Issues and Concerns in the Implementation and Maintenance of HRIS

This article looks at the issues and concerns faced by nine Indian organisations in implementing and managing Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS). The organisations are diverse in terms of size and sector that they belong. The critical success factors and weaknesses in various stages of implementing an HRIS are explored in this paper. The problems are rooted in mainly two factors. One is the fact that the HR department lacks knowledge about HRIS and hence is not able to clearly elucidate the requirements of the system. Poor need assessment is a continuation of this problem. Second is the lack of importance given to the HR department in the organisations. The spectrum of cases covered shows the clear variation in terms of the success of implementation. In poorly managed implementations, the potential of HRIS has been under-utilised. Only a few modules have been implemented and at best HRIS's role is that of a centralised database. Very high dependence is placed on the vendors without having a clear idea about how to select vendors or a proper process or contract to ensure vendors' accountability. Another area of concern is that level of cooperation needed across various functions and divisions of the organisation for proper implementation of HRIS is also lacking. User satisfaction is low because there is minimal user involvement in the implementation project and the implemented package is not user-friendly.