System of Record

I am suffering from serious information overload this week. There have been so many interesting posts and links related to #hrst that it's hard to know what to focus on. In the interest of attempting coherence in this post, I'm going to just write a quick blog about Naomi Bloom's white paper, System of Record.

Ms. Bloom raised what has long been a question to me: how to clearly differentiate strategic HR from administrative HR processes. It always sounds like it should be easy, but it isn't always that clear cut in my mind. In my experience, the administrative components are the building blocks that allow for the higher-level management processes to take place. I appreciated her definition of strategic HRM as specific data, processes and business rules that increase the degree to which the organization's mission is accomplished by improving the performance of individuals and groups. When presented in this manner, it makes that effectively leveraging the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and other characteristics (KSOACs) should be the center of strategic HRM.

The concept of integrated IT systems that support both the administrative and strategic functions will undoubtedly be the wave of the future, once developed and launched. I imagine that these will be SaaS-delivered systems, as Ms. Bloom suggests, because this seems to be the way things are moving in general with technology. The benefit I see in SaaS systems is what I think of as "passive improvements" on the part of the user. If the system is constantly upgraded for all users whenever upgrades are made in the system by the service provider, then your organization never falls behind technologically (or at least with the software). I understand from other articles that not all systems that are billed as SaaS actually perform in this manner. But, I think it is something people will come to expect and rely upon. But that's another post for another day.