HRMS Self-Service Maintenance: Necessary Costs

As you’re establishing your HRMS self-service roadmap and defining future functionality such as Manager Self-Service (MSS) and Employee Self-Service (ESS), on the surface, these items can be seen as a win-win situation; your employees have more access to the data and your HR staffing costs potentially go down due to less HR intervention in transactions. But what’s the catch? Is it too good to be true?

Like any other HRMS expenditure or implementation, you need to calculate your ROI to ensure your business case is strong. Often, a hidden cost in HRMS Self-Service is the post go-live staffing needed to maintain the system after implementation. Frequently I hear HRMS Managers complaining that additional system work is created. It is often not recognized or accounted for, but instead is considered an add-on to a current HRMS staff member’s responsibility.

Training for HRMS Self-Service

Inside our HR bubble, we often assume that tasks, processes and procedures are well-known or if not, at least common sense. However, to an employee in Finance or Sales, this is often not the case. Definitions of departments or codes for positions are not known data elements, and if they are a required part of the transaction, it can be frustrating to a user. Even the best MSS and ESS systems will not be seamless to use like Google or Amazon, you need to ensure that HRMS self-service ‘introduction’ or training sessions occur when implementing new functionality in these areas. Further to this training, you need to build help into your application—either through online information or links, or to somehow direct a user to the HRMS manager who can answer the question.

HRMS Self-Service Administrators

Even in the best system, things sometimes go wrong. An employee who is a part of an approval chain can unexpectedly have a medical emergency and be out of the office for six weeks, thus freezing transactions in time. Employees can change to a different manager before a transaction has been completed. Often, workflow within the HRMS does not automatically adjust itself to such situations (in particular due to SOX controls), instead, you need to ensure that an Administrator exists to manually move or otherwise cancel or fix stalled transactions. It’s important that such a role is an ‘exception’ situation rather than the norm, and that this role’s workload is periodically reviewed to make sure that your transactions are performed in the most efficient manner.

As long as you keep in mind this training and administration aspect, you’re one step ahead in making sure that your HRMS self-service functionality can be a success long after the go-live date.