Determining HRIS Needs - Research Paper Example

Though the adoption of technology in HR department has exhibited a whole range of advantages in managing firms’ human resource, technological advancement equally poses a wide range of challenges that span ethical, financial as well as legal implications. Technological advancement within the field of HR presupposes higher skills for the staff. Moreover, the staff in the firm wholesomely expects higher levels of accessing data than was the case before adopting the HRIS. This therefore shows that in adoption of these systems, there is a need for proper future planning.

There may be some requirements for changes in technology or government regulations in the future, which in the event of unpreparedness may adversely affect the firm. Such planning needs are: need for caution in incorporating the ever-dynamic social media as tools of recruitment. New applications as well as legislations keep showing up hence the need for a better system that would accommodate the dynamics. There is the need to adopt systems that can easily expansion and reporting requirements as stipulated by different legislations and government regulations, as this will always keep changing.

Taking caution on the use of hosted approaches through which firms rent services from other service providers or unreliable software. Technological advancement may face out the software in use thus lending the organization helpless. While taking long range planning for these HRIS, an organization should also be aware of the changing trends within the HR practices where records are showing that managers are adopting HR systems through which analysis of individual employee performance can be monitored and evaluated.

This will assist in the choice for the most appropriate systems to minimize costs of revising and changing. Finally, long range planning will take into account transparency challenges where the system adopted should ascertain confidentiality of personal information. This is especially important with the technological awareness that is currently exhibited (Johnson and Gueutal, nd, 4-6). HRIS requires periodical analysis. There are the advantages that make the methods more appropriate than others.

However, it is worth noting that the methods exhibit major setbacks and can thus not ascertain accurate measurements. Error-some data may result from the drawbacks that are associated with data collection faults associated go these methods. Apart from the limitation of time, both focus group as well as the interview method is limited in costs, human resource requirements and language barrier (U.S. General Accounting Office, 1991, 40-66). On matters of costs, interviews as well as the focus groups require the services of one on one questioning for the purpose of focus groups while the interviews may be over the communication media as well as the one on one interview.

These two cases require a lot of funding as compared to other methods as the secondary data. In relation to human resource, the interview method and the focus group methods both require the services of competent personnel. In the instance of poor personnel, the data collected is inaccurate while the reverse is true. On matters of language, it is seen as a critical disadvantage because the two methods of collecting data requires some form of communication; either written or better still the oral communication.

In the instance of differences in language, communication would not take place and in the process, no data at all will be collected. From the above analysis, the