gupta
IPMX09005
Harshmeet Singh
IPMX09016
Jaskaran Singh Gulati IPMX09017

10th Aug 2016

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary.................................................................................................... 2
IT based HRM: A brief introduction............................................................................. 3
Employee Relations and Communications..................................................................4

Executive Summary

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The project is aimed to study the impact of information systems on the human
resource management (HRM) in an organization. The HRIS (Human Resource
Information System) or HRMS (Human Resource Management System) is a
combination of processes, systems that integrate human resources, information
technology through software. The report touches upon key functions performed by
the HRM and how HRIS translate the traditional approach into an incrementally
more responsive, cost efficient HRM, converting it to a strategic business function.
The report also gives an overview of HR analytics, which is adding a whole new
dimension to the HR practices by way of assisting the HR practitioners in data based
decision making thus contributing to achievement of competitive advantage.

IT based HRM: A brief introduction

The way in which human capital is managed has witnessed a sea change in recent
years. The HR activities are now being increasingly delivered, not just by HR
professionals but also by reporting managers across the organizational hierarchy.
This has been made possible by the advent of web-based information technology
tools which are an intersection of technology and HR processes. The intuitive,
interactive user interfaces provided by these HR softwares give a convenient visual
dashboards, reports to better manage the human resources in any organization
irrespective of its size. There is a ubiquitous thrust across the organizations for
enhancement in speed, effectiveness, and cost containment that HRIS system
brings.
Broadly HRM primarily consists of two sorts of activities: Transactional, this is the
set of those activities which are performed on a daily basis and are for record
keeping purposes. The transactional matters include administrative functions and
are passive, process oriented. These include benefits administration, employee
database (leave systems, payrolls etc), workplace issues and policies. The HR
practitioners generally maintain this information across the employee life cycle in
an organization I;e from recruitment to exit. Transformational, these activities are
more strategic, proactive in nature and align with the organizational long term
objectives. The transformational activities take a step back from the routine and
expand into a more strategic management role in order to develop business growth
thus bringing about a substantial value-add. The key metrics collected by the
transactional activities can be employed to influence business decisions and help in
reshaping the organization. For ex: recruitment is a traditional HR activity but the
recruitment workflow can be aligned to strategy of an organization by recruiting a
specific talent rather than a generic job description.
As per Ruel, Bondarouk and Looise, the electronic HRM (eHRM) or electronically
enabled HR system has been defined as a way of implementing HR strategies,
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policies and practices in organizations through a conscious and directed support of

and/or with full use of web-based technology channels (1). eHRM can be used for
both transactional as well as transformational activites.

Figure 1. Key HR Activities

The development of web based technologies (HRIS/HRMS) has enabled firms to
directly service the employees through extensive use if self-service systems. These
technology-intensive sophisticated tools have helped the delivery of HR transactions
that are much faster, quicker and improve the HR experience. In addition, they have
helped in offloading the HR of intermediary activities thus enabling them to spend
effort on strategic planning in human resource organization and development. The
key advantages of using an HRIS can thus be summarized as under:
Improved user experience
Offloading HR transactional activities
Faster, Quicker delivery of services
Routine tasks automation
Productivity improvement of HR by reducing administrative burden
Cost effective
Efficient employee data management
Improvement communication
HR analytics is another paradigm which has made huge forays into the modern HR
practice. HR analytics also know as Talent Analytics is the application of
sophisticated data mining tools and business analytics techniques to employee data
in order to come up with valuable insights. These insights in turn help an
organization to effectively manage increasing workforce complexities. The HR
analytics seeks to identify data models to predict capabilities to get an optimal
return on investment on its human capital.
The report will further elaborate specifically on impact of IT on below:
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Employee Communication
Resourcing
Measuring and Managing Employee Performance
HR Analytics

Employee Relations and Communications

Employee Self Service (ESS)
ESS is a web based application that provided employee within an organization access to
Payroll system, Leave Management system, Travel management system, etc. It provides
flexibility and ease of working to employees by reducing dependency on HR for each and
every transaction which in turn increases the efficiency level of the employees.
ESS can be integrated in the company portal and customized as per the company's objective
and requirements.
In our scenario, we have displayed integration of ESS package in SAP Portal and working
model of leave system mechanism of ESS package.
Below figure shows the example of SAP Portal with ESS package in an organization with
features such as Leave System, Payroll system, Employee Dashboard, etc.

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Working mechanism of Leave System:

Traditional way of applying leaves by employee's involved sending the leave approval
request to the manager's over the mail and then sending multiple reminder mails to get the
leave approved. Even after following up multiple times the leave request led pending,
causing great inconvenience and lot of time and energy wastage of an employee.
Below figure shows the Online Leave system page from a company's portal

As can be seen from the above figure, an employee can login to the portal, go to the leave
application page, fill in the details and reason for applying leave, enters his approver's email
id and submit the application for approval.
Once the request is submitted, the request then goes in the SAP Universal Worklist inbox of
the approver and he is notified over the email by the system. If the request is kept pending
in the approvers inbox without any action taken, reminder mails are automatically sent to
the approver at specified times by the system.

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In the workflow diagram below, once the approver opens the leave approval task from his
Inbox, he can then review the application and take the necessary action. He can either
approve it by adding the necessary comments and submitting the form or reject/send the
form back to the requester for modifications. In the former case, once the approver hits the
approve button, a notification mail is generated and sent to the requesters inbox and also
the details gets stored in the SAP backend system and the workflow gets terminated.
However, in case approver sends the form back to the requester for review, the request
appears in his inbox with the necessary comments regarding the modification that need to
be made and then requester can re-submit or cancel the application as per the need. If the
request is rejected, a notification mail is sent to the requester updating him and also citing
the reason for rejection and finally the workflow is terminated.

The above workflow is designed in SAP ECC using the transaction swdd. The backend ECC is
connected to the frontend i.e SAP Portal by maintaining backend system details and
providing the relevant SAP connectors information in the SAP Portal.
SAP comes up with the standard ESS packages which can be integrated in SAP Portal and
customized as per the company's requirements.
With the invent of technologies(e.g: SAP Fiori), the ESS can now be incorporated in
Mobile/Handheld devices which gives the user on-the-go working ability.

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Thus integration of ESS packages in SAP Portal provides the employee and organization with
ease of working, reduced communication and dependency of employee and HR on one
another which in turn improves the efficiency of the employees and hence the organization.

Measuring and Managing the Employee Performance

Organizations are growing in size, functions, and working across nations, hence,
becoming more and more complex to handle. To handle these intricacies and
Competition in labor market, an automated performance management system has
become an imperative. In absence of performance management system (PMS),
employees and managers, both, find it extremely difficult to perform yearly
appraisals and set a balanced compensation system.
Performance appraisal is a way of finding better, more accurate, and cost
effective communication technique for measuring job performance and satisfaction.
A well-suited performance management system must provide following
functionalities.

Online form filling and paperless processes

Goal tracking and cascading functionality for complete visibility and
alignment
Legal scan wizards to ensure appropriate/legal use of language
Support tools providing coaching support to managers when they need it
most
Dashboards to deliver company-wide, aggregated or individual reporting
Tools for succession planning and compensation management

There are various IT firms which understood the need of employees, managers, and
HRs to design the online Appraisal Systems with distinct functionalities of
Performance management. Few of these firms and their tools names are below.

Oracle Taleo Cloud Service developed by Oracle

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Cornerstone Performance by Cornerstone

1-on-1s by Quantum Workplace
MAUS Performance Review by MAUS Business Systems
Voyager by Vivify Software
SAP Successfactors performance & Goals by SAP

Most of these tools are based on cloud computing, SAAS and web platforms and
provide the firms an ability to pay on use-case basis. Because of easy
implementation and full scale integration by customizing the tool according to
corporate structure, these softwares have been proved successful. We are taking
an example of one such tool SAP Successfactors Performance & Goals to illustrate
the features and functionalities of Performance appraisal softwares.

SAP SUCCESSFACTORS AND GOALS

SAP Successfactors and Goals provides a clear direction to the employees with
continuous improvement in their skills and incentivise them to perform at their best
by giving the recognition and feedback. It is a complete set of functionalities that
evaluates the past performance of employees and help improves future
performance. This software was built by keeping following 3 functions at the core:
1. Goal Management
2. Continuous performance management
3. Performance assessments
To instantly develop the goals, this tool comes up with 500 predefined SMART
(Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relative, Timely) goals. Employees/Managers can
also add a new goal by clicking the Add new button on the Menu in Goals Page. It
also provides the functionality of 360 degree review and Ask for feedback system.

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Writing assistant and coaching advisor are integral part of SAP Successfactors that
provide help in choosing the right words and render fairness & legal compliance. Top
and bottom performers can be seen on the dashboard and an easy comparison
among team members can be made in a quick and integral manner.
There are certain features which give this tool unique advantage over others. Few of
these advantages are listed below.
Intuitive Solutions put talent management in the hands of employees
Ability to scale system quickly to accommodate upcoming mergers and
acquitions
Cloud Based solution offers the chance to go live quickly and easily
Ability to leverage data and business practises from the core SAP Systems
SuccessFactors uses a unique, hybrid multi-tenant architecture that has the
capability of serving millions of users. This architecture completely separates your
data from other customers data, while allowing us to roll out rapidly the latest
functionality to everyone, all at once. This approach also offers the most
configurability and allows you to extract deep insight from your data.

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Figure: Hybrid Multi-tenant architecture used in SAP Successfactors

HR Analytics
HR analytics is fast catching up in the industry. There has been a lot of emphasis in
quantifying employee behaviours with performance, attrition etc. In the last few
years a lot of companies have started tracking employee behaviours.
A big part of the analytics revolution is to measure the efficiency, effectiveness, and
outcomes of People processes. What analytics really intends to do is to analyze the
activities of employees and their utilization of resources for achieving the business
objectives.
Companies intend to know what a process costs, how long it takes to familiarize
people with a process change or adjustment, how much output is obtained from a
given input, what is the quality of the output, and how do people feel about all
these. At the end of the day it all about the perception of the employees.

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To summarize, the HRIS can function as a decision-making tool if the HR function

knows what kind of information is relevant for the employees that the company has.
For example, a technology company with a lot of knowledge workers may be
interested in understanding the relationship between the introduction of new hires
in the company to the morale of its existing knowledge workers. This information
exists in raw form and the HRIS can function as a tool to give a lot of information.
However, it is upto the HR people to see what information they want from the HRIS.
In other words, though HRIS can give a variety of information, the decision that
which information is relevant depends on the HR person.
Types of HR Analytics
Predominantly three types of analytics used in HR Function
1. Descriptive Analytics - E.g. Traditional HR efficiency metrics (turnover rate,
time to fill, cost of hire, number hired and trained, etc.). Primary focus of
these analysis is to reduce cost and improve HR processes for efficiency. This
analysis does no extrapolation of trends for expected future trends and
events.
2. Predictive analytic gives hints about future events, given past data plus
knowledge of changing market demands. It covers a lot of techniques
(statistics, modeling, data mining) that use current and historical facts to
make predictions about the future. For e.g. Models used for increasing the
probability of selecting the right candidates to recruit, train, and promote.
SOME EXAMPLES OF PREDICTIVE RELATIONSHIPS
Job satisfaction vs. retention
Engagement vs. productivity
Culture vs. productivity
Engagement vs. safety
Job satisfaction vs. attraction
Stress vs. productivity
Ethics vs. profit
Compensation vs. retention
Conflict vs. productivity
Performance vs. retention
3. Prescriptive analytics suggest the better way to optimize the future. Used to
analyze complex data to predict trends, provide multiple decision
alternatives, and show business impacts.
For e.g., models used for understanding how different learning investments
impact the profitability of the organization in the long run
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HR Analytics in Action A case in HSBC

An example of using data within HSBC to examine a potentially sensitive
subject was with nonexempt employee hours.
HSBC was concerned about overtime worked by these employees due to legal
issues surrounding the classification and payment to this group of employees.
In this case, the HR team did an analysis which proved that the data showed
that employees were actually working the same amount overtime and in line
with seasonal trends,
Additionally, by doing the analysis, they uncovered an issue that might have
gone unnoticed otherwise; the passive approval rates (the number of times
overtime was approved without a manager's sign-off) were higher than they
should have been.

Reference: https://www.successfactors.com/en_us/solutions/talent/performancegoals.html
https://www.successfactors.com/en_gb/whysuccessfactors/technology/cloud/architecture.html
The Promising State of Human Capital Analytics - i4cp_report- 2016-final

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