HRIS systems are not lagging behind, but are often poorly targeted

The debate on HRIS keeps coming back, with a new twist: a recent criticism that is gaining ground, accusing it of being too administrative, not strategic enough, and trapped in payroll and administrative tasks.

The recent interview with Pascal Grémiaux, CEO of Eurecia, on Parlons RH is part of this logic, and I find it interesting, well-argued, and difficult to dispute on the merits ([FR]Pascal Grémiaux: “An HRIS that is limited to managing administrative tasks is no longer sufficient”). Yes, an HRIS can no longer be limited to managing administrative flows. Yes, it must contribute to the management of the organization. Yes, it must be part of a broader vision of performance.

However, once this observation has been made, one question remains: what exactly should be managed, and for whom?

In short:

• The challenge is not the technological evolution of HRIS systems, but the ability of organizations to design information systems that are adapted to the complex and intangible reality of management.
• HRIS is criticized for being too administratively oriented and lacking strategic contribution to organizational performance.
• There is confusion between structured, standardized HR information and more contextual, informal managerial information, which limits the usefulness of HRIS for managers.
• Management relies heavily on informal and relational practices, which are difficult to capture with current information systems.
• HRIS systems provide reassurance by giving an impression of control, but they can mask deeper, unmeasured managerial issues, particularly their business impact.

The confusion between HR information and management information

In many organizations, the HRIS is presented as a decision-making tool, whereas when we look at what it actually produces, we see that it primarily provides structured information for the HR function itself and, secondarily, for social management control or compliance.

This is not a flaw in itself and is even perfectly consistent with the history of these tools. The problem is that it is assumed that this information, once enriched or better visualized, automatically becomes useful to management, as if formatting it were enough to transform its very nature.

However, the information a manager needs to work is not the same as the information that enables the organization to manage jobs, which are two different things. One is contextual and often fragmented and multifaceted, while the other is standardized. Both are legitimate, but they do not serve the same purposes or meet the same expectations.

This is the confusion I already mentioned in my reflections on the role of HRIS, because as long as we do not clearly distinguish between HR information and managerial information, we will continue to believe that a pile of indicators is enough to equip management (Managers need more than an HRIS).

Management, a largely informal activity

Management largely takes place outside of systems, as it involves daily trade-offs, decisions that can often be improved upon, informal discussions, and constant adjustments that leave little formal trace. This work is difficult to describe and even more difficult to fit into data models.

Faced with this difficulty, information systems tend to circumvent the problem rather than tackle it head-on, capturing what can be formalized and traced while leaving aside what relates to relationships, judgment, and contextualization. Only what is measurable and measured counts, while what is not is secondary or even neglected.

I am not saying that these indicators are useless, but that they produce a partial representation of reality, which may be reassuring but is rarely accurate (What is managerial performance and its hidden face?).

In this context, asking the HRIS to make management more effective often amounts to asking it to better describe an already simplified version of management, neglecting what falls outside the framework.

A system that reassures more than it helps

An information system always has an implicit reassuring function, because it gives the impression that the organization sees, knows, and is in control. HRIS is no exception to this logic, since by structuring social data, producing dashboards, and standardizing practices, it contributes to this impression of control.

The problem is not this function itself, but rather when the system becomes an excuse to avoid more difficult questions about the quality of management, managerial trade-offs and decisions, or even tensions experienced by teams.

This is why I refer to a management information system not as a natural extension of the HRIS, but as a change of perspective, because such a system is not intended to measure everything, but rather to highlight areas of concern, shed light on choices without claiming to automate them, and, above all, measure the impact of what is currently not tracked or measured (What vision for a managerial information system?).

This means accepting that information is not only used to organize administrative management, but also to highlight contradictions that systems are specifically designed to mitigate and quantify the intangible dimension of management and its impact, which is currently completely neglected by systems and most often evaluated on a whim.

But finally, and above all, it means changing the paradigm and recognizing that the manager’s objective is not to manage people in the HR sense of the term, but to have an impact on people so that they have an impact on the business, and that it is this ability to have a knock-on impact that must be successfully measured. However, it must be acknowledged that, as things stand, the HRIS is more of a burden for managers, who have to feed it with data, than a tool from which they derive significant value.

Bottom line

Current technological developments, whether in analytics or AI, reinforce the idea that a qualitative leap is within reach, when in reality they do not change the nature of the problem, as they merely accelerate and enrich an established vision that some might even describe as obsolete or backward-looking.

If HRIS continues to be designed as a tool primarily geared towards compliance and reporting, it will remain stuck in this mindset, regardless of how sophisticated the technological building blocks added to it may be.

The question is therefore not whether HRIS should evolve, because it is constantly evolving, but whether the organization is ready to design an information system that truly supports managerial work, with all its complexity and gray areas.

It is not a question of technological maturity, but of how we view management itself as a discipline in its own right that manages work, whereas HR administers jobs.

To answer your questions…

Image credit: Image generated by artificial intelligence via ChatGPT (OpenAI)

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