As HR technologies continue to evolve and expand into previously uncharted waters, the technology infrastructure HR Information Systems (HRIS) functions manage is changing faster than many can absorb, requiring teams to upskill and adapt at a level not seen since the introduction of desktop personal computers and client-server architectures. Consider the major shifts that impact how HRIS professionals perform their jobs over the years, from:

• On-premise to cloud-based systems
• Wired to wireless connectivity
• Desktop to mobile device compatibility
• Single-purpose to integrated platforms
• Hardware-based functionality to App-based ecosystems
• Local operating systems (OS) to software as a service (SaaS)
• Independently operating platforms to API-based App integration

Estimated HR software revenue growth shows the pace of expansion: the global market is currently estimated at $23.68 billion and projected to grow by over 250% ($60.26 billion) by 2034. That level of spending reflects the price organizations are willing to pay for more advanced automation to improve employee productivity, generate deeper insights into talent trends, enable faster and more efficient processing across the full range of HR processes and programs, and do more with fewer resources. 

At the same time, it puts greater pressure on HRIS professionals to adapt, learn, configure, deploy new systems and capabilities, and support the workforce in adopting and leveraging those at levels required to achieve their promise and anticipated ROIs.

Challenges facing HRIS professionals and functions

While new technologies draw the most attention, some common issues (some recent, others long-standing) affect HRIS teams in most organizations, as an estimated 79% of small businesses and 90% of mid-to-large-sized organizations rely on some type of HR platform(s) to deliver service and support. The most common challenges faced by organizations of all sizes and scales include:

An ever-increasing number and variety of HR systems

Although organizations are commonly reported to average between 3 and 10 distinct modular HR systems, as will be explained later, the full range of available HR technologies is much larger. In fact, industry analyst and guru Josh Bersin has found that the typical large company deploys over 140+ largely unintegrated employee systems. As HRIS professionals know, limiting the definition of “HR systems” to major platforms can be misleading and underrepresent the actual ecosystems, when they include external systems linked via APIs and native integrations to dozens of vendor-operated systems, Apps, libraries, databases, and regulatory update feeds.

Non-integrated systems

Research by HiBob found that 69% of surveyed organizations said that integration with other business tools is “very important”, both across HR technologies and with tools and shared data sources in finance, IT, procurement, and operations. When not connected, these create challenges with siloed, unmatchable data; duplicated data entry and field population; and substantial difficulties generating useful talent trend and HR impact analyses.

Under-automation of repetitive and non-strategic processes

While often considered an issue for smaller businesses, 19% of all HRIS professionals report operating a technology infrastructure that makes it hard to support managers and employees with automated, streamlined processing of administrative, high-volume transactions.

Insufficient support for analytics and reporting 

While 25% of companies consider improving data and analytics their top priority, 32% report struggling to deliver them because of poor systems integration. At the same time, HR skills and capabilities in data literacy and quantitative analysis techniques are lagging badly, putting greater pressure on HRIS professionals to deliver them to leaders.

Rapidly growing demand for AI adoption and implementation

The pressure on HR to define AI use cases and deliver capabilities that drive productivity improvements is falling disproportionately on HRIS professionals. As the technology owners and experts, they must provide the foundational elements and conditions required for successful application development, if not the applications themselves. Successful AI depends on access to comprehensive employee information (from integrated systems), validated/cleansed employee data, harmonized data definitions (data dictionary), and standardized calculation methods (for computed fields like turnover).

Demand trends bringing complexity to HRIS professionals

Because HRIS professionals provide critical technology support to every employee, from the CEO downward, it's no surprise that the range of requests and preferences matches the number of roles and people who occupy them. Organizations are asking for more enhanced, effective ways to run HR processes, execute practices, access and participate in programs, and interact with those systems. Those demands continue to stretch HRIS teams, who must become experts in the technologies, co-designers of workflows and user interfaces, managers of data quality and integrity, and facilitators of users’ access and use. The most significant trends that HRIS must bring online and support include:

• The introduction and embedding of advanced technologies including AI, machine learning, and LLMs into traditional HR and talent processes, including talent acquisition, learning and development, performance management, career development and management, employee support, and HR analytics and reporting.
• Requests for more advanced workforce insights related to deployment availability and readiness, individual and aggregated skills, experiences, and proficiencies, retention, wellness/well-being, and predictive assessments of productivity and potential.
• Interest and access to intelligent learning and career capabilities that can fill gaps in managerial knowledge and capabilities related to career planning and options, learning pathways, development opportunities, and locating subject matter experts.
• Demand for automated employee self-service using AI and LLMs that support bots to replace the need for employees to answer basic or even moderately complex inquiries, questions, coaching, and clarifications about policy, programs, standards, and expectations.
• Expectations for consumer-like experiences that match the features and functionality employees get with their personal devices and services. This notably includes a level of personalization that they access when logging into and navigating social media, video platforms, shopping websites, and others.
• Cloud-based dominates, but on-prem and hybrid architectures remain in organizations with stricter system and data protection requirements (e.g., healthcare, power and energy, governmental, pharmaceutical) or preferences for using and maintaining highly customized workflows. This impacts the work and skill requirements for both IT and HRIS professionals.
  
  

The range of HR systems and technologies is extensive

HRIS professionals must maintain a detailed knowledge of systems and related technologies and tools that drive HR processes and programming. Consider the different types of systems that the typical organization deploys, and then add to that list a wide variety of linkages to external (outsourced) systems and applications. The latter requires the HRIS team to connect those seamlessly to meet end-users' expectations for functionalities such as single sign-on (SSO) and personalization, where connected systems share knowledge of the employee, their role, function, level of responsibility, location, and access eligibility.

The relevant systems, some of which may be comprehensive and embedded, exclusively HR or embedded in an enterprise resource planning platform (ERP), or deployed as a set of separate but integrated systems, include:

Core HR 

These are the base HR systems (e.g., HRIS, HRMS, HCMS) that house, process changes, and are the system of record (SOR) for all employee and role identifiers, employment status, personally identifiable information (PII, including name, address, age, SSN, family, demographics, tenure, etc.), and up-to-date information related to individual time and leave, compensation and benefits, and base payroll and tax. They also often include employee self-service portals and related capabilities.

Talent management systems (TMS) 

These stand-alone or embedded modules (in core HR) automate HR functions related to talent acquisition (ATS), onboarding, learning management (LMS), performance management, compensation/total rewards, succession and career planning, and associated HR metrics and reporting.

Specialized HR and talent platforms 

These systems are increasingly moving from stand-alone to embedded in Core HR or TMS, including those supporting employee skills, talent mobility, candidate relationship management (CRM), workforce and labor market intelligence (LMI), workforce analytics, learning experience (LXP), and learning content management (LCM). This category also includes platforms related to knowledge management (KM) and collaboration (messaging and communication, co-authoring, project management, and visual whiteboards and concept mapping).

Smaller HR organizations might manage payroll and hours-worked systems, but Finance often manages (or outsources and monitors) them, with work scheduling and absence and leave management responsibilities often shared between operations and HR.

In addition to these popular, widely used systems, HRIS professionals must also manage connections between external vendors' systems and employee desktops (or tablets/smartphones) using “application programming interfaces” (APIs) that serve as “digital bridges” to share data and access permissions to their platforms. For example, common external provider platforms whose linkages, connectivity, and applications require HRIS oversight include:

• Job boards
• Employee referrals
• Benefits administration and claims processing
• Social networks
• Skill and capability assessments
• Virtual and automated interviewing platforms
• Reference and background checks 
• Learning content and program libraries

The most recent additions to the myriad of systems and technologies requiring HRIS attention and oversight now include AI apps that provide the necessary infrastructure and foundational elements, including large language models (LLMs), generative AI (GenAI), and agentic AI models and subsystems.

Essential roles and responsibilities of HRIS professionals

HRIS professionals represent and produce a substantial and essential portion of the HR value proposition. They act as a conduit that builds and sustains the links between an HR strategy, operating model, information and insight generation, decision support, employee experience, and operational efficiency. As builders of the HR digital ecosystem, they are essentially like a department of transportation for the company’s digital highway and roadway system.

Classic roles range from HRIS Analyst, Administrator, Project Manager, Consultant, or Business Analyst to Manager, Director, and executive-level positions. The last section of this post examines new roles emerging from the adoption of advanced technologies. Core responsibilities shared across those roles include:

System administration and configuration

Manage the design and installation of new systems, modules, and updates; manage and oversee user permissions and approval chains; configure and customize workflows; and test and activate new features and functionality. Execute and oversee mass data updates, such as updated pay bands, merit increases, annual enrollments, reorganizations, and job architecture updates, and review them for accuracy and completeness. Monitor workflow performance and efficiency, collaborating with HR process owners, end-users, and IT to identify opportunities for improvements and enhancements, design and develop those, and implement solutions for those (and related, integrated) systems.

System and vendor selection

Provide technical input to identify, define requirements for, review proposals for, and select HR technology vendors and systems in collaboration with HR leaders, process owners, subject matter experts, and end-users. Support translating and rationalizing functional HR workflow, data integration, and user experience requirements and preferences into assessment and selection criteria, including features and functionality, system compatibility, service and support levels, security, and costs, etc., to compare and contract candidate providers.

Data integrity and auditing

Proactively review and identify errors or omissions that degrade the accuracy, reliability, and trustworthiness of employee records and data input, translation, or transfer into the system. Run regular data audits to ensure compliance with the data dictionary, field standards, and calculation guides, and identify improvements to those and user interfaces to reduce or avoid errors. Manage permissions and review suspicious or non-conforming entries for possible fraud or improper access.

HR analytics and reporting

Create standard and ad hoc reports and dashboards on workforce trends to generate reliable, trustworthy insights on headcount, turnover, compensation trends, and compliance metrics. Whether generating the analytics or working with measurement/statistical experts to create them, HRIS professionals often own the available and needed data fields, program calculation methods, and provide access to reporting platforms and tools.

System and data storage integration

Support IT teams’ efforts to connect HR and other functions’ systems (“interoperability”) to each other and to the IT infrastructure, managing and testing them to ensure proper data sharing with integrity, enabling better employee access, more efficient processing, and improved data consistency and reliability. Similarly, monitor the extraction and consolidation of data from HR (ideally with data from business, financial, and operational) systems into shared data storage repositories (database, mart, warehouse, or lake) to support retrieval, analysis, and reporting for more valuable and advanced HR effectiveness and impact analyses.

Compliance and security

Oversee and proactively manage data, access control, system configurations, and reporting to align with data privacy and protection laws, internal policies and standards, and role-based access protocols and rules, and ensure consistent compliance. Conducting audits and working with IT to implement optimized cybersecurity protocols and employee access/usage policies and practices that protect both employee rights and company standards. Manage and champion data security practices and processes to protect employees' personally identifiable information (PII) during managerial and third-party vendor transactions, data extractions and consolidations for analytics and reporting, and report/dashboard event or trend presentations.

Troubleshooting, support, and end-user experience

Respond to and resolve software performance issues, trouble tickets, and user support requests. Provide documentation and support (and/or deliver) user training and upskilling on new or updated system capabilities, features, and functionality. Collect and review user feedback and improve workflows and transactions to refine process design and user interfaces.

IT and technology vendor coordination

Collaborate with the information technology (IT) team and external platform vendor teams to plan, prepare for, execute, and test system updates, upgrades, and module or functionality additions. Monitor and manage system performance audits, cross-system integration links, data migration and extractions/downloads, and patch installation.

Skills and capabilities requirements of HRIS professionals

The continuous nature of technological change and advances has made skill profiles and development a constant for information systems professionals across specialties, and for HRIS professionals, that fact of life is no different. In many organizations, limited HR budgets keep staffing levels relatively modest. At the same time, they serve not only as technical experts, but also as members of a team that provides crucial support to every employee, from the C-suite down to the lowest-level workers.

As noted in a previous blog post on HR Shared Services, HRIS professionals must blend “hard” technical and “soft” interpersonal skills to understand technology and the human-centric employee experience (EX), interpret user requirements, and select and configure systems that meet those needs. The required and increasingly preferred traits and capabilities for success as HRIS professionals include:

Traits and aptitudes

Technological savviness

A natural inclination towards technology and its potential to streamline HR processes and capture/report on trends. 

Curiosity

An eagerness to explore and integrate new technologies and systems to improve efficiency, identify how they (or selected parts) might be combined to create a more robust or cost-effective solution.

Detail orientation

The ability to closely observe, track, and attend to the intricacies of data and system configurations to avoid errors.

Critical knowledge, skills, and abilities

HR software

Deep knowledge and understanding of how the primary types of HRIS platforms and related systems operate, are configured, managed, and governed. Understanding how to manage data privacy and protection, storage and retrieval, and reporting within and across those.

HR functional knowledge

A demonstrated understanding of the HR processes that are automated, their business and talent purpose, the end-user groups and their roles in executing those processes, and the desired outcomes and outputs from each by the systems being managed. 

Project management

Expertise in gathering project requirements, designing effective and detailed project plans, developing budgets and timelines, coordinating cross-functional dependencies, engaging stakeholders at each phase, and building (or collaborating on) change management plans that enhance awareness, acceptance, and adoption. 

Interpersonal skills

Understanding user needs is essential and can be supported by HRIS professionals with strong emotional intelligence (EI), communication, active listening, and group facilitation skills. These skills enable quality interactions with end-users that generate valuable insights into their tech-savviness and skills, usage patterns, and system interface preferences at individual (one-on-one) and group (focus group, training class) levels. 

Data and analytic prowess

As reporting access and generation providers, HRIS professionals should have quantitative and analytical creation, interpretation, and presentation skills. They use these to support analytics experts in compiling and preparing data for analysis, or to generate reports and dashboards that are reliable, trustworthy, and provide meaningful decision support.

Emerging skills to develop and deploy

Process design

HR process improvement and excellence are crucial value-adding capabilities for HRIS professionals, as they can lead reviews and improvement activities that streamline processes for greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Human-centered design 

HR design thinking is an end-user-focused process design approach used by industry leaders in user interface design, purpose-built to drive employee experience (EX), reduce friction, and simplify how employees engage with systems.

Continuous learning 

The rapid pace of technological change requires a focus on mastering emerging technologies and approaches through certification programs, experiential learning, and experimentation with proposed vendor capabilities or emerging technologies (e.g., GenAI, Agentic AI, bots), as well as future capabilities (AI-assisted analytics, statistical testing).

This includes testing and practicing with new tools and capabilities, whether company-created apps or Agents or those embedded in vendor-supplied systems (e.g., TA, LMS, LXP, talent Marketplace). Have HRIS professionals learn and test them as developmental opportunities and value-proposition evaluations in partnership with HR SMEs.

Understanding the new and emerging HRIS professional responsibilities

The escalating growth and expansion of AI and related technologies is creating new opportunities for HRIS professionals to grow and advance. HR experts and futurists point to the need for roles and capabilities that support greater integration of intelligent systems, with human oversight and management into existing HR workflows. These include:

• Advanced workflow automation design and oversight, where HRIS manages standards and monitoring of automated and AI-assisted HR administrative processes, AI chatbots, and virtual assistants. 
• AI governance, facilitated by HRIS professionals to establish and monitor rules and guardrails that track compliance, guidance, and decision support related to legally bound and policy-related actions that can subject the organization to risk. 
• Contextual architecting, or designing how AI agents can be used to consistently and equitably interpret policies, skills requirements, and apply guardrails and alerts 
• Identifying productivity-enhancing opportunities for HR functions and teams to leverage new capabilities available through company-generated or vendor-embedded systems, such as deploying chatbots, skill inference and mapping, AI-driven learning paths, career advancement or mobility, predictive analytics for WFP, or flagging of emerging productivity and performance issues.
  
  

Relevant Practices & Tools

Advanced HR Practices that Accelerate the New Digital Reality. >

An intense focus on the future of work in a digital organization is critical to the value realization of digital transformation... more »

Applying Lean Analysis to Assess Levels of “Flow” and “Waste” in Current HR Processes. >

A core element of Lean focuses on transforming HR into a data-informed, continuously improving system. “Flow” is the movement of value across a process without interruption, confusion, or delay... more »

Defining Calculation Methods, Data, and Sources to be Used When Creating HR Metrics. >

Identifying the specific location of data in databases and documenting the calculation methods that will be used ensures reliability and consistency across time and reports... more »

Assessing How Emerging Technologies Can Shift the Organization Towards the Forefront of Innovation. >

Technological developments, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), are reducing the need for human-intensive work in some areas and are expanding the possibilities for innovation... more »

The Flow and Waste Analysis Worksheet: Examine HR Process Flows to Uncover Issues that Reduce Value for Employees and Managers. >

The Flow and Waste Analysis Worksheet is used to assess how well HR processes perform from the perspective of speed, quality, and ease of use... more »