by Benefits
Collective Bargaining:
HRIS through a computer terminal can provide up-to-date relevant and required information, facts and figures and, thus, can facilitate collective bargaining. It can he p collective bargaining as “what if analysis” rather as feelings and fictions. In the same manner, HRIS can also help maintain better human relations in the organisation.
Career Planning:
By providing necessary information such as which employees have been earmarked for which positions, HRIS facilitates positional advancement of employees. In other words, HRIS helps in planning for succession.
Recruitment:
Recruitment forms the most essential function of HRM. HRIS helps in the recruitment process in a big way by recording the details of activities involved in employee recruitment. These may include cost and method of recruitment and time taken to fill the positions level wise.
Performance Appraisal:
In order to form a comprehensive overview about an employee, HRIS maintains performance appraisal data such as the due date of the appraisal, potential for promotion, scores of each performance criteria and alike. The textual information can be combined with the factual data obtained from the HRIS and the combination of information can be used for imparting training and affecting employee mobility in the form of transfer and promotion.
Manpower Planning:
HRIS is used for manpower planning also. It keeps information of organisational requirements in terms of positions. HRIS connects employees to the required positions in the organisation. It is also used to identify vacancies and establish employees thereon. HRIS can also help identify a logical progression path and the steps to be taken for employee progress/ advancement.
Medical History:
The HRIS is also used to maintain occupational health data required for industrial safety purposes, accident monitoring, and so on.
Skill Inventory:
Recording employee skills and monitoring a skill data base is yet another use of the HRIS. Such a skill record helps identify employees with the necessary skill for certain positions or jobs in an organisation.
Leave/Absence Increase:
HRIS is also used to control leave/absence of employees. This is done by maintaining a leave history of each employee. Every employee can be issued an identity card writing every employee’s token number coded on it. Employee’s entry and exit from the organisation should be recorded on the identity card. This reduces chances for malpractice or oversight in calculating wages for each employee.
Salary Administration:
One of the functions of HRIS is to provide a report containing information like present salary, benefits, last pay increase and proposed increase in future.
Personnel Administration:
It encompasses personal information of an employee. These may include name, address, date of birth, marital status, and the date of joining the organisation. It also contains the name and address of next kin of the employee concern. These information describe the employee.
Limitations
Inadequate Information:
Some enterprises do not have requisite information about their employees. In the absence of adequate information and data base, this system cannot be properly implemented. So, there is a need to collect, store and retrieval of information before implementing human resource management.
In many organisations, even the professionals misunderstand HRM as synonymous with HRD. Some class room training programmes are generally arranged, which are called HRD programmes. These programmes are understood as human resources management. Such casual class room programmes are not the actual HRM programmes.
Even a well planned and executed HRD programme is not HRM. HRD is only a part of HRM which is an integrated approach to management. Undoubtedly, human resource management suffers from such limitations. But the impact it has made on the managerial effectiveness has been spectacular wherever it was introduced. Actually speaking a real need exists in every Indian organisation for an HRM approach.
Security. Security is one of the biggest worries. Systems must be designed to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive and confidential data and also the unintended publication of such information. This typically required many “compartments” and many levels of authority for access, all of which have to be monitored and maintained.
Inadequate Development Programmes:
HRM needs implementation of programmes such as career planning, on the job training, development programmes, MBO, counselling etc. There is a need to create an atmosphere of learning in the organisation. In reality HRM programmes are confined to class room lectures and expected results are not coming out of this approach.
Staffing. With larger installations, there’s probably the cost of hiring an IT specialist to manage the system.
Lack of Support of Top Management:
HRM should have the support of top-level management. The change in attitude at the top can bring good results while implementing HRM. Owing to passive attitude at the top, this work is handled by personnel management people. Unless there is a change in approach and attitude of top management nothing remarkable will happen.
Improper Actualisation:
HRM should be implemented by assessing the training and development requirements of employees. The aspirations and needs of people should be taken into account while making human resource policies. HRM is actuated half-heartedly. The organising of some training programmes is considered as the implementation of HRM. With this, management’s productivity and profitability approach remain undisturbed in many organisations.
Recent Origin:
HRM is of recent origin. So, it lacks universally approved academic base. Different people try to define the term differently. Some thinkers consider it as a new name to personnel management. Some enterprises have named their traditional personnel management department as human resource management department.
Such superficial actions may not bear much fruit. What is actually required is a fundamental change in attitudes, approaches and the very management philosophy. Without such a change, particularly at the top management level, renaming of personnel department or redisgnating the personnel officer may not serve the purpose. With the passage of time an acceptable approach will be developed.
Barriers in effective implementations of HRIS
Insufficient Information:
In most of the Indian organisations, human resource information system (HRIS) has not been fully developed. In the absence of reliable data, it may not be possible to develop effective human resource plans.
Uncertainties:
Labour absenteeism, labour turnover, trade cycles, technological changes and market fluctuations are the uncertainties which serve as constraints to Human Resources planning. It is risky to depend upon general estimates of human resource in the face of rapid changes in environment.
Expensive and Time Consuming:
Human resource planning is an expensive and time-consuming process. Employers may resist human resource planning feeling that it increases the cost of human resource.
Coordination with other Managerial Functions:
There is generally a tendency on the part of the human resource planners to remain aloof from other operating managers and to become totally absorbed in their own world. To be effective human resource planning must be integrated with other management functions.
Identity Crisis:
There is generally identity crisis and many managers as well as Human Resource specialists do not fully understand the total Human resource planning process. There can be little doubt that unless the Human resource planning specialists develop a strong sense of purpose; they are more likely to fail.
Resistance from Employees:
Employees and trade unions often resist human resource planning. They feel that this planning increases their overall workload and regulates them through productivity bargaining. They also feel that it would lead to wide spread unemployment, especially of unskilled labour.
Insufficient Initial Efforts:
Successful human resource planning flourishes slowly and gradually. Sometimes sophisticated technologies are forcefully introduced just because competitors have adopted them. These may not be successful unless matched with the needs and environment of the particular enterprise.
Lack of Support of Top Management:
Human resource planning requires full and wholehearted support from the top management. In the absence of this support and commitment, it would not be possible to ensure the necessary resources, cooperation and support for the success of the human resource planning.
Requisites for Successful Human Resource Planning:
- Plans should be prepared by skill level rather than aggregates.
- Backing of top management.
- HRP responsibility should be centralised for better coordination and consultation between different management levels.
- Personnel record must be complete.
- The technique of planning should be best suited to data available.
- It must be recognised as an integral part of corporate planning.
- Data collection, analysis of planning and plans themselves must be continuously revised and improved.
