Conclusion

To be effective, the organization’s goals, objectives, culture, and activities must be consistent with the organization’s strategy. This means that all information systems in the organization must facilitate the organization’s competitive strategy. By finding the right HRIS system which able meet the needs of companies, it can serve as an advantage to companies when managing the competitive forces.

HRIS offers HR, payroll, benefits, training, recruiting and compliance solutions. Most are flexibly designed with integrated databases, a comprehensive array of features, and powerful reporting functions and analysis capabilities that you need to manage your workforce. Therefore, it saves much time of the HR administrator spent on their routine tracking employee’s development. Besides that, it serves the function of facilitating communication processes and save paper by providing an easily-accessible, centralized location for company policies, announcements, and links to external URL’s. Employee activities such as time-off requests and form changes can be automated easily, resulting in faster approvals and less paperwork. An effective HRIS provides information on just about anything the company needs to track and analyze about employees, former employees, and applicants.

With an appropriate HRIS, Human Resources staff enables employees to do their own benefits updates and address changes, thus freeing HR staff for more strategic functions. Additionally, data necessary for employee management, knowledge development, career growth and development, and equal treatment is facilitated. Finally, managers can access the information they need to legally, ethically, and effectively support the success of their reporting employees.

Reference:

James R Mensching & Dennis A. Adams (1991). Managing An Information System. Prentice Hall Series in Information System

HRIS application: An Overview

Compensation Administration: Maintaining internal and external equity while preserving the incentive value of compensation is not getting any easier. Specifically, there are systems that perform their job analyses (some even describing job descriptions) and others that carry out job evaluation, using either the vendor’s propriety technique and accommodating the evaluation methods that the user may prefer. Some systems accept survey data and perform analyses that help the user price jobs according to the market. Still others facilitate the development of salary structures, costing out the various alternatives as the users experiment with them. Example: Lotus 1,2,3.

Benefits Administration: Benefits plans requires intensive records keeping, therefore introduction of computerizing have save much costs. The situation has changed dramatically especially in the recent years,  largely because changing demand of benefit administration – most emanating from government regulation such as pension regulation has added to the administrative burden. Another increase in costs is the health care cost which requires record keeping to be computerized for government compliance and analyst of cost control. Example: Employees Benefit Software Directory

Human Resources Planning: HR planning is especially important for forecasting and succession planning.  Forecasting uses HRIS application to determined the demand of key jobs, turnover. This allows HR planners to use computer softwares to forecast training and hiring needs besides identify staffing problems. However few companies have the expertise to forecast as it is difficult task. Secondly, the succession planning is a planning for the development of talent besides for continuity in key positions. This systems function by having information list of managers at all level who has the highest promotion potential to be stored and manipulated. Such systems can stored placement related data on individuals and can position data (including reporting relationships). Example: ExecuGrow 

Organisational Planning: This is a planning for organizational structures and roles that people will occupy. This includes creation of organizational charts to document hierarchical relationships of jobs and to records names of incumbents. Some systems goes beyond to locate important information such as locating data to determine the firm spending on various activities. Therefore, it allows alternative organizational structures to develop cost-cutting.

Employment Management: Organizations may receive unsolicited employment applications, therefore  must preserve a good image and acknowledge these applications. The record keeping allows organization to keep track promising applicants to be contacted. This is useful during recruitment function which enables monitoring of selection process, manage interviews, minimize delays and record information collected thus decision made effectively.

References:
Stephen E Forest & Zandy B. Leibowitz (1991). Using Computers in Human Resources: How to Select and Make the Best Use of Automated HR system. Jossey-Bash

What Is Competitive Fores?

The subtopic of competitive forces give me a better insight of using for the topic of using Information System for competitive advantages. Before this lesson, I always define competition too narrowly, as if it occurred only among today’s direct competitors (rivalry among existing competitors). Yet competition for profits goes beyond established industry rivals to include four other competitive forces as well: bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat potential entrants, and lastly threat of substitute products. The extended rivalry that results from all five forces defines an industry’s structure and shapes the nature of competitive interaction within an industry. For an example, in the market for commercial aircraft, fierce rivalry between dominant producers Airbus and Boeing and the bargaining power of the airlines that place huge orders for aircraft are strong, while the threat of entry, the threat of substitutes, and the power of suppliers are more benign.

An organization responds to the structure of its industry by choosing a competitive

strategy. Porter followed his five forces model with the model of four competitive

strategies. According to Porter, a firm can engage in one of these four fundamental competitive strategies.

An organization can focus on being the cost leader, or it can focus on differentiating its products from those of the competition. Further, the organization can employ the cost or differentiation strategy across an industry, or it can focus its strategy on a particular industry segment.Consider, a car rental company can seek to differentiate its products from the competitors. It can do so in various ways—for example, by providing a wide range of high-quality cars, by providing the best reservations system, by having the cleanest cars or the fastest check-in. The company can strive to provide product differentiation across the industry or within particular segments of the industry, such as- domestic business travelers.

 Cost leadership means a company provides goods/ services with lower price compare to other company with same goods/ services, the company who able to produce goods in lowest cost would gain best profits. Innovation strategy means produce a unique product that the other company do not have to attract customers. Another way to compete with competitor is to improve the company itself by developing or expanding the size of company to turn it into global markets in order to  gain more customers and profit. Alliance strategy includes of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and others.

To be effective, the organization’s goals, objectives, culture, and activities must be consistent with the organization’s strategy. This means that all information systems in the organization must facilitate the organization’s competitive strategy.

Reference: Paul Sparrow; Chris Brewster; Hilary Harris (2004). Globalising Human Resource Management. Routledge

What is HRIS?

What is HRIS?

A HRIS, or Human resource information system, is a software solution for small to mid-sized businesses to help automate and manage their HR, payroll, management and accounting activities. A HRIS generally should provide the capability to more effectively plan, control and manage HR costs; achieve improved efficiency and quality in HR decision making; and improve employee and managerial productivity and effectiveness.

HRIS Advantages

The advantages of having a sophisticated HRIS are many. An HRIS monitored by qualified specialists who know technology and HR functional and tactical processes can manage compliance with federal and state laws, streamline processes for recruitment and selection, and produce analyses, data and reports for internal and external use. Other advantages of an HRIS include the ease of use for qualification computer technology specialists, accuracy of information and the ability to perform HR audits using any combination of parameters. The employee and manager self-service features are excellent ways to free up the time of your human resources staff members for project work and other duties. Employees and managers can locate answers and information quickly without the need to consult an HR representative every time.

HRIS Disadvantages

An HRIS also can be a problematic for small businesses in which some employees must wear many hats. If the company isn’t big enough to have a dedicated human resources technology specialist, consider outsourcing. Some of the disadvantages of an HRIS involve human error during information input, costly technology to update the system and malfunctions or insufficient applications to support your human resources needs. There is a demand for computer and technology specialists with general information technology knowledge, and finding a qualified specialist with human resources functional area knowledge can be difficult. With such a demand, your cost to hire an HRIS specialist may be far above the average salary for a computer technology specialist. The cost per-hire for another employee in a specialized field may be a stretch for some small businesses.

Something Personal About Me

My name is Shirleen Chow Suet Li. I am Malaccan. Why do I highlighted myself as Malaccan, is pretty much that I take pride my own hometown. Malacca has turn into one of the most visited state by tourists, in fact is placed in the position of top three “Most Visited State”

 

Malacca is a small, friendly city that with many eye-catching sights and attractive modern establishments. It is easy to go around on foot or trishaw to explore the many places that make Malacca unique. As you explore them, you'll learn about the rich heritage and history that has shaped the landscape and left a mark on Malaysia's cultural lifestyle. In fact, the city is a mix of old and new, historical establishments and old shops stand side-by-side with shopping complexes and modern offices. 

I am the second child in family. I don’t experience the middle child syndrome as the age gap between my sister and me is only 10 months apart. Both of us aged the same which is 23 having myself as a February baby and she herself as the December baby. When we have a new acquaintance who knows about this, they gave a surprised and shocked look. These facial expressions many at times amused me.

 Next I would like to describe my temperaments and personality characteristics.  I am a phlegmatic-sanguine having the mixture traits of two temperaments. My phlegmatic nature of mine might lead me to be fundamentally relaxed and quiet, ranging from warmly attentive to lazily sluggish. However my sanguine temperament describes myself as fundamentally impulsive and pleasure-seeking.  Sanguine people are sociable and charismatic.