Determining HRIS Needs (Essay Sample)

Determining HRIS Needs
Name:
Instructor:
Course:
Date:
Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) are highly regulated by the federal, state and even the local laws. As such, when updating or replacing a HRIS, there are a number of regulatory factors that have to be considered (Vikas, 2012). The human resources department needs to note that if there are any laws that have changed in reference to hiring or recruitment up to the point of termination of employment of staff within at the local level, such as the counties, at the state and even in the country. Issues like safety of staff, health benefits, compensation, labor/privacy rights, reporting, record keeping, penalties and working conditions; have to be put on the scale. Any changes in this areas covered by labor laws at any level are going to affect parts or the entire process of updating or replacing a HRIS. Moreover, these are factors that also determine if the system is going to be updated or replaced altogether (Kumar, Shaikh, Ahmed, Khan, Mursalin, Memon, & Zareen, 2013).
Technological advances and regulatory measures also affect the choices that have to be made in light of updating a HRIS or replacing it. If there are any changes in the software or hardware that has been used on the previous or existing system, these are going to impinge on the update or call for a replacement. The software mainly relates to changes in applications, presentation, users, cloud management or any additional packages in future (Vikas, 2012). The hardware on the other hand may relate to the peripheral devices, networking options, user interface, database location, hosting, encryption, security, connectivity, computers such as the servers, personal computers and the mainframes all affect the decision to upgrade a system or change it entirely for future developments.
During the assessment of the HRIS needs, interviews are commonly used on the staffs that are going to be interacting with the system. However, the interviews system of collecting data has some limitations. One of the main limitations is the fact that it can be quite expensive. This is due to the fact that it takes up a lot of resources to organize, carry out and analyze the responses. However, this can be avoided by simply using surveys and questionnaires to collect data much easily and inexpensively. Much like the interviews, the questionnaires have questions that staffs have to go through. However, with this approach, the cost of drafting, distributing, collecting, analyzing and transcribing questionnaires is much less costly compared to interviews logistics. It is also common that interviews seem intrusive to the staff, especially where they have to take a lot of time and the staffs are under tight deadlines. In this case the hiccups can be solved using case studies on the same HRIS where it has been documented in relatively similar scenarios (Vikas, 2012). Using the case studies the interviewer can assess the differences in the responses given and what empirical data exists to make corrections and notifications. At the same time the interviews tend to have limitations on the level of interpretation that the interviewer may have as they transcribe the responses. To overcome this limitation, it is important that more than one interviewer goes through the transcriptions to ensure that the content is not out of sync with the objectives of the interview (Razali & Vrontis, 2010).
In the process of collecting data to assess the needs of the HRIS, there are a number of methods that can be used. Each of the methods has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, which are issues that an organization has to consider. One of the main methods used in the data collection stage when assessing system needs, is observation (Vikas, 2012). This method offers the team collecting data a chance to observe the activity of choice as it is carried out, and notes the characteristics of the same, relative to the objectives of the organization and the needs of the staff (Jones & Hoell, 2005). The team has a chance to see firsthand other than rely on what the staffs say. It also means that data collection in this case, does not rely on the willingness of the staff to give the information to the team seeks. However, the method does not increase the understanding of the behavior of the staff with reference to the activity assessed. It is also crucial to note that people tend to work hard and effectively when they know that someone is watching them, creating bias.
Interviews are also common in data gathering and are useful in that they give more insightful content on the issues at hand. At the same time the interviewees tend to give their own account of the issues they face which is crucial to the HRIS processes (Jones & Hoell, 2005). However, it is quite time consuming as the organizers have to deal with set up, interviews, transcription, analyzing, giving feedback and drawing up reports. All these processes involved also mean that the process is quite expensive. At the same time, interviewers may have their own accounts when transcribing thereby distorting the data, report and the entire process (Jones & Hoell, 2005).
Focus groups can be used in the data gathering phase. The groups give the team collecting data an easier time to setup and also offer useful information due to the group dynamics. However, they are also susceptible to bias of the facilitators (Vikas, 2012). It is also common to have a few individuals dominating the discussion thereby masking the views of the soft spoken in the group. This means that they are good for collecting individual information (Jones & Hoell, 2005).
The current database location of the organization HRIS is distributed. However, the organization needs to adopt the centralized database system as the organization is growing fast and old the system is compromising on efficiency and cost (Duc, Siengthai, & Page, 2013).
Gap analysis
The distributed database system was designed with the sole purpose of having more than one database, where the users can have the chance to interact with their data at the local levels. As such, data is replicated across different local databases depending on the level of organization and the department of reference. However, for any data to be uploaded to the central server there are a couple of restrictions and the...