Scratch the surface with any experienced HR Manager and you’ll find a professional with the kind of qualities that would put a Boy Scout to shame. The experienced HR professional is honest and trustworthy. They are also friendly, courteous, and kind. These are all admirable qualities, but it’s the last three that are the most relevant: an experienced HR professional, like a good Boy Scout, is resourceful, thrifty, and wise, because that’s what has always been needed from Human Resources.
People often regard HR as extraneous business when in reality Human Resources is the glue that holds the company together. HR finds good people to bring into the company, makes sure they are paid properly, gets them enrolled in benefits, helps them address questions about work behavior and professional conduct, and completes employee terminations.
All this is done with a minimum of fuss. In fact, it is widely known that good HR is seen, but not heard.
Technology and HR
For years, Human Resources was the last place you would expect to find up-to-date technology solutions. This is changing. People have realized that a successful business needs a well-run HR department. When HR is really working, employees are happier, more confident, and more successful. When HR isn’t working, the department and the company by extension is treated as a joke by employees.
If you need proof that technology has improved HR, you don’t need to look any further than Payroll. Some of the first changes to HR technology were related to the way payroll was handled. The payroll process, especially small business payroll, was largely paper-dependent, which meant that the process wasn’t secure. The process was also inefficient and vulnerable to errors. Payroll software was developed to safely and quickly allow for the gathering of time and attendance data, and to process that data quickly, efficiently, and correctly. After people realized that technology could be used to assist with payroll, it wasn’t a huge stretch to expand the technology to include time and attendance tracking and time off tracking.
The Roots of HCM
While technology was reaching out to Payroll, other departments realized that technology could be leveraged to improve staffing and recruiting. In fact, when it comes to technology, recruiting firms were early adopters. It didn’t take their clients long to realize that they could also benefit from recruiting software. The same kind of realization happened with employee benefits management. Companies realized that technology could greatly ease benefit administration.
At this point, HR technology was reaching critical mass. Large companies like PeopleSoft and SAP realized the need to bring all aspects of HR together under one Enterprise Solution. These large projects were deployed to big companies because of the cost of initial startup and maintenance, but technology providers soon realized that HR solutions could be scaled.
And that brings us to today. You no longer have to be a Fortune 100 company to afford good HR technology. With cloud computing, your company can find a solution that works for you. The solution that works best for your company doesn’t have to be huge and complex, so long as it’s comprehensive and solves the process challenges of your business, regardless of its size.
Today, Human Capital Management, or HCM, is a solution that brings all of the different aspects of HR management together. Using HCM, you can more efficiently and securely fulfill all of the traditional functions of HR. New hires can complete their onboarding online, payroll can get data for the weekly pay cycle, and benefits can make open enrollment more efficient, smooth, and employee friendly. And it all runs from the same platform that isn’t co-located with your other systems so that your IT department can concentrate on the rest of your business.
In this document, we’ll discuss the challenges businesses face and explore how HCM can address them. Then we’ll talk about how to move forward.
For more information on how Commonwealth Payroll & HR can work with you on your strategic human resources planning, call us today at 877-245-1159.
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