Overview on Human Capital Management

Human capital management (HCM) is an approach to employee staffing that perceives people as assets (human capital) whose current value can be measured and whose future value can be enhanced through investment.

An organization that supports HCM provides employees with clearly defined and consistently communicated performance expectations. Managers are responsible for rating, rewarding, and holding employees accountable for achieving specific business goals, creating innovation and supporting continuous improvement. HCM software streamlines and automates many day-to-day record-keeping processes and provides a framework for HR staff to manage benefits administration, payroll and create map out succession planning.

There are many excellent solutions that don’t attempt to do everything, but focus on specific functionality – such as recruitment, HR administration, or performance management. The Human Capital Management market is crowded, with many different vendors.

This list below is an attempt at capturing best enterprise-grade solutions that are proven, well-maintained, and being actively developed:

·         Workday

·         Ultimate Software

·         SuccessFactors BizX

·         Oracle Fusion

                                                                      

Workday Inc. is an on‑demand (cloud-based) human capital management and financial management software vendor. Workday Human Resource Management helps to effectively handle a global workforce. From hiring       employees to analyzing the workforce, Workday helps  to manage the processes. As business circumstances and requirements   change— including organizational structures, business-process rules, worker assignments, and reporting priorities, Workday  immediately adjusts for those changes.

Key features offered by Workday:

•        Intuitive User Interface

•        Business Process Framework /Advanced Work-Flow Capabilities

•        Actionable Reporting / Analytics

•        Total Workforce Visibility

•        Constant System Enhancements

•        No Database license, Server or Software Upgrade Cost hence less Cost of ownership ( TCO)

•        A Unified HR, Talent Management System

Three times a year, Workday releases updates to its HCM solution. Unlike traditional on-premise software that requires costly and time-consuming upgrades every 3 to 5 years, Workday's mulit-tenant architecture allows customers to move to the new updates in just a few days - at no additional costs - as part of their regular subscription fees.

Workday's HCM solution is designed to help a company to plan, hire, manage and analyze the workforce. People in the company are most valuable resource and Workday provides the tools to effectively execute HCM strategies.

 “Human Capital Management (HCM) is responsible for attracting, developing and managing the firm’s biggest asset: - People”.

Compensation Software Tools

Compensation is one of many human resource (HR) tools that organizations use to manage their employees. For an organization to receive its money’s worth and motivate and retain skilled employees, it needs to ensure that its compensation system is not an island by itself. Hence it is important for an organization to link compensation to its overall goals and strategic.

Smart, successful organizations do regular planning and evaluation of their compensation and performance appraisal system. It is critical to consistently communicate clear message regarding, how pay decisions are made. Today, organizations tend to view employees as more than just another resource. Compensation has become blended within an overall talent management approach where compensation programs include all employees and not only the “rock stars” of the organization. There may be variations depending on the type and level of contribution of each employee, but generally speaking, compensation aims to be consistent to motivate all employees.

Software Can Help Ensure Fair Compensation

• Software allows decision makers to manage and visualize compensation within an overall talent    management picture
•   Analytics indicates trends in employee behavior, which can lead to the ongoing adjustment of the    overall  compensation planning
•  Technology has the ability to create a space where employees are able to share unstructured        feedback (e.g., freeform comments as opposed to pre-defined surveys). Unstructured data is a    valuable source  of insight for HR managers, as it allows them to trace employees’ dissatisfaction with  compensation,  in real time
•  As flexibility is becoming an important part of compensation packages, software can help track  flexible  work conditions, thus eliminating timesheets or the need to punch in and out

It seems that the way in which technology can assist with designing fair compensation plans depends entirely on the company culture and on the ability (or willingness) of its decision makers to adapt to employees’ demands.

In today’s technology market we see a number of software tools that help or provide some fabulous features that are very beneficial for HR manager. The top compensation management software products are:

•       CompensationXL
•         HRsoft Compensation Planning
•      QCommission
•      EASi - Stock Plan Software
•      Halogen eCompensation
•      Glocent
•      Kenexa

It can be safely concluded that Compensation strategies should no longer be based on whim and fancies of individuals. It should be based on structured and consistent parameters and a software tool can help achieve the goals.

SaaS vendor selection & Performance review by HR tools

 Software-as-a-service (SaaS) continues its rapid growth — becoming an increasingly strategic part of firms’ application portfolio. SaaS presents a compelling new opportunity for small and medium-sized organizations. A 2008 report by AMI Partners titled "2008 U.S. Small and Medium Business Applications & Solutions Market Overview" found that 21 percent of small businesses and 31 percent of mid-sized businesses have tried SaaS products. Software configuration, upgrades, maintenance, and support are all responsibilities of the vendor; customers adopt a "pay-as-you-go" pricing structure, with monthly fees based upon actual use i.e. they're now "renting" the software rather than "buying" it. Following are the areas in which the SaaS approach is ideally suited for HR as a function:

·         Applicant tracking

·         Time and attendance management

·         Benefits management

·         Leave management,

·         Employee self-service functionality,

·         Payroll management, recruitment and performance management.

When implementing SaaS, there are a number of processes and tasks that a business must complete, in order to successfully implement SaaS.  These considerations and processes are detailed below:

·         Understand exactly why are you implementing SaaS- There are a number of reasons why businesses would want to implement SaaS. Some business might want to improve the efficiency of their HR business related process while others might have some specific pain points to address

·         Data ownership- Buyers expect that they have ownership of their data — but in some cases they have been surprised by fees associated with getting their data back at the end of their relationship with the provider. SaaS contracts should be clear about any fees associated with getting data back at the end of a relationship as well as other details such as data format

·         Support expectations- SaaS vendors are often able to provide additional services such as password resets and health checks

·         Cost increases at end of contract- Firms often spend time negotiating their initial contract and considering the total cost of ownership based on that initially agreed-on price

·         Backup and recovery guarantees-  SaaS buyers should understand how their vendors are approaching backup and data recovery as well as to write language into the contract that commits the vendor to restore data in case of disaster

·         Flexibility and quality of service- Many SaaS providers do their integration and data exchange from Web server to Web server over public Internet on a secured or unsecured port. The quality of service via public Internet is “best effort” at the network level and thus the provider cannot ensure high quality

·         Global reach- Global companies need to ensure their SaaS provider has a solution in the countries that meet the buyer’s existing and expanding geographic needs. This is especially important where users need fast response times.

Performance Review- In the whole organizational life cycle a performance review is one of the most important stages for employees. Performance Review is a powerful evaluation mechanism to measure individual employee performance accurately, clearly, and objectively for an engaged, focused, and highly productive workforce. The performance review is intended to be a fair and balanced assessment of an employee’s performance.

                     Sometimes it has a negative effective, if it is not performed well by managers and supervisors. 

“90% of performance appraisal processes are inadequate. –Salary.com survey”.

    Most Serious Performance Appraisal Problems are:

§  Actual performance is not assessed                             

§  Infrequent feedback

§  Lack of effectiveness metrics

§  Lack of accountability

§  Managers are not trained

§  A time-consuming process

There are some tools in market that helps HR in Performance reviews making it less time consuming, appropriate, effective and trustworthy. A shift to web-based, on-demand technology is making these systems affordable, regardless of the size of an organization, with quick implementation schedules and requiring minimal IT support and automatic upgrades. When selecting an automated performance management solution make sure to do your research. Some solutions offer nothing more than an electronic appraisal form while others offer complete best-of-breed goal management solutions.

                Cornerstone is one of the best software tools in the market today to support performance review process. The cornerstone tool translates workforce activity into positive business results, identify and track employee performance, recognize and reward top performers. The Cornerstone helps organization to get the greatest return on its human capital investment by offering

§  Goal Setting & Management

§  Performance Appraisals

§  Social Reviews

§  KPI Dashboards at Every Level Of the Enterprise

§  Custom Performance Reviews & 360-degree reviews.

                        Apart from Performance Management, Cornerstone also offers capabilities across other HR areas such as Skill & Competency Management, Succession Management and Compensation Management.

LMS, MOOC & Mobile Learning (eLearning tools)

Technology has evolved at a mindboggling pace in the past few years and it plays a very vital role in our lives in this 21^st century. Be it education, research, training, or job - one can’t think of thriving without the help of technology.  I have attempted to throw light on some key tools/resources in learning space made possible by technology. These tools/resources play even a more vital role for HR personnel by making knowledge management tasks easier.

LMS- Learning Management Systems (LMS) are software applications designed for the management of training and educational programs. LMS combines the administration and documentation of learning initiatives, content development tools, virtual learning, social learning, online testing and assessment functionality to achieve a single goal: improving employee development while cutting costs and risks.

         It’s very difficult to run a successful business if employees aren’t continuously learning, and an LMS ensures that a business is constantly growing while allowing the employees to connect and learn from each other in new ways. A Learning Management System is also known as "Course Management System", "Pedagogical Platform", and “E-Learning Platform.

MOOC-A massive open online course (MOOC) is a free Web-based distance learning program that is designed for the participation of large numbers of students. MOOCs do not always offer academic credits; they also provide education that may include certification, employment or further studies. Here, are some key online resources:-

•    Udemy is a marketplace for online courses. The platform currently offers over 13,000 courses, with more than 2 million students and 7,000 instructors
•     Udacity is the outgrowth of free computer science classes offered in 2011 through Stanford University. It has 9 full courses & 24 free courseware and around 90,000 students enrolled in the initial two classes as of March 2012.
•    Codecademy is an online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in six different languages. As of June 2012, the site had over 5 million users who had completed over 100 million exercises.

Mobile Learning-Mobile learning is defined as "learning across multiple contexts, through social and content interactions, using personal electronic devices". Best part of this is that learners can learn anywhere and at any time. M-learning technologies include computers, MP3 players, notebooks, mobile phones and tablets. M-learning also brings strong portability by replacing books and notes with small devices. For instance, SMILE, the Stanford Mobile Inquiry Learning Environment, is a learning management system that allows students to create, share, answer, and evaluate questions in a collaborative manner through the use of cell phones.

All these learning tools enhance employees’ skill and engage employees in an appropriate way to grasp more accurate or advanced knowledge through advanced technology.

HRIS Blog Four- Cloud and its risk and benefit/opportunity, Onboarding and background verification

"What's the cloud?" "Where is the cloud?" "Are we in the cloud now?!" These are all questions you've probably heard or even asked yourself. The term "cloud computing “means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive. The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet. Cloud computing comes in three forms: public clouds, private clouds, and hybrids clouds.  Public cloud is basically the internet. Service providers use the internet to make resources, such as applications (also known as Software-as-a-service) and storage, available to the general public. Private cloud is owned by a single company that provides flexibility, scalability, provisioning, automation and monitoring.  Hybrid cloud is companies can maintain control of an internally managed private cloud while relying on the public cloud as needed.        

          But the cloud may also mean loss of control, and potential security, compliance and privacy concerns. Like most things in life, the benefits come with risks—it’s just a matter of knowing if the benefits outweigh the risks and vice versa.

Let’s take a look at some grounded facts about cloud computing to help you decide if you are ready to go up, up, and away.

Risk	Benefit
Network dependency	Flexibility
Difficulty in creating hybrid systems	Cost Reduction and Increased Efficiency
Centralization	Reliability
Data Integrity/Security	More timely and effective and efficient updates                       and defaults

Corporate spending on third-party-managed and public-cloud environments will grow from $28 billion in 2011 to more than $70 billion in 2015, according to IDC. In addition, according to recent McKinsey research, 63 percent of business leaders who responded agreed that the cloud can make their entire organization more business agile and responsive.

And we also discussed about the success factors of onboarding. Onboarding is a critical part of HR to handle it without the help of advanced technology. Loads of paperwork, missed details and busy managers often fail to make new hires feel welcome; it creates a poor first impression, and slowing down time to productivity. For an efficient embedding is important to solve these challenges by making the hiring process more efficient and personal. For a successful Onboarding process it needs to take a fresh approach to ramping up with new hires by more strategic onboarding activities – connecting, informing and empowering new hires with the right people, tools and content they need to start contributing in record time.

SuccessFactors Onboarding is one of the IT solutions that provides a more structured and efficient support for onboarding by providing:

·         Improved process efficiency and compliance 

·         Faster time to contribution

·         Better employee engagement and retention

Similarly, SilkRoad's RedCarpet, the global onboarding software, is an easy-to-use cloud-based HR solution that has helped organizations of all sizes, and from all industries, to onboard over a million employees while saving millions of dollars.                                                                                            

Lastly, we looked at background checks and verifications. The HR may want to make sure that candidates are telling the truth. It's estimated that up over 40% of resumes can contain false or tweaked information, so, HR wants to ensure that what they are getting from the candidates is true and reliable.    

Sterling global background check is a company that helps to make the right hiring decisions. It offers employment verification services offered by Screening Direct online portal provide the most accurate results with the fastest turnarounds, securely and privately, in real-time . Having a system and advanced  techcnology like this helps HR prfessionals save a lot of time and paper work & its also beneficial for a new candidate to get their result faster.

HRIS Blog Three- QR codes, iCIMS, Zoho, HR Suites and Pay scale.

QR codes

If you are new to recruiting world or want to pursue your career in recruiting, than its very important to be aware of the technological miracle called “QR” code.    A QR code (quick response code) is a type of 2D bar code that is used to provide easy access to information through a smartphone via a QR Code Scanner. It looks like a maze in advertisements or in posters and that can be mistaken for a black design box or patterned square. However, this little square has the capability of encoding large amount of relevant information for a recruiter regarding a candidate such as-(his/her) name, education, mobile no. etc. 

Some of the recruiting situations where QR code can come handy are :

• In job postings, social media and blogs - QRcode can provide detailed reference or follow-up information without taking up lots of real estate
• Job alerts/calendar events — individuals can sign up for specific job alert notifications and calendar items can be easily saved on a phone’s calendar.

It’s noteworthy that QR code can be created for free and because it’s so small, saves space (both storage and display) leading to reduced advertising costs.

 iCIMS

iCIMS, is a leading provider of innovative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition and Software Satisfaction solutions focused on solving corporate business issues through the implementation of easy-to-use and scalable solutions. For instance, iCIMS' Talent Platform is a talent-management software that enables Recruiters and HR Professionals to develop, connect and guide the strongest hiring and employee management decisions such as applicant tracking or onboarding. iCIMS also offers easy HR tools built upon a core applicant tracking system that powers seamless and efficient recruiting by offering :

• Simplified social media and job board posting
•  Branded career sites for online resume submission
•  Electronic onboarding documents and communication
•  Robust searching and reporting within a centralized database
•  Complimentary 24x5 customer support

Zoho

Zoho is a company that offers valuable HR comprehensive suite of online business, productivity & collaboration applications. Most of the companies use Zoho Applications to run their business processes to manage their information and be more productive. It also helps recruiters to manage all HR and benefits programs by making it easy to attract, retain and reward top talent. All this can be achieved while reducing costs, saving time, and integrating & aligning the HR efforts with the rest of an organization.

PayScale    
              

PayScale, Inc. or payscale.com is an online salary, benefits and compensation Information Company that was developed to help people obtain accurate real-time information on job market compensation. 

The service works via the Internet by enabling individual employees to submit their job profile and salary data, which is then compared to others.

Compensation & benefits plays a huge role in HR or recruiters professional work life.  HR professional must be able to recognize needs and opportunities as they occur, whether immediate or strategic long-term, and convert them into action to give the organization a competitive edge and contribute to its ongoing success.  The most important insight for a recruiter is “How much should I pay” and “what is the salary range for the selected candidate”. And this is where Pay scale provides lot of helpful information to recruiters by providing :

• Access in Real-Time and On-Demand
• Streamline Salary Benchmarking
• Set and Adjust Pay Ranges
• Get Pay Right and Identify Flight Risks
• Price Jobs in Multiple Geographies
• Industries or Company Size with MDA
• Allocate Pay Increases and Create Executive Reports.

Because a very large number of people utilize the service every month, the company is able to use the volume of information statistically to determine accurate real-time salary information.

My Experiences with HRIS – Session Two

Last Thursday in HRIS class I learned about what comprises Big data, difference between Active & passive candidates, Recruiting Strategies, ATS (applicant tracking system) and most importantly, usage of LinkedIn for recruiting. Some key takeaways:

Big data:  Going by definition, Big Data refers to massive volume of structured and unstructured data collection that is difficult to process using traditional data processing tools. The insights derived from Big Data are changing the way organizations work and HR as an enabling function is no exception.   Big Data for HR can help organizations tap better candidates, create more effective recruiting strategies viz. a viz. competition and create a robust Talent Pipeline.

LinkedIn: I was a member of LinkedIn but it was only after this class, that I understood how to use it for professional recruiting. LinkedIn, as everybody knows, is the world’s largest professional networking site with directory of professionals and companies. Individuals and companies can use this site for networking, job searching, hiring, and organization search. It can also be utilized effectively for connecting with affiliates including alumni, industry and different business groups.

LinkedIn also provides advanced search techniques such as Boolean search. The basics/operator of Boolean searches are 

·         AND   
·         OR                    
·         NOT

Boolean Modifiers are symbols that are used for specific searches ;-

·         “ “                                
·         ( )                                    
·         *,%,$

Apart from standard features available to all the users, LinkedIn also provide certain additional features for recruiters (via paid subscription) such as: 

·         Ability to view the full list of who’s viewed your profile
·         Ability to contact anyone (even somebody outside your network) with InMail
·         Ability to see expanded profiles (outside your network)
·         Additional search filters and results

While LinkedIn caters to professionals from all backgrounds, there are some specialty sites for job seekers and recruiters of specific professions such as GiHub (for coders), Proformative (for accountants) and Dribbles (for designers).

Apart from LinkedIn, technology provides few other tools that make the life of a HR recruiter more efficient. The initial days when hiring managers and recruiters picked hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes by hand to uncover the best job candidates are long gone. Today, the task is computerized; an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is now frequently used to narrow down the candidate pool to those candidates who meet the requirements of the prospective employer. An applicant tracking system is a software program that stores and organizes resumes, allowing recruiters to screen, sort, track, and rank all the resumes they receive. ATS uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, which simply means that your resume is scanned into the software so that it becomes searchable.