Армстронг

904 Employment and HRM services

●making arrangements for off-the-job courses;

●informing employees about the arrangements for courses;

●handling correspondence about training courses;

●storing data on standard or individually tailored induction, continuation or development training programmes, including syllabi, routings, responsibilities for giving training, test procedures and progress reporting;

●generating instructions and notes for guidance for all concerned with providing or undergoing on-the-job training programmes;

●storing progress reports and monitoring achievements against training objectives;

●producing reports summarizing current and projected training activities and calculating the output of training programmes – this can be linked to human resource planning models including those designed to determine the input of trainees required for training schemes;

●recording and monitoring training expenditure against budget.

Computers can also be used as training aids.

Career management

A system can help in the implementation of career management policies and procedures which embrace both career planning and management development. The system does this by analysing the progression of individuals and comparing the results of that analysis, first, with assessments of organizational requirements as generated by the human resource planning models and, second, with the outputs of the performance management system.

Absence control

Absence control can be carried out with the help of computerized time recording and attendance systems which:

●record clocking-on or -out time and the hours actually worked;

●enable employees to record the time spent on particular jobs;

●get employees to explain the reason for late arrival, early departure, or any other absence;

●can be linked to the payroll system for pay and bonus calculation purposes and to a flexible working hours system;

●provide team leaders with a statement showing the length and reasons for absence.

Computerized HR information systems 905

Advanced systems link information obtained from clocking-on or -out direct to a screen in team leaders’ offices so that they can have instant information on how many people are at work and on the incidence of lateness.

Equal opportunity monitoring

The system can store records of the ethnic composition of the workforce. This information can be analysed to produce data on the distribution of ethnic minorities by occupation, job grade, age, service and location. The analysis could show the overall proportion of ethnic minority employees compared with the proportion in each job grade. Similar statistics can be produced for men and women. The analysis can be extended to cover career progression, splitting the results of the overall analysis into comparisons of the rate at which women and men of different ethnic groups progress.

Expert systems

Knowledge-based software or expert systems are computer programs which contain knowledge about particular fields of human activity and experience, which, through linkages and rules built into the system design, can help solve human resource management problems. Unlike a database system which stores, sorts, manipulates, and presents bits of information – ie data – expert systems store, sort, manipulate and present managers with ready-to-use knowledge of management practice, written in a language that management understands, as opposed to computerese.

Expert systems are developed through a process of knowledge engineering which starts from a knowledge base containing facts and a body of expertise (‘heuristics’, or rules of thumb) about the use of those facts. These ‘rules’ enable decisions to be made on the basis of factual information presented to the computer. Thus, a fact may be information on employee turnover during the last three years, and the rule of thumb may be the method by which turnover could be predicted over the next three years. These facts and rules are processed by what is termed the ‘inference engine’, which solves problems or makes predictions, and the results of this process are presented to the user in the ‘user interface’.

An expert system can produce a list of suitable candidates for promotion by using information from the database. If more information were required, it would ask the user to answer questions. It would also respond to users’ questions about why particular candidates had been identified, by giving details of qualifications, performance appraisal results and so on.

What can loosely be described as expert systems are also used in job evaluation

906 Employment and HRM services

applications where they make use of a database of job analyses and evaluations in order to make consistent judgements about evaluation scores. This is done by:

●defining the evaluation rules;

●programming the computer to ask appropriate questions concerning each factor in a job to enable it to apply the evaluation rules – this involves the analysis of structured questionnaires which have been specially designed to facilitate the systematic collection and analysis of data;

●applying the rules consistently and determining the factor score for the job;

●grading and ranking jobs;

●storing the information in the computer’s memory so that it can be called to the screen or printed at any time.

AUDITING THE SYSTEM

As suggested by Robinson (1999), regular audit of the system should be carried out to obtain answers to these questions:

●Is the system being used efficiently and effectively?

●Are there any barriers to the effective use of the system?

●Does the technology enable managers or merely dictate to them?

●Are there any aspects of the system which are causing dissatisfaction in the HR department, with senior management or line managers?

●Are there any problems with data inaccuracy?

●Are reports accurate, helpful and used for decision-making?

●What is the functionality of the system? That is, what does the system do, and how well does it do it? What additional functions might be useful?

●How effective are the systems links, the use of data in different applications?

908 Appendix

How to complete the questionnaire

The questionnaire will take about 15 minutes to complete. Please indicate your views about the statements overleaf by placing a ring around the number which most closely matches your opinion. For example:

Function/department

Please circle one of the following:

1.corporate office;

2.marketing;

3.manufacturing;

4.finance;

5.IT;

6.HR;

7.customer service;

8.marketing, development, fundraising, PR, HR.

Appendix 909

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