Human Resource Automation or having an HRIS system in India is something business owners and managers don’t think about until they’re a sizable company. Sadly, it’s an after thought. There seems to be a disconnect between regular small size businesses of under 100 employees, and those at the enterprise level. The MNCs, or the 1000+ employee companies tend to have their systems in place -- either by inheriting the policies and practices of their parent companies from the west or because of the progressive leadership and HR heads that make changes. Those SMEs that are home grown in India tend to focus on growing the business by keeping operational costs down and hiring cheap labor. How far can you keep costs down and how effective is hiring the cheapest labor you can find? Especially when they lack the skill set to carry out business tasks that matter the most.

HR in India has a long way to go, according to TV Mohandas Pai, the Director and Head of HR (among other things) at InfoSys, “HR in India is 10 to 15 years behind the curve”, he said in the address to CII Karnataka Annual HR Conference earlier this month (read the Financial Express report here). From my interaction with HR thought leaders and professionals, I understood that there are HR change agents - there just doesn’t seem to be enough of them to actually make a huge impact. So, change happens in increments, in a small paces. Automating HR processes is one of those small changes that happens. More and more companies are realizing that it’s not an efficient management system when you have to manually keep several spreadsheets, plus at least one person on the HR team to mange those spreadsheets. This is there just to manage employee data. Imagine what that one person could do if you freed up their time from processing.

As this economy grows, we will see more changes happening. More progressive companies, and those who are forward thinking leaders are starting to put programs in place that truly engage their employees, and leverage technology to the fullest extent. It’s all about optimizing, and maximizing output. What are you doing to close this gap in your organization?

Photo by dmason