Addressing the Disconnect In Your HR Tech Stack

Managing your workforce requires having a full view of employee data, including hiring and payroll, time and attendance, performance reviews and more. But if you rely on a complex patchwork of siloed HR systems to store and report your employee data, you’re missing out on opportunities to build more accuracy and efficiency into your HR management activities.

Instead of allowing you to do more, a fragmented HR tech stack can increase the risk of errors, leading to more administrative work as you chase them down across systems. This not only wastes valuable time, but also prevents you from getting the most out of your HR technology.

The Dangers of Using Fragmented HR Management Tools

Many different areas comprise the employee experience. As an HR manager, you know how challenging it can be to ensure you have the right systems to cover each area. For example, you need an applicant tracking system to help you hire and dynamic workforce management technology to support employee scheduling, time and attendance and document management.

When you manage HR activities using multiple systems, you spend so much time loading information, making updates and downloading reports that you miss out on the value those systems were meant to provide.

You may be using more HR systems than you realize. If so, you’re not alone. In a recent TCP survey, nearly 80 percent of respondents said they used two or more systems to manage their workforce. Fifteen percent of respondents said they used four or more systems.

Although you need more than one HR system in your tech stack, you can miss valuable opportunities for automation and accuracy when those systems don’t talk to each other. Here are just a few examples that illustrate how using fragmented HR systems can be just as bad as using no tech at all:

Inaccurate Time Tracking and Payroll
To effectively manage labor costs and understand when employees are working, you need access to employee schedules. But when you have separate systems for employee scheduling and time tracking, you can’t identify exceptions such as missed shifts, overtime or scheduling conflicts across departments. Instead, you have to rely on manual processes to compare the schedule to when employees actually worked.

Furthermore, when your time tracking system isn’t integrated with your payroll system, you remain reliant on manual, error-prone processes to calculate and run payroll. Your time tracking system can capture employees’ straight time and overtime, but without integration, you have to feed those hours into your payroll system. This manual effort can result in calculation errors, delays and employee overpayments or underpayments.

Poor Leave Management Practices
Your employees likely accrue leave according to a range of criteria, such as tenure and employee type. As a result, you need a leave management system that integrates with your human capital management (HCM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. When those systems operate independently, it’s difficult to determine time-off eligibility and accruals for different employees (e.g., salaried versus hourly, one year of employment versus 10).

Lack of Cohesive Workforce Data
Although having multiple HR systems may make it seem like you have more data to help manage your workforce, using fragmented HR tools can limit the data and insights available to support effective HR management.

In fact, using disconnected systems requires you to enter employee data in so many places that it becomes harder to draw insights from that data. For example, you may have to enter employee performance data in one system, benefits data in another, and time and attendance information in a third system. Without integration, each system only tells you part of the story, limiting your ability to use data for better decision-making.

How an Integrated HR Tech Stack Simplifies Workforce Management

To operate an efficient HR function and meet employee needs, your HR systems must be seamlessly integrated. As a McKinsey research report on the future of work suggests, “The need of the hour is for HR to collaborate on and leverage the landscape of HR tech solutions across the employee lifecycle—from learning, talent acquisition, and performance management to workforce productivity—to build an effective HR ecosystem.”

All-in-one HR software can be too ambitious, trying to do too much with one system. Thankfully, it’s possible to use more than one system and get maximum value from your HR tech. By integrating your existing workforce management tools, you can build an efficient HR tech ecosystem and reap the benefits for your employees and HR team. Here are just a few of the ways a well-integrated HR tech stack can improve your management capabilities:

Provides a 360-Degree View of Your Workforce
Integrated systems work together to provide a complete view of the employee lifecycle. For instance, when your time and attendance software is integrated with payroll, you can see how employee hours translate to pay in any given week. You can also run reports that display historical data to identify trends, including when in the calendar year overtime peaks and which employees haven’t taken enough leave.

Offers a Single Source of Truth
It’s not uncommon to have conflicting information on the same employee when your workforce data is spread across multiple systems. However, when all of your digital HR tools are integrated, they offer consistent data and a single source of truth for time-off accruals, work shifts, pay rates and more.

Saves Time
Integrated HR systems remove much of the double-entry required of fragmented systems. As a result, HR managers can say goodbye to updating multiple systems and spend more time on what matters most. The time savings support higher productivity and help you build a more efficient HR team.

Improves Data-Driven HR Decision-Making
With disconnected HR systems, it’s nearly impossible to make data-driven decisions. This is because reporting is limited to a narrow part of the employee experience. However, when your HR software is integrated, you can use data to identify trends that help you upgrade HR policies, conduct workforce planning, manage your labor budget, and more.

Supports Better Labor Law Compliance
Just about every workforce management action you take is governed by labor laws, so your digital HR tools should support your goals for compliance at all times. When your HR software is integrated, you have the added benefit of automated processes that support compliance with federal and state scheduling and leave laws. For example, you can establish scheduling rules in compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), build in required break times, and track employee leaves per federal and state leave laws.

Enhances the Employee Experience
As part of your organization’s digital transformation journey, you may already empower your employees with self-service access to your time and attendance and HCM systems. For self-service to offer maximum value, the information available to employees must be accurate. With integrated HR systems, you can deliver up-to-date information to your employees, allowing them to swap shifts with a coworker, request time off, download payroll forms and more.

Elevate Your HR Management Capabilities with Integrated HR Tech

Integration helps you make the most of your HR systems, achieve consistency in reporting, and gain deeper insights from your workforce data. Without integration, you can get stuck with manual processes that waste time and prevent you from reaching your goals for efficiency and compliance.

As a busy HR manager, you always have numerous demands for your time. But with the right integrated workforce management tools, you can cut out inefficient workflows and support your employees more effectively. To learn more, read our guide, How Workforce Analytics Can Improve Your HR Management.