Diversity in the workplace shouldn’t be some publicity stunt to showcase images of how ethnic your team is and plastering them everywhere. That’s tokenism. We need to break these old habits. When it comes to being a well-integrated diverse company, it takes metrics to allow you to make a real change. Data is a powerful tool when it comes to diversity. When optimized correctly, you can create opportunities based on equity with your company for ALL.  

Why do you need metrics?

With metrics, you can identify your exact pain points, where you are lacking, and where you are doing well. Just as you analyze metrics at the end of the fiscal year to review your company’s performance, metrics are visually helpful to know the current state of your company and what DEI measures should be improved.  

An example that depicts what occurs very often is, “In industry after industry, our research shows that 81% to 88% of white men report fair access to career-enhancing assignments. For other groups, that percentage slips as low as 50%.”  Sometimes things can be overlooked for whatever reason and to mitigate this issue, metrics allows you to create equal opportunities for all employees. These metrics can help you monitor whether your employees are getting a fair amount of learning opportunities or if their deviations are based on gender, age or ethnicity. Things you can monitor are employee billable hours, variables in the hiring processes and individual employees’ goal setting.  

Benefits that come from diversity metrics  

1. A well-diversified company: having varied cultures, ethnicities, ableism, ages and genders. 
2. Credible reputation for your company: practicing what you preach by taking rightful actions towards your DEI strategies.  
3. New skills: A diverse talent pool unlocks different skillful team members. 
4. Using money wisely. Without precise metrics, a DEI effort can spend a lot of time and money trying to fix the wrong thing. The more support/training offered by your HRIS for proper execution, the more likely your initiative will be a success. 

Tools you’ll need  

Here’s where HRWize can help you with your DEI initiatives. You can use employee data to build a custom report which can include data from employee surveys, changes in compensation, genders in upper management positions, etc. This will assist you in visualizing the diversity within your company and see where you can be making the correct changes! Lastly, our team of HR consultants are available to help you integrate your strategy at any time, continuing this support even after implementation. 

The post Diversity Requires Metrics appeared first on HRWize.

HRIS solutions have become popular thanks to the many data management benefits they offer. The most attractive one is their capacity to minimize manual work through automation of repetitive, procedural, and time-consuming tasks. This can drastically increase operational efficiency. The data is the factor that guides all of these automated processes. Whether it is an automatic email, an employee benefit statement, or any other type of report, an HRIS will use the available data to complete the requested process.

Inaccurate or out of date data

Having bad data in the system can create a lot of problems in the long run. A worst-case scenario would be pulling a payroll report based on inaccurate data that causes an employee to get an incorrect pay check. Make sure to double-check the data validity before you input it in your HRIS. HR analytics benefit the most from the automation processes. Accurate data enables those in charge of HR analytics to track the employee throughout their employment lifecycle.

Bad formatting

To operate as intended, an HRIS has to be fed with properly formatted data. Since it is an IT-based solution, an HRIS operates with databases, and bad formatting can cause a lot of errors or result in incomplete reports. Tracking back the bad data is time-consuming, not to mention the risk of making a bad decision due to incomplete reports.

To avoid formatting issues, establish the rules according to the HRIS specifications. Be sure to outline the data formats, such as date (d/m/y vs m/d/y), grammatical differences (capital letters, dashes vs spaces) and naming conventions (risks vs warnings), that have to be used when entering the data into the system.

Embracing the best practices of data management early on removes the risk of badly recorded and badly organized data. With easy-to-follow rules regarding data entry, data formatting, and data organization, you will ensure that all the data that ends up in the HRIS will be able to serve its purpose and result in smooth automations.

Lack of available time

Many organizations spend too much time deciding whether they can benefit more from an HRMS, HCM or HRIS. Instead, they should be focused on the business-specific goals and needs and how many available hours they have to ensure a successful implementation process. This specifically applies to an organization with a lot of paperwork that has to be digitized and transferred into the HRIS.

When compared to other departments, HR is often the one with the least manpower. Developing a data management strategy will help organizations plan the implementation relative to the available manpower and instruct employees from other departments on how they can help with the process.As you can see, an HRIS is only as good as the data available to it, which makes data management directly responsible for successful HRIS implementation in organizations of all sizes.

The post HRIS Implementation Part 2: bad data management can cause a world of trouble appeared first on HRWize.

We live in an era where data management is paramount. Finding, accessing and distributing data as fast as possible is vital for the success of processes across the board. HR professionals in particular have to deal with massive amounts of data. They must be able to create new records, find, access, update, and share existing ones on the go. This is exactly why many HR professionals consider an HRIS (Human Resource information system) as the best solution.

An HRIS is designed to make data management easier in two ways; by cutting down and automating repetitive tasks and making access to the information easier. Following an HRIS implementation, many organizations experience improvements in HR analytics and HR data management.

But what many HR departments fail to realize is how important data management is for a successful HRIS implementation. Here are some tips to help efficiently manage and prepare your data for a successful HRIS implementation.

Start working on data management early on

Not all Human Resource Information Systems are the same in terms of scalability and the number of features. While choosing the best HRIS for your business is vital, the data management is just as important. Why? Because it’s the data that makes the HRIS useful. This is why it is best to start working on HRIS and data management simultaneously and as early as possible in the process.

The data we’re referring to falls into 2 different categories; employee data and business processes. Employee data refers to personal information, job titles, salaries etc. Business processes include clear and concise steps for activities like recruitment, training, performance management, HR policies, and payroll. Both of these categories of data need to be clean in order to efficiently set up a well-functioning HRIS that leverages automation.

Working on data management prior to HRIS implementation will make it significantly easier to discover patterns in the HRIS output, identify synergies of different HR practices, and feed decision makers with actionable and accurate data to improve the HR process overall.

A data management plan as a basis

While very sophisticated, an HRIS is, generally speaking, a very simple system. It can be described with a simple scheme: input > data management > output. As you can see, data management stands at the center. This is why it is of utmost importance to understand the value of data management and look at it as the basis of a successful HRIS implementation strategy.

What should a data management plan include? First of all, be clear on what data types will be entered. Once you have a spreadsheet of data types, you should decide who is going to be responsible for managing the data and ensuring the success of the data management plan. Finally, address the data format, entry, updates, sharing, and re-use policies. Pay special attention to privacy and confidentiality matters regarding the data sharing procedures.

Once you have a data management plan in place, shopping for, evaluating and choosing an HRIS system for your business will be simpler. You will have a better understanding of the data you need to process and can more easily match those needs with the offerings of the different HRIS providers.

Contact us for more information.

The post HRIS implementation part 1: why data management is key to success appeared first on HRWize.