4 tips to help your HRMS go-live run smoothly

So your team has worked hard and HRMS go-live is around the corner... it can be a busy and exciting time, but is your organization ready? What actually happens when the system goes live? What could go wrong? What should you prepare for?

1. Prepare your organization checklist and contingency planning

The one key document for any HRMS go-live is the go-live checklist, and the creation of it should be included on your HRMS project plan. The checklist should contain all the steps that will take place, who will manage these steps, and the schedule. A second section of this document should include a list of the possible fail points, and the mitigation or steps that will be taken if such an act occurs. If any surprises do occur, they become much smaller issues with appropriate planning.

Recommended Reading: HRMS Implementation Guide - The companion to your HRMS go-live

2. Communicate and support readiness

Go-live for an HRMS can be anti-climactic, balloons and confetti does not fall from the ceiling. In fact, the first day or two is often the calm before the storm as employees and managers first start to explore the new HRMS, and questions start to stream into your HRMS support structure.

Communication to the users of who to contact with questions is a key area to remember. Within the support team it is also a good idea to have daily meetings on these questions to ensure additional communication can be established if needed, as well as to triage any issues that may impact time-sensitive areas, such as payroll.

3. Recognize missed, forgotten or surprise requirements

Every HRMS implementation has some surprise impacts; perhaps a user forgot about a report during requirements gathering, or an unknown downstream system was receiving department data from the HRMS and the data structures have now changed, causing a broken process. The best practice is to acknowledge that these ‘new’ requirements will appear when you launch, and to allocate and block time for someone to work on these unknown items.

4. Acknowledge mistakes as lessons learned and move on to new opportunities

In any HRMS launch, there will always be things that we wish we did differently. The key is to capture and document those items post-launch for future system implementations. The window of acknowledging mistakes should be small and quick, then, it’s better to focus more on beginning to capture future HRMS needs. As a new HRMS is implemented, if done successfully, you will become quite popular with requests for new and enhanced functionality.