The Role of Human Resource Information System (HRIS) in Organizations: A Review of Literature

The information systems (IS) are becoming very important for the organizations. Therefore over the last decade’s wise companies started to become aware of those technologies and they tend to use it for their competitive advantage. The human resource information systems (HRIS) as a function of IS are also become inevitable for organization, because they know that their human resources (HR) are one of the most important factor in their success, therefore to implement a human resource information system in their human resources will help the organizations reach their goals easily. In this study a literature review related to HRIS is done and it is revealed its importance for the organizations.


Definition of HRIS
There are different definitions of human resource information systems (HRIS) as follow, Kovac & Cathcart,(1999) defines "HRIS as a systematic procedure for collecting, storing, maintaining, retrieving, and validating data needed by organization about its human resources, personnel activities, and organization unit characteristics (Kovach & Cathcart, 1999)."In another research Tannenbaum, (1990) defines "A human resources information system is a technology-based system used to acquire, store, manipulate, analyze, and retrieve, and distribute pertinent information regarding an organization's human resources (Tannenbaum, 1990) ."In addition, HRIS is a connection between HRM and information technology (IT).On the other hand human resource information system also includes the people, policies, procedures and data that required to manage human resources functions other than the applications that comprise the technical part of the system as hardware and software applications are not only limited with the computer hardware and software (Hendrickson, 2003).
Furthermore HRIS is not only concentrated on HR management issues but also it is concentrated on the organizational objectives.Therefore an HRIS is more than recording the files to the computer, it is an approach that store, record, analyze and control the data that related to organization human resources (Bingöl, 2006, p. 557).

Historical Overview
The very first mechanized human resource comes from 1940's and from 1950's it starts to run sorting and tabulating equipment, in those days computers had very limited thing to do, like monitoring employee record and payroll activities.In the 1960's personnel department started to take part in the technological improvement occurring in finance and accounting area, until late 1960's the only computer based applications in personnel department were payroll and basic employee record keeping.During 1970's some large companies has developed personnel data system.Studies of 1980's shows that, the firms that have human resource information systems are about 40%, while, the majority of companies which do not have are interested to obtain one (Desanctis, 1986).
Starting from 1980's large organizations has established a HRIS in their human resources department, to meet their needs.Apart from IS, the development of HRIS has been made possible by advanced mainframe software technology such as; packaged applications, database management systems.
The developing a HRIS within the organization has been improving much after 1978, however, most of the organizations had not developed a HRIS till 1980.The maturity of a HRIS which is the professional use of the system in an organization depends on the organization size and the level of its management.
The typical HRIS consist of 4 to 5 application modules such as; compensation and equity monitoring, which is considered to be the most important module, that followed by benefit administration module, applicant flow module, and the human resource control module (Yeung & Brockbank, 1995).Before the sustained improvement in the HRIS.The functions of the HRIS used to be under the IS area to reach their goals.For example, HRIS was maintained and developed by IS technical staff before, meanwhile, in last decades all responsibilities related to human resources has been transferred to human resources personnel.

Functions of HRIS
HRIS must meet the needs of different levels of the management within the organization such as; HR professionals, managers in functional areas and employees.A functional HRIS enables an integration of policies and procedures used to manage the firm's human resources as well as the procedures required to operate the computer software and hardware applications (Hendrickson, 2003).The most important functions of HRIS are; to integrate the technologies of HR, to increase the efficiency, to increase effectiveness, and to enable usage of IT.Accordingly, the HRIS provides a significant support to human resource functions in regard to the impact of information technology on human resources ( Boateng, 2007).

HRIS Model
HRIS has been designed for human resource management to realize the strategic objectives of the organizations, to improve its productivity and proficiency by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of daily functions.HRIS has given an opportunity to the organizations to solve and manage their different issues and processes related to the management of employees.On the other hand HRIS also used for different purposes, particularly in human resource processes as recruitment and selection, performance evaluation, compensation and benefits, training and development, health and safety, employee relations and legal issues, and for retention and work life balance (Ensher, Neilson, & Grant-Vallone, 2002).Contemporary human resource information systems that are comprehensive, accurate and accessible are used to ease jobs of HRM such as; recording and working employee related data.HRIS is aimed to support operational decision making, to evaluate programs and routine daily operations (Chauhan, Sharma, & Tyagi, 2011).(Desanctis, 1986).Beadles et al. 2005 Reducing the HR cost by automating information.
Reducing the need for large numbers of employees (Beadles II, Lowery, & Johns, 2005).Akansha Chauhan 2011 HRIS can assist human resource management in different aspects, particularly by streamlining workflow processes through control processes in their day-to-day tasks (Chauhan, Sharma, & Tyagi, 2011).Ngai and Wat 2006 Small firms cannot afford the cost and the risk of implementing new software (Ngai & F.K.T., 2006).

Role of HRIS Usage, Implementation and Its Impact
The literature states that HRISs are generally used for administrative purposes.For instance, Ball (2000) have found out that the organizations that have more employees are tend to hold their information electronically both on the individual and organizational level.Similarly, the information analysis would occur with the human resource information systems (HRIS) in the organizations that have more employees.In the use of HRIS, most of the organizations with an employee of less than 500 use the core modules of HR rather than training and recruitment modules.Lastly, author indicates that the time and attendance was the most frequently integrated additional modules (Ball, 2001).Furthermore the more people employed by the organization the less likely it was to adopt additional non-core HR modules, and the organizations that have newly purchased HRIS are tend to buy additional non-core HR modules (Ball, 2001).
Additionally, Hussein et al, (2007) indicates that in the practice of HRIS there are small differences between smallmedium and large organizations.Thus, it adds value to company regardless to its size by means of strategic use of HRIS through HR profession.Moreover, strategic use of HRIS enhances the perceived standing of HR professionals within the organization by being more important than ever (Hussain, Wallace, & Cornelius, 2007).In the globalizing world any company cannot omit the role of HRIS in their human resources.Organizations use HRIS for different kind of purposes as human resources planning, recruitment, selection, training and development, payroll benefits and so on.
Accordingly, the use of HRIS become part of corporate culture providing valuable information in managing one of the most valuable asset of an organization and thus, have been used as a competitive advantage.This has been also emphasized as main advantage of an organization by Totty (2001) where HRIS is cost reductive, as the replacement of the people with software is less costly (Kovach & Cathcart, 1999).

Conclusion
According to the studies of scholars as stated in the literature review, the implementation of the IS along with its advantages and disadvantages within the organizations is inevitably important to survive in the global competitive market.Thus, for the organizations that are aware of its human resources value, an efficient use of IS in HRM and specifically for strategic objectives and strategic decision making processes of the organization will sustain everlasting success in their operations.The strategic implementation of HRIS would improve the perceived standing of HR professionals and executives within their organizations as HRIS provides added value and increases the status of the HR profession as a whole.Additionally, HRIS may lead to sustained competitive advantage through the creation and deployment of knowledge based resources for the organization.
As stated by Ball (2002) the use of HRIS differs for companies with different sizes.Where, large scale companies use HRIS more effectively compared to the small-medium sized ones.In contrast Husain et.al (2006) indicates it become a norm irrespective to company size.Thus, it can be concluded that the use of HRIS have gained dramatic stage in use through the period of 2002 to 2006.Apparently, Desanctis (1986), (Wickramaratna, 2011) and (Benfatto, 2010) argue that most of the organizations use the HRIS for their administrative purposes other than for their strategic or organizational purposes.
To sum up, the use of HRIS is common to almost all organizations but not in the same level.Some organizations

Table 1 :
The advantages and Disadvantages of HRIS presented by scholars: