The Role of Web-Based HR

Developments in technology underpin, to varying degrees, the different HR service delivery approaches. However, introducing new technology is not an end in itself. It enables the organisation to complete work more efficiently through better processes and more effectively by improving quality control. However, it is an expensive venture to upgrade computing and communication devices and this has driven some organisations towards outsourcing, because they cannot fund the capital investment themselves. 

As we have already noted, Web-based HR is a recent phenomenon, emerging within the more established and broader context of technology, organisation and people management. The more visionary, advanced interpretations describe a fully integrated, organisation-wide electronic network of HR-related data, information, services, databases, tools, applications and transactions that are generally accessible at any time by employees, managers and HR professionals. So instead of a centralised personnel team handling everyday tasks such as approving pay raises, sorting out training and checking holiday entitlements, these can be handled by the employees themselves or their line manager — Figure 1 provides an illustrative screen shot of an employee self-service home page.

 
Figure 1: Illustrative employee self-service screen (courtesy of HR.net).

Part of the espoused case for Web-based HR is that it offers the potential to transform HR's role. It promises to do this by increasing the HR function's influence as consultants focused on the needs of managers and employees and expanding HR's reach as the experts of the organisation's people processes and the developers of value propositions for different employee groups.

The emerging literature and our own research and experience show that in order to meet or exceed expectations associated with investment in Web-based HR, it is vital that a number of considerations are addressed at the outset:

• The focus on occasion is too much on the efficiencies of Web-based HR, that is, cost-cutting and not the longer term gains enabled by the new infrastructure. One clear cause for concern is that discussion at senior management levels regarding the transformation impact on the HR function's capability could be too little and too late.
• The extent to which Web-based HR software is over-engineered and designed by IT consultants and not HR practitioners.
• The fact that Web-based HR is designed for the HR function and not the line managers who should be the real custodians of people and performance.
• The difficulties in securing access to the information that people really want.
  • New technology does not remove poor-quality data.
  • Expect user resistance — unless the new Web-based HR-derived functionality is easy to use and seen to be relevant to the user, adoption rates are likely to be low.

In order to assess whether or not Web-based HR is meeting the promises, we should perhaps look in more detail at what has been achieved with the Web enablement of HR processes in practice.