Speaker 1: If you work within HR, chances are that you'll be working with some sort of HRIS system, aka Human Resources Information System, sometimes it's also known as Human Resources Information Software. And in today's video, I will be going over everything you need to know about a HRIS system when you work in HR. It is the integration of human resources operations and information technology. An HRIS system allows the collection of important HR data such as employee records, onboarding, payroll, benefits. A good HRIS system has a bunch of features that makes the HR professional job a lot easier. Specific features of HRIS system vary, and honestly, the more features a software has, the more money is going to cost your company. Now, if you're not in senior leadership, you really don't have to worry too much about the cost of an HRIS system until you get up to the senior management level and you're in charge of actually purchasing a new system for the company. But at the lower level as an HR professional, all you really need to know are the core features of the HRIS that your company uses and the different features that you may come across if you ever decide to move to a different company, start a new job, things like that. What are the common features of HRIS? Again, a lot of the common features that you will see within a HRIS system is basically a feature to onboard new employees, a feature to hold all of the employee records, a feature to, or I should actually say features, to actually help improve recruitment needs. You may be able to see applicants. You may be able to communicate with applicants on a HRIS system, track their movement through the application system. Normally within a company, the different HR departments like recruitment, payroll, employee relations may use the HRIS system together. Obviously, depending on your clearance level or depending on what your responsibilities or duties are within HR, you may be able to see more than another colleague or vice versa. They may be able to see more than you can, but normally the whole HR department will work within the same HRIS. And normally an HRIS system definitely lessens the need for actual paperwork and that allows companies to be more organized. Normally within a HRIS system, there's typically a cloud system similar to the iCloud if you have an iPhone where everything is stored online in a database. So if you do have to, for example, fill out new hire paperwork, when in the past you would print everything out, fill it out by hand, have the applicant fill it out by hand, which normally meant that they will have to go into the office. With an HRIS, everything is a lot more simpler. You can send them a link to complete the new hire paperwork on their own. They don't really have to come in and everything will be stored in the database. So if anyone needs to go back and check their new hire paperwork, they can easily do so by just searching it up and it will pop up. And typically when you limit the amount of paperwork you have within a company, it allows the company to become more organized. Since everything is cloud-based or within one central database, you no longer have to go hunting through a old filing room with tons of paperwork when literally all the dust is covering all of the filing cabinets, all of the paperwork, because again, everything will be in one central location. Regardless if you're looking for new hire paperwork, regardless if you're looking for an incident report, everything is located in the same place. I've actually worked for companies that are very outdated when it comes to technology and they did have a filing room with all of the employees' paperwork and issues can quickly arise when paperwork goes missing. Companies are always being audited, so if important paperwork is missing, that can mean that they have to pay a fine, that can mean that they're not up to code, that they're not compliant with laws and regulations of the state. So when you have an HRIS system with a huge cloud where everything is stored, you can easily find everything that you may need and it allows companies to be more compliant with laws and regulations and it limits the amount of lost paperwork or limits the amount of mistakes. Another pro is that it actually increases accountability. Have you ever had a coworker that never admits to a mistake that they've made? I feel like we all make mistakes, it's just a human thing to do and it's completely normal and I'm the type of person, if I make a mistake, I own up to it and I quickly come up with a solution to fix my mistake. I've had coworkers in the past that will avoid taking ownership of their mistake and that then causes problems later on because then you have to figure out when the mistake was made, who it was made by, and fix whatever consequences came from that mistake and sometimes that can be days after, weeks after, or months after and the more time passes by, the harder it is to fix that mistake. Having an HRIS system allows for an environment with increased accountability and the reason being is that normally when you access a document within an HRIS system, it automatically puts in a timestamp and also it lets everyone know who was the last person to access that file and what they did exactly. For example, if there is an Excel spreadsheet that is being used within the HR department because HR loves using Excel spreadsheets. Every job I've had within HR uses a million Excel spreadsheets so if you're not familiar with Microsoft Excel, get familiar because you're definitely going to need to know how to use Excel within HR but that's besides the point. If an Excel spreadsheet is being used within the whole HR department and important information is stored there, if someone deletes important information from that file, another HR professional can go in and see exactly who went into the document, what time they went into the document, and what time the mistake was made and they can obviously go to that person and not necessarily get them in trouble or fire them but say, hey, you might have done this by mistake but this portion of the document was deleted. In the future, please make sure that you don't do that basically. Instead of deleting a document and then you're like, what the heck happened to the document? Who did this? And there really isn't no accountability and if the same mistakes are happening over and over, this allows senior leadership to focus on training employees so those mistakes don't continue to happen. I don't know why people are so scared to admit when they make a mistake. Just admit it, learn from the mistake, and then come up with a solution to fix your mistake. It also improves HR efficiency. Normally an HRI system makes an HR professional's job a lot easier. In my previous HR videos, I've said multiple times that a lot of the job duties and responsibilities within HR can become very tedious after a while and some of them are very time-consuming. So having an HRI system that cuts those time-consuming tasks in half allows HR professionals to focus on things that actually matter, like hiring new employees and employee retention. But it's not all rainbows and unicorns. There are also a lot of cons. Well, not a lot of cons, but there are cons. As you guys know, technology is great. It makes all of our lives easier, but with technology also comes hackers. You can have the safest cloud system. You can have the toughest firewalls out there, but sometimes data breaches do occur. So that is a risk that companies run when they implement a cloud system or a HRIS. Again, not really something that you have to worry about as a lower-level HR professional. And as I mentioned earlier, these systems can be really, really expensive, especially when these systems have a lot of features. The cost can increase rapidly and not only are you paying for the system itself, but you are also paying for the implementation and for additional training of your employees. Another con is training. So when a company implements a new system, they have to train every employee that will use that system. That can cause problems for a number of reasons. Sometimes there are people that have been there for years and years and years, and they're so comfortable using whatever the current system is that they actually boycott trying to learn the new system. Many higher-ups have to get involved and explain to them in any way that they can think of that they have to train and learn the new system. And training is very time-consuming. You also have to take the time to take important HR professionals out of what they are focusing on to train them on the new system, which then takes their time away from their responsibilities within their role and takes them away from meeting deadlines. When a company implements a new HRIS system, they definitely have to consider the time that they implemented, and they also have to consider the whole HR department's needs. So that is pretty much the gist of an HRIS system or software, whatever you prefer to call it. It is a very simple system, but there is a lot that goes into it. But this is basically the gist of it, and if you guys have any questions or if you want me to go more in depth regarding an HRIS system, definitely let me know in the comments below and I can. Don't forget to give this video a big thumbs up, don't forget to subscribe, I would love to have you a part of my channel, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye guys.