What Is a Human Resource Management System

What is a human resource management system? It does two jobs, and organisations frequently buy it for one and are disappointed by the other.

As a system of record it holds employee details, employment terms, leave balances, training completions, policy acknowledgements and documents. Its value is accuracy and retrievability, and it is what you rely on when somebody asks a question about the past.

As a system of work it runs processes. Onboarding, approvals, reviews, offboarding. Its value is that things happen without anybody remembering to make them happen.

Products lean one way or the other, and the marketing rarely tells you which. A strong record with weak workflow leaves you doing exactly the same manual chasing you did before, and everybody quietly blames the system for it.

The Fair Work Ombudsman covers employee record obligations. This is general information rather than legal advice, and obligations vary by state and territory.

See Sentrient’s HR management system and workflow automation software.