Top 10 HR technology challenges in the workplace

1. Employee experience

The UI and ease of task completion have a major effect on how much employees use a new system. User adoption can be especially difficult if employees liked the old system.

Addressing UI challenges may be difficult because many cloud applications don't allow clients to make those kinds of changes. Often, the only options for changing items are the following:

• Changing colors and logos.
• Turning some features on and off.
• Modifying menus and text, in some cases.

If UX is a source of complaints, working with the vendor to address as many issues as possible is crucial. The vendor knows what changes are possible, and if the vendor can't address a particular issue, documenting the complaint may be the next best step.

2. AI

AI can potentially reduce the workload of HR teams and employees. However, AI is still relatively young, and the models are still being perfected.

The HR team may try to use AI to draft policies and other documents, such as job descriptions, but find that the text requires significant cleanup or that the generated text is more suitable for a different country or region. AI may also make incorrect inferences about the tone or essence of a person's feedback when analyzing free-form text.

The HR team must test the AI model's results. If AI functionality is missing or AI is providing mixed results, HR should contact the vendor so they can understand whether it's possible to fix the issue or if the vendor will address the problem in a future release.

3. Change management

Encouraging employees to adopt a new HR system can be difficult. Employees may begin creating processes outside of the system, such as using spreadsheets to track data, if they are not discouraged from doing so.

Change management for a new HR system should take a multipronged approach. The approach should include the following steps:

• Explaining to workers why the new system was selected.
• Training employees so they understand how to use the system.
• Listening to and addressing employee concerns.
• Securing support from senior management.

4. Product limitations

Every system has limitations. The question is whether the limitations have a minor or major effect on the way the company operates. Adjusting an internal process so it aligns with the HR system's functionality may be possible, but that's not always the case.

When a problem arises, the HR system administrator should work with the vendor to identify options and workarounds. If the problem can't be resolved, investigating the use of a third-party tool may be necessary. For example, a new HR information system (HRIS) may work well for many areas of HR but lack functionality for the talent acquisition team. In this case, a company may purchase a third-party applicant tracking system and integrate the ATS with the HRIS so new hire information is pushed into the HRIS.

5. Support for multiple countries

The HR system may work well in one or more countries in which the company operates but fall short in others. For example, the system may not support the necessary languages or currencies, or it may not allow for workflows in multiple countries.

Addressing this issue may be difficult, but it's always best to work with the vendor to identify potential fixes. Many vendors have a list of countries they fully support and have options for other countries, such as preferred third-party vendors. For example, the vendor may only support processing payroll in some countries and use other vendors for payroll in certain areas.

6. System complexity

An HR system may provide all necessary functionality, but many of the forms, processes and features may be difficult to use. For example, forms that capture employee data may contain many unnecessary fields, or employees may find processes difficult to carry out if they don't use the HR system regularly.

The system administrator should look for ways to hide or remove fields that are used infrequently and identify options for simplifying processes where possible. If needed, the administrator may want to contact the vendor or a third-party consultant to find remedies.

7. Access permissions

Employees must have access to the information they need in an HR system to perform their role, whether they work in HR or not. However, many systems require administrators to give employees more permissions than the administrator prefers in order for the employee to access the data they need. Meanwhile, the new permissions may require significant amounts of time to build, test and then deploy.

If the HR system does not include the preferred permissions flexibility, such as being unable to limit access to employee data by country, company leaders need to decide if users having more access to data than the company prefers is an issue. The decision may rest on the sensitivity of the data and the laws in the countries in which the organization operates.

When creating new user permissions, the new role should be built and tested in a staging or test environment first. If a role must be rebuilt in production because a way to copy it over does not exist, then more testing is required before assigning it to users.

8. Integrations

An HR system, particularly an HRIS, contains data that other departments must access. Interfaces can help ensure that departments like IT, finance and others can get the information they require. However, getting systems to share data can sometimes be difficult or expensive.

A cost-benefit analysis must be carried out if setting up an interface requires a significant cost. For example, the preferred integration between two systems may be to use an API so the information is always up to date in both systems. However, using a file transfer once or more per day may be sufficient and have limited or no cost. A performance management system or learning management system may only need to be updated once a day.

9. Reporting

Reporting on HR systems data can be challenging, particularly when HR data is spread across multiple systems. For example, the performance management system may be licensed from a different vendor than the HRIS, or a vendor may have acquired another company and the data remains stored in different databases. Permissions may also play a part in whether those who need the data can access it.

Capturing the result of one process and entering the data into the HRIS so that it can be reported on could help resolve the issue of data being stored in multiple systems. For example, the final rating from a performance management system could be entered into the HRIS.

Another option is to use a third-party reporting and analytics package that is designed to pull data from multiple sources.

10. Data quality

Capturing accurate data continues to be a challenge for many companies. Causes include employees who enter data infrequently and don't remember the process when they do, free-form text fields, a large amount of fields to complete leading to data inaccuracy and the system allowing users to leave important fields blank.

Hiding fields that aren't required, making important data fields required and using picklists instead of free-form text fields can help limit inaccurate data entry. Also, using interfaces to pull data from other systems rather than making users rekey it can help reduce issues.

Regular data audits can also help catch problems.

Eric St-Jean is an independent consultant with a particular focus on HR technology, project management and Microsoft Excel training and automation. He writes about numerous business and technology areas.