Chapter 17

The Future of HRIS

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF HUMAN
RESOURCES TECHNOLOGY?
• Technology has changed the world, in general and
the world of Human Resources
– Employees can work any time and anywhere
– HR has shifted to a more strategic focus
– HR still has Administrative responsibilities
– Delivery of software as a “cloud based” application has
enabled any size company to take advantage of
efficiencies and effectiveness of strong HR Systems
functionality
– However, the implementation of an effective HR
Technology solution is still a challenge. Requiring
leadership, communications, management buy-in
and competence.

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HR MANAGEMENT

• Healthcare
• Business Intelligence
• Demographic Workforce Changes
• Complexity of Legal Compliance
• Virtualization of Work

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HR MANAGEMENT
Healthcare
– Rising healthcare costs were identified by nearly 90% of
executives surveyed as an important challenge facing their
organization in the next 2-5 years
– Chief Financial Officers identified healthcare costs at the number
one issue facing their organization
– Passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (i.e.
Obamacare), HR departments are facing a number of issues
associated with its implementation.
• The new law makes some provisions of these plans illegal if they are
not available to lower compensated employees as well. In addition,
organizations will have to consider the penalty costs of not offering
healthcare to employees, and the makeup of their workforce (e.g.
full-time, part-time, contingent) as they determine how to best
comply with the new law, as well as offering plans that best serve
their employees.
Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HR MANAGEMENT
Business Intelligence
– HR is increasingly turning to the use of business intelligence to support
complex metrics. Although covered in greater detail in Chapter 7, we
also discuss data analytics and HR metrics here because they are
growing in importance to HR departments in most large organizations
– Many organizations already have basic reporting capabilities, but they
are increasingly looking to incorporate more sophisticated metrics
– Metrics:
• Organizations will increasingly demand that HR better measure and assess
the value of their human capital initiatives.
• The increasing use of metrics may lead to standard, and widely accepted set
of metrics to “describe, predict and evaluate the quality and impact of HR
practices and the productivity of the workforce”.
• Organizations begin to transform their view of HR, from that of a people
function to more of one focused on decision science.

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HR MANAGEMENT
Demographic Workforce Changes
– More women and minorities are entering the workforce than ever
before. For example, nearly 60% of working-age women are now
in the workforce compared to only 40% in 1970 (Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 2011).
– Growth in the Hispanic-American (Hispanics) population in the
United States. Currently, Hispanics make up 15 percent of the U.S.
population, and account for more than half (50.5%) of its
population growth (Pew Hispanic Center, 2010). They are also
expected to comprise at least 25 percent of the population by
2030 (U. S. Bureau of Census, 2009).
– Baby Boomers are postponing retirement. Recent data from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that the fastest growing age
groups in the workforce will be those over 65 years old, with
projections suggesting that participation of those over 65 will
have grown by over 80% between 2006-2016 (Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 2008)!

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HR MANAGEMENT
Complexity of Legal Compliance
– The pace of regulations continue to grow. For example, the
EEOC continues to develop additional guidelines and states
continue to pass additional regulations on issues as varied as
hiring practices to workplace safety. In addition, the recent
negotiations due to the recent “fiscal cliff” has resulted in a
change in the social security tax rates for all employees, and the
raising of taxes for high earning employees. Human resources
will need to be prepared to implement these changes, and
additional changes are likely to occur in the coming years.
– Changes due to the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act will require human resource departments in organizations
from the very small to the Fortune 100 to comply with a myriad
of federal requirements and very likely state mandates as well

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HR MANAGEMENT

Virtualization of Work
– No longer are employees confined by physical or temporal
space. Employees can conduct work anywhere and at any
time. “The virtual workspace can be defined as an
environment where employees work away from company
premises and communicate with their respective
workplaces via telephone or computer devices” (Lockwood,
2010,).
– Text - Figure 17.1 lists several keys to managing virtual
meetings successfully.

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HR MANAGEMENT

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
• Bring your own Device
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Web 2.0
• Social Networking
• Enterprise Portals
• Open Source Software

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
Bring your own Device
– The change is a dramatic departure
• Previously, the most common arrangement by organizations was to manage a
centralized and tightly controlled technological platform (e.g. IBM, HP, Dell,
Windows, etc.), and anyone who wanted to use another platform (e.g. Mac,
Linux, etc.) would potentially have problems receiving adequate support.
• But, today, employees are more likely to want to use their own personal
mobile devices (e.g. smart phones, tablets, and laptops)
– In a recent Forester research survey, nearly 70% of employees
noted that they would like to be able to bring their own personal
mobile devices and use them at work (Forrester, 2012). Gartner
also predicts that by 2013 mobile devices will become the most
common technology used to access the Web, even surpassing PCs
(Gartner, 2012).
Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
Bring your own Device
• Privacy issues become important: For example, how do you deal with
the privacy issues associated with the storage and use of personal and
work data on the same device? In addition, the complexity of
managing network and data security dramatically increases when
employees bring their personal devices into work, which means that
organizations will need to rethink data and network security practices
to support these devices
– Companies will need to develop policies in regards to the use of these devices and
who will pay for these devices
• Accordingly, the growth in smartphone apps (e.g. for the iPhone,
Blackberry, Android, or Windows). For example, vendors such as
Workday and SuccessFactors have built apps where employees can
use their mobile devices to access and connect to the corporate HRIS.
• No longer are employees “chained” to their desks to when working
with HRIS data.
Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)
– Traditional software development models, the "on-premise" or
home-grown" approach, are being replaced by “on-demand”
software plans, which see the company or customer leasing access
to as few or as many HR functions as it wishes to access.
– The newest trend in delivering software to companies is “cloud
computing”
• HRIS functionality is delivered to companies via the Web. For the company,
there is no hardware to purchase or software to install. Employees can also
access the software anywhere they have a Web browser. As with SaaS,
companies are able to adopt only the amount of functionality currently
needed and then scale up to additional functionality.

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)
– Organizations find moving to the cloud attractive because
employees find these systems e In the last four years, the
market share for the largest three cloud vendors
(SuccessFactors, Ultimate Software, & Workday) has
increased by 361%
– In addition, in a recent survey of companies with IT budgets
over $50 million, over 85 percent of them were exploring
ways of getting out of long-term, on-premise, contracts and
are actively considering cloud vendors to provide a viable
option for them
– These applications are easy to use and usually leads to both
lower up-front and ongoing costs.
Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
– SOA converts monolithic and static systems into modular and
flexible components. SOA is about efficient modular design and
deployment, and reusable software is at the heart of the
architecture.
– SOA offers several advantages to end users, who can change the
business process when needed and purchase or develop only
those applications that are involved in the new processes.

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
Web 2.0
– A “second” generation of Web-related services focusing on creativity,
collaboration, and sharing. In contrast to traditional isolated information
silos.
– Examples of Web 2.0 technology:
• Social networking sites (e.g., chat rooms, MySpace, Facebook), Wikis (publicly available
collaborative Web dictionaries), and Blogs (short for Web logs, i.e., online journals or
diaries)
• Mash ups . (web applications that combine data from multiple sources into a single
location, or application
• Podcasts (audio or video recordings)
• RSS (rich site summary/ really simple syndication) – feeds which publish frequently
updated sites such as blogs or news
• Personal Web sites, Peer-to-peer networking (P2P) - file sharing, e.g., text, music, and
videos)
• Collective intelligence (sharing knowledge to tap the expertise of a group)

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
Social Networking
– Social networking (SNW) is one of the features of Web 2.0. Social
networking tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have become
important tools for organizations, and human resources is not an
exception
– Companies are using Facebook and Twitter to help expand their HR
brand and attract employees to the organization.
– A recent SHRM study has found that 20% of organizations are using SNW
tools for internal communications (SHRM, 2012).
– Through these tools, companies are seeking to connect employees and
facilitate internal and global work group collaboration
– Due to the growing use of social networking HRIS vendors are
developing applications within their product offerings to help support
employee collaboration, onboarding, and learning.
Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
Enterprise Portals
– “Enterprise portals” refer to the ways in which individuals
can interact with each other. Enterprise portals can be
information portals, collaboration portals, expertise and
knowledge portals, operation portals, social business
networks, or a combination of all of these.
– Within an HRIS, Employee and Manager self-service (ESS
and MSS) portals SHOULD BE USED in a majority of business
processes (or workflows). For example:
• Employee requests for time off
• Employee and Manager input to Performance appraisals
• Manager approvals for a variety of actions affecting his/her direct
reports or his/her Manager’s direct reports

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
INFORMATION SYSTEMS (HRIS)
Open Source Software
– Normally, software that is developed is copyrighted, and the
source code is neither open nor available for others.
– Some software developers have agreed to a different approach to
the development of software called open source.
– In an open source approach to software development, the
developers make the source code available for anyone to see and
to change.
– Other companies or developers can then expand on the product
or easily develop complimentary products.
– Open source software also costs much less than traditional (or
proprietary) software, and is sometimes provided for free.

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN WORKFORCE
TECHNOLOGIES
• Carden’s Philosophy
• CedarCrestone Survey – 2010-2011

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN WORKFORCE
TECHNOLOGIES
Carden’s Philosophy
– Technology should serve strategic goals.
• Carden notes that the increasing competition by organizations to
improve their profitability has often led to the conclusion that new
technology will solve these issues, but the reality is more complex than
that. Organizations which are most successful are those who are able to
leverage technology which most closely link to a strong business
strategy.
• Feeling increasing pressure to remain competitive and survive has led to
companies who are adopting technology to carefully diagnosis what
strategic goals the adoption of technology could support.
• It is important to keep in mind that how effectively organizations are
able to harness the power of these new technologies will depend on
how well they link it to their HR strategy.

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN WORKFORCE
TECHNOLOGIES
CedarCrestone Survey – 2010-2011
– Data for this report were collected in 2010 from 1,289
respondents representing over 20 million employees.
– Major Findings:
• Organizations that have more automation across all categories of
technologies outperform those organizations with less automation on
the important productivity measures of net income growth, sales
growth, and sales per employee.
• The respondents in the survey reported that their organizations have
had strong recoveries (from the weak economies), and they forecasted
a 100% growth in HRIS talent management, social media, and analytics
and planning applications.
• Organizations reported that business process improvement through
techniques such as Six Sigma (Chapter 8) for recruiting new employees

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN WORKFORCE
TECHNOLOGIES
CedarCrestone Survey – 2010-2011
– Major Findings: continued
• Organizations are increasingly choosing to rent access to applications
instead of purchasing and installing these applications on site.
• Organizations are continuing to invest in applications across all HR
functions. Administrative HRIS software for core HR record keeping,
payroll, and benefits is still the dominant class of technology, with
worldwide average use at 90%.
• There is a continuing trend to use new “service delivery” applications,
such as employee and manager self-service systems, portals, HR help
desks, and workforce life cycle management.
• The major increase in the use of technology to support HR will focus on
tools such as talent management, social media, workforce planning,
and workforce analytics, with over 90% growth in the next three years.

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.
 FUTURE TRENDS IN WORKFORCE
TECHNOLOGIES
CedarCrestone Survey – 2010-2011
– Major Findings: continued
• Among organizations that have installed multiple talent management
applications, in particular those companies with four or more
applications installed outperformed those companies with three or
fewer applications in terms of higher net income growth, sales
growth, and sales per employee.
• Organizations have begun preparing to use service-oriented
architecture (SOA) to automate business processes, e.g., applicant
tracking.
• Finally, the survey focused on choices and investments which are
providing a strong return to companies. These choices include the
following: (1) Focus on Career Development, (2) Use Workforce
Optimization Technologies, (3) Choose an Integrated ERP-based Talent
Management Solution, and (4) Adopt Social Networking.

Kavanagh, Human Resource Information Systems, Third Edition© 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.