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Responses to current and emerging trends in HR and Payroll technology reflected significant differences of opinion among HR managers. Survey respondents were asked to rate how much they agreed with three statements about their HR and payroll software, using a scale of 1-5 where 1 means ’strongly disagree’ and 5 means ’strongly agree’.

Two questions addressed web 2.0 technologies, the user-generated tools that have exploded in the consumer world and are making their way into the business sector. Asked if they agreed that “Web collaboration tools such as blogs, tagging, wikis and social media sites provide great ways of communicating with employees and will become increasingly important to HR over the next two years,” over a third of respondents (36%) agreed or strongly agreed – while another third (33%) disagreed or strongly disagreed.

The positive findings were weighted towards larger companies: with a mean score of 3.0, the smallest companies registered 2.6, while companies with 1001-5000 employees registered 4.1. That skewing may reflect the pressing need for collaboration tools in larger companies, where complex organisational structures make for significant communications and collaboration challenges.

Opinion was also divided about the use of social media sites for recruitment. Asked whether they agreed that “Social media sites such as Facebook and Linked-In are an extension of traditional employee referral schemes and provide a great way to reach potential new recruits,” 38% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed, while 26% disagreed or strongly disagreed. In this case, there was less diversity by size.

These findings suggest that opinions about Web 2.0 have shifted over the last year, not least when compared to a survey of HR managers carried out by Webster Buchanan Research in March 2008 . Asked to rank the effectiveness of different recruitment tools, social networking was positioned a distant tenth as an effective recruiting tool in that study, well behind traditional techniques such as media adverts, executive search and online advertising, and was predicted to stay at tenth over the next two years.

The third question – “There is a lot of functionality that I am not taking advantage of in my existing HR systems” – addresses a recurrent problem within the HR sector, where organisations purchase multi-module HR systems but don’t implement all of the available technology at the outset. Usually, the decision not to do so is made for sound business reasons – companies are keen to get quick returns and typically target their initial system work on the core infrastructure, or on areas that will deliver the most impact. But the outcome is that modules scheduled for implementation at a later stage often never see the light of day – clearly an issue for the 31% of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.

Computers In Personnel Ltd
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