Thoughts on HR Systems of Record vs. Systems of Engagement

During class the other week we read a great article about HR Systems of Record vs. Systems of Engagement. As I have worked more and more with HR systems at work, this has constantly been on my mind.

In the recruiting function, I am working in the applicant tracking system (ATS) every day, all day. But what about the rest of the employees? When they approach the recruiting team about making employment referrals and we reply, "Please submit them directly through the ATS" the response is often, "What's an ATS?"

In my company, a big issue is that no one spends time in the HR systems that are being used, unless they are part of HR. Maybe employees will go in once per pay period to make sure their timecards look good, or once every few months to request time off, but otherwise the HR system never crosses their minds. They don't even know all of the functions that our existing HR systems have. What we have is just a system of record, and not a system of engagement.

Part of the issue, I believe, is that HR may not pick the most user-friendly technology to use. Systems like ADP are very well known and widely-used by huge international companies and seem like a really safe choice, so the UX and UI of the systems may never be considered. And people may never think about getting a full HR suite where the core HRIS, ATS, and performance management system actually connect and talk to one another. So you may be left with 3 separate systems with overlapping information that requires a lot of manual input but don't actually feed information back into one another. Once a system is implemented (a process that could take more than a year) it's very difficult to even consider undertaking that labor again, even if better systems are out there, so you end up stuck with less-than-ideal systems that you expect employees to use.

And that leads to the issue with the company HR systems: if it is being used. No matter what system you pick and how great its features are, if employees aren't using it, then it is not working. Employees won't use systems that (1) are difficult to use and ugly, and (2) they are not trained on. If systems aren't intuitive and feel like the '90s when we are already more than halfway through the year 2014, and employees are never given information about the uses and capabilities of a system, how can we expect it to become a system of engagement?

First Post

Hello~ This is Jennifer Ho's HR blog for the UC Berkeley Extension class Human Resource Systems and Technology. Looking forward to learning a lot =)