Executive Summary
Human resources management is a core function of all organizations that employ people, and to a significant extent the welfare of the organization and its employees depends on their executing HR functions efficiently. Employee satisfaction is strongly influenced by how easily and satisfactorily employees can interact with the HR department.
To do HR well companies need to manage huge amounts of information related to employee identification, compensation, performance, benefits and policies and provide relevant and timely information to employees and managers whenever needed. Employers also have to comply with a range of rules governing employment and required benefits such as healthcare; in the United States the Affordable Care Act in particular adds to the compliance burden.
The human resources management system (HRMS) has long been a key tool for handling this information and communicating it to stakeholders. Today, new technologies enable the HRMS to perform better and make it easier to use by HR professionals and members of the workforce.
Ventana Research undertook this benchmark research to determine the attitudes, requirements and future plans of those who use human resources management systems and to identify the best practices of organizations that are most mature in it. We set out to examine both the commonalities and the qualities specific to major industry sectors and across sizes of organizations. We considered how organizations perform human resources management, issues they encounter in the process and how their use of the HRMS and related technology is evolving.