WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME your human resources department explored new technology or brainstormed creative ways to maximize existing software? Many months ago? Last year? Maybe longer?
Ironically, employees’ resistance to learning new technology is often the villain, forcing HR to stick with manual or outdated processes. Other times, budget cuts or software solutions that don’t fit a school’s criteria are to blame. Administrators at some colleges or universities even try to enlist tech students in creating software. Since they lack an HR background, their efforts often fall by the wayside.
Some HR departments aren’t sitting still. By adopting new technologies or experimenting with current software applications, they’re streamlining processes, offering value-added, online services for employees, or working their way toward a paperless department.
Take a look at what other HR departments have done, then do a little comparison. Is there room for improvement at your institution? Is it time to reconsider, reconfigure, or rethink how your own department should operate?
At the very least, HR needs a bare-bones compliance reporting system and an employee tracking system. “You can’t effectively or efficiently track your faculty and staff, particularly from a compliance perspective, using hodgepodge, homegrown systems or local databases,” says Steve Boese, an adjunct HR technology professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (N.Y). “It just doesn’t work.”
Yet many colleges still operate this way. Several years ago, when RIT implemented an online employee self-service portal, he says the faculty “hated it, couldn’t believe they were being made to use it, and were just outraged.” Only after everyone was trained was the portal considered a valuable tool. Even now, he says, certain faculty push back when it comes to adopting new technology.
Some HR professionals are in the dark about how to maximize free social networking sites.
Some HR professionals are also in the dark about how to maximize social networking sites, like Twitter or Facebook, and collaborative tools, such as Yammer and wikis. While Yammer, an internal microblogging service, can be a great way for HR to send quick messages to 10 to 20 people, a wiki uses server software that enables open editing, Boese explains. Employees can create and edit webpage content using any browser. HR can use it when developing documents, such as creating, modifying or editing workforce policies. Instead of e-mailing the policy as an attachment to 2,000 employees, he says HR can post it on a wiki site, then invite specific staff to provide feedback.
Boese believes more HR departments need to strategically deploy such platforms across their school.
Chances are, most staff and faculty are out there on Twitter or Facebook sharing information anyhow, says Boese. “HR should try to leverage that energy and try to build upon it to meet their organizational objectives. That’s really the challenge of the future.”
Technology Triumphs
Some HR leaders scour the market for software or create in-house programs to help meet institutional objectives.
Last year, the application process at Calvin College (Mich.) became paperless, explains Deirdre Honner, associate director of HR. For the past three years, the school has been using PeopleAdmin, a vendor-hosted software service.
Honner says the service’s licensing fee paid for itself within the first year due to reductions in copying expenses and labor required to manage paper documents. The program was so successful that HR went paperless in other areas. Staff post job openings, college news and events, alumni information, and local events on Twitter. They also use ImageNow by Perceptive Software, which scans and indexes documents attached to employee electronic files. The software is compatible with Colleague HR, the school’s enterprise resource planning system by Datatel.
Calvin uses the same system to communicate with new employees, not just applicants. New hires receive electronic documents on a variety of topics, including benefits enrollment information.
Other institutions turn inward for solutions. At The University of Iowa, almost 90 percent of the HR forms that affect an employee’s pay and benefits are paperless, says Larry Meyer, associate director of HR. The exception is UI’s talent management suite. HR is exploring ways to track employee skills, certifications, training, and compliance as well as to centralize the onboarding process. “We would like to automate the first few months of employment to keep the communication lines open,” Meyer explains.
