It is the best of times and the worst of times for HR professionals. Many organizations have reaped enormous benefits from more effectively managing the unstructured information association with core Human Resources processes. That’s the good news. The bad news is that MOST organizations have not yet moved down the path of HR automation, creating massive inefficiencies and risks in their hiring, retaining, employee servicing, and firing practices.
Consider, for a moment, the huge variety and volume of documents associated with these HR processes, each of which carries with it different regulatory and legal requirements.
HR executives responsible for these policies must make a choice:
AIIM’s own unpublished research indicates that many HR organizations are still mired in paper-based processes. Most organizations have not applied the lessons from the digital mailroom to their core financial processes. According to an AIIM unreleased survey of 173 HR executives, there are still many green field transformation opportunities in your core HR processes.
Now some would argue that most organizations automated their HR processes long ago. Perhaps on the data side, but not on the content and unstructured information side. When we asked, “What is paper usage in the following processes?” here are the percentages answering, “% answering “A lot of documents are processed as paper documents:”
Which brings us to the second option, single process SaaS-based solutions. I am a big advocate for SaaS-based process solutions. Beginning with Salesforce, they have revolutionized how we buy and implement enterprise technology. Many monolithic HR solutions that were previously thought of as on-premise solutions requiring long purchase and implementation cycles, with all the money paid upfront, can now be bought in the cloud, implemented quickly, and paid for as an annuity. There is a but, though. Which is that unless you think carefully about how the unstructured information associated with each of the above SaaS processes is managed across these processes, you will have created a set of irreconcilable silos – a genie that will be hard to put back in the bottle.
In addition, HR processes are surrounded by a lot of legal risk, more than many other business processes. And the records management capabilities of many single-process SaaS solutions leave much to be desired.
The desired third option above – managing HR content and information in such a way that you avoid the creation of silos – is not without its challenges. Many document management suppliers are not known for their ease of integration with SaaS-based process engines or for the speed (and cost!) of custom solutions built upon their content platform. Which means careful review is needed. For those organizations that already have a large on-premise solution, it means your content platform must seamlessly integrate with Lawson, SAP, PeopleSoft, or whatever other human capital management system you use.
The kinds of information challenges typical of HR processes are amplified by the business challenges now facing HR professionals. HR professionals are assuming a different – and more strategic role – within their organizations. A role that requires create information management competency and knowledge than ever before.
According to Amit Jain, Division Vice President of Strategy & Business Development for Major Account Services at ADP, there are 5 major trends that are on the “keep me up at night” list for every HR professional. These 5 trends each carry with them a host of document and content management challenges. Here’s his list (originally published in Forbes) with some paraphrasing:
Addressing each of these trends requires a) an end to manual approaches; and b) once the commitment to automation is made, a simultaneous commitment to a strategy to manage process information in an integrated fashion and bring all employee information together into one place.
So as you think through these trends, and the challenges of managing all the information required to run a modern HR operation, here are 8 “must haves” as you consider your content platform:
Successful businesses depend on good people. HR plays an increasingly strategic role in hiring and retaining good people – and mitigating the risks associated with half-baked documentation of poor performance. All of these processes need to operate in a smooth, effective, and modern way – or risk alienating the Millennials who are critical to maintaining competitive advantage.