e-hrm: A Catalyst for Changing the HR Function?

Transcription

1 e-hrm: A Catalyst for Changing the HR Function? Emma Parry Abstract Past research has suggested that e-hrm may have benefits for organisations by allowing the HR function to be more efficient, improving service delivery and facilitating its transformation into a more strategic role. This chapter draws upon the results from a large-scale survey across 12 countries and also on 10 qualitative case studies in order to examine if, and how, organisations can realise these benefits of e-hrm. The results confirmed that that e-hrm is most commonly introduced in order to improve efficiency, service delivery and to allow HR to become more strategic. Efficiency and service delivery improvements were most commonly realised, but some evidence was also found that e-hrm may help HR to increase its value by becoming more strategic. This is due to the fact that HR staff had more time and information to support the organisation in achieving its business strategy. The results also demonstrated that the relationship between e-hrm and efficiency, effectiveness and strategic outcomes was not clear cut but rather was dependent on the careful planning and implementation of e-hrm, including the engagement of multiple stakeholders and the development of a number of skills in the HR team. Keywords e-hrm HR role HR efficiency HR effectiveness 1 Introduction In recent years, much attention has been paid to the role of technology in managing people, both in academic and practitioner circles. The maturing of electronic human resource management (e-hrm) as a field of academic interest is evidenced by the production of several edited texts (e.g. Bondarouk et al. 2011) special issues E. Parry (&) Cranfield University School of Management, Cranfield, UK emma.parry@cranfield.ac.uk F. J. Martínez-López (ed.), Handbook of Strategic e-business Management, Progress in IS, DOI: / _24, Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

2 590 E. Parry Table 1 Proportion of organisations using e-hrm in eight countries Country Percentage of organisations United Kingdom 91 Germany 92 Italy 84 Norway 98 Switzerland 90 USA 85 Australia 84 South Africa 84 Source Data taken from the Cranet survey 2009 of journals (e.g. Bondarouk and Ruel 2009) and conferences (for example the European Workshop on e-hrm, held bi-annually since 2006) focusing on this field. The practical use of technology for human resource management has increased dramatically. In fact, data showing the proportion of surveyed organisations using e-hrm across eight countries in 2009 showed that the majority of organisations were actually using some form of technology for managing people (see Table 1). E-HRM has been defined as the planning, implementation and application of information systems for both networking and supporting actors in their shared performing of HR activities (Stroehmeier 2007) and also as a way of implementing HR strategies, policies and practices in organisations through a conscious and directed support of and/or with the full use of web-technology-based channels (Ruel et al. 2004, p. 281). Ruel et al. (2004) and other authors have taken care to distinguish between e-hrm and HR information systems (HRIS) in that HRIS is used basically by the HR department itself whereas e-hrm is used by a wider range of organisational stakeholders such as managers and employees and is concerned with changing the interactions between the HR function and these stakeholders from a pure face to face relationship to a technology mediated one (Martin and Reddington 2010, p.1554). Not only has the use of e-hrm grown, the nature of both the technology and its applications has also developed from the use of one-way internet-based information sources such as portals providing HR information to the use of more interactive web 2.0 technologies, mobile technology (Martin and Reddington 2010) and even gaming applications. This has allowed the use of self-service technology whereby line managers and employees conduct HR activities themselves and social media applications in which potential job applicants and learners interact, at least partly, with a technological platform rather than an individual. Indeed, Florowski and Olivas-Lujan (2006) reflected on the transition to a technology centred approach to HR delivery where a large proportion of administrative or transactional HR activities are now delivered electronically. Thite and Kavanagh (2009) however, noted that the use of e-hrm was not limited only to transactional HR but could also be used for traditional HR activities such as

3 e-hrm: A Catalyst for Changing the HR Function? 591 recruitment, selection, training, compensation and managing performance, for value-adding transformational activities or for managing HR across the whole employee life-cycle. Table two shows the proportion of organisations across 33 countries using e-hrm for various HR activities in Data from the same survey also showed that 48 % of surveyed organisations (in 33 countries) used manager self-service and 39 percent used employee self-service. The goals for the introduction of e-hrm have been much discussed in the literature. Notably, Ruel et al. (2004) identified three main goals for e-hrm use, based upon the Lepak and Snell s (1998) three pressures of virtual HR. First, the need for an HR function to be cost efficient and save money; second, the improvement of the service that the HR function provides to its internal clients and third, increasing the strategic orientation of HRM. Ruel et al. also added a fourth goal based upon their case study research the need to improve the global orientation of HR. The first three goals or objectives are mirrored by a number of scholars in the area of e-hrm (for example see Martin et al. 2008; Stroehmeier 2007; Hendrickson 2003). Using the resource-based view (RBV) (Barney 1991), these objectives can be related to the achievement of competitive advantage for a firm. Barney (1991) and others have suggested that the valuable rare, inimitable and imperfectly substitutable resources, including human resources (Wright et al. 2001), within a firm are the main source of its competitive advantage. Specifically, the framework of Bowman and Ambrosini (2000), based on the RBV, divides human resources or labour into generic labour that conducts routine, codifiable and imitable tasks and differential labour that is a source of the uniqueness within forms that can lead to competitive advantage. We can relate these two types of labour to the above goals. Increased efficiency can be associated with the efficient management of generic labour and the goals of improved service delivery and a strategic orientation for the HR function can be related to differential labour (Parry 2011). In order to realistically assess the impact and benefits of e-hrm for organisations, it is important to understand whether the above goals are actually being realised. More importantly, it is essential to develop an understanding of the factors that might affect the realisation of the benefits of e-hrm so that organisations can maximise these benefits and therefore potentially improve their competitive advantage. This chapter will therefore seek to examine whether the three goals of increased efficiency, improved service delivery and a more strategic role for the HR function are being achieved through an examination of two sources of data on the outcomes of e-hrm. Therefore we will focus on data and analyses taken from two previously published studies Parry and Tyson (2011) and Parry (2011). The use of the qualitative and quantitative data from both of these studies will allow us to examine the impact of e-hrm on efficiency, effectiveness and the strategic orientation of the HR function in some detail. Therefore, while this chapter relies on existing data, the combination of these two studies will allow us to provide new insights into the outcomes of e-hrm for the HR function. We will therefore aim to answer three questions (directly related to each of the three objectives of e-hrm) in turn:

4 592 E. Parry 1. What is the impact of e-hrm on the efficiency of HR processes? 2. What is the impact of e-hrm on the effectiveness of the HR function (the service that it delivers to its internal customers)?; and finally 3. What is the impact of e-hrm on the strategic orientation of the HR function? We will proceed by discussing the methodology used for the two pieces of research on which it will be based. Following this, each of the three potential outcomes (goals) for e-hrm will be discussed in turn through an analysis of the past literature in each area and an examination of the data from the aforementioned studies. Finally the conclusions and implications of these two studies as a whole will be discussed. 2 Approach As discussed above, this chapter is based upon data collected as part of two previously published studies (Parry 2011; Parry and Tyson 2011). One of these studies utilised purely quantitative survey data (Parry 2011) while the other relied on qualitative case study information (Parry and Tyson 2011). The combination of these two sources therefore will allow us to take a mixed methods approach to addressing our questions and to provide some detail behind the relationships established through analysis of the survey data. The methodology used in these two studies will be explained in full below. 2.1 Quantitative Study This study drew on cross-sectional data from the Cranet survey of human resource management (for full details see Parry et al. 2011). Data were used from 12 countries (the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Finland and Austria), that were chosen because they had seen an increase in the use of e-hrm. The Cranet survey examined the actual HR policies and practices used by organisations, therefore the unit of analysis was the organisation. Initially developed in 1989, the items within the questionnaire as a whole were based upon a review of the literature on HRM practices and discussions within a Network of academic experts on HRM. Since this time, the survey has been repeated on several occasions and the questionnaire updated on each occasion based upon developments in the academic literature and in practice. In each iteration, the Network included representatives from academic institutions in each of the countries from which data were to be collected. The questionnaire was first developed in English, translated into the language of each country by a local HRM expert and then translated back into English by a different HRM expert in each country to ensure that the meaning of each question remained

5 e-hrm: A Catalyst for Changing the HR Function? 593 Table 2 Activities e-hrm used for (%) HR activity Percentage of organisations Personnel records 83 Payroll 93 Attendance 79 Recruitment and selection 42 Training and development 52 Performance management 40 Career development 20 Work scheduling 40 Health and safety 26 Measurement of HR performance 25 Providing HR information 42 Source Data taken from Cranet survey 2009 the same. Full details of this process can be found in Brewster et al. (1994). For the purpose of this study, the following variables were created: 1. e-hrm use: Respondents were asked to indicate whether they used e-hrm for a particular activity (see Table 2 above for a list of activities) by ticking yes or no. The responses to these variables were summed to create a single variable with 9 meaning high e-hrm use and 0 meaning no use of e-hrm. 2. e-hrm sophistication: Respondents were asked to indicate how sophisticated their use of e-hrm was on a scale relating to the complexity of the system from 0, meaning no use of e-hrm through 1 for simple one-way communication to 5 for a very complex system. The relationship between e-hrm use and sophistication and a number of variables was examined. These variables were: ratio of HR practitioners to employees, strategic involvement of HR, HR manager experience, devolution of HR activities to line managers and HR outsourcing. Each participating Network member was responsible for developing a mailing list of organisational addresses and personal contacts in their country. These were generally commercial or governmental databases or databases from professional associations. The survey was sent to all of the organisations on the developed list. In accordance with Arthur and Boyles (2007) and Kumar, Stern and Anderson (1993), we used key informants to examine HRM at the organisational level. The respondent was therefore the highest-ranking manager in charge of HRM. The questions were designed to request only factual information about HRM within the organisation and respondents were advised to leave blank any questions for which they did not know the answer. Potential respondents were contacted by letter or and sent a copy of the questionnaire. They were later sent a reminder to encourage them to complete the questionnaire. The response rates for each country were between 20 and 35 %. Analyses of previous Cranet surveys have suggested that the responses are

6 594 E. Parry representative of each country (see Brewster et al. 1994). Only private firms were used in this analysis. In order to examine the relationship between these predictors and the outcomes of e-hrm use and sophistication two least squares regression analyses were conducted (see Parry 2011 for the full details and results of these analyses). For the purpose of this chapter only a summary of the results of these analyses will be provided. 2.2 Qualitative Study The second piece of research to be discussed in this chapter is based on ten case studies of organisations that had been using e-hrm for a year or more at the time of research. While it was not possible to be fully representative using ten case studies, organisations from a range of industries and from the public, private and not for profit sectors were included in order to elicit a variety of potential responses and to provide a detailed examination of the relevant issues. The organisations were visited between June 2006 and January 2007 so that interviews with a range of stakeholders could be undertaken. These individuals included HR practitioners, managers and employees. The number of interviews in each organisation was dictated by the nature of the organisation and its use of e-hrm. In two organisations focus groups with employees were conducted rather than individual interviews for convenience. Related documentation was also collected where this was appropriate to the case. The case study organisations were: BOC, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), Cancer Research UK, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), IBM, Marks and Spencer, the National Health Service (NHS), Nortel, Norwich Union and Transport for London (TfL). An interview protocol was developed as a result of a review of the relevant literature and discussions within the research team. This examined the goals for e- HRM use, implementation of the system and the impact of e-hrm within the organisation. For the purpose of this chapter only the information pertaining to the impact of e-hrm will be used. Detailed notes of the interviews were taken and checked with the participants for accuracy. Data were analysed in order to first identify outcomes of e-hrm relating to the three areas of efficiency, effectiveness (quality of service delivery) and the strategic orientation of the HR function and then to identify emergent themes within these areas. Full details of this study are available in Parry and Tyson (2011) and also in Parry et al. (2007). 3 Impact of e-hrm on the Efficiency of HRM The idea that using e-hrm can improve the efficiency and increase the speed of HR processes as well as reducing costs has been much discussed in the literature. In fact, the operational (Lepak and Snell 1998) or transactional (Martin et al. 2008)

7 e-hrm: A Catalyst for Changing the HR Function? 595 impact of e-hrm on HR processes appears to be widely accepted by most scholars (Lepak and Snell 1998; Enshur et al. 2002; Hendrickson 2003; Martin et al. 2008; Marler 2009). In fact, it could be suggested that efficiency gains are the most common objective for the introduction of e-hrm within organisations (Ruel et al. 2004). For example, Hendrickson (2003) suggested that e-hrm would have an operational impact by allowing more transactions to occur with fewer fixed responses (p. 383). In terms of the RBV, this may provide a means by which organisations can more efficiently manage generic labour in line with the RBV (Parry 2011). Despite the expense involved in introducing e-hrm systems, this technology has ultimately been associated with a reduction in the costs of performing HRM activities. This is generally seen as the result of a reduction in HR headcount. Indeed, e-hrm may provide the means by which transactional or administrative HR tasks can be performed automatically therefore reducing the need for HR employees to perform these activities manually. In addition, the use of employee and manager self-service functionality allows the devolution of many basic HR tasks onto employees and line managers, again reducing the need for large numbers of HR practitioners. We may therefore expect that a higher use of e-hrm within an organisation would be associated with a lower headcount within the HR function. However, our analysis of quantitative survey data failed to find a significant relationship between e-hrm use or sophistication and the ratio of HR practitioners to employees within an organisation (HR headcount). On initial examination this seems surprising but an analysis of the qualitative data from our second study might provide some insights into why this is the case. On the basis of the quantitative data alone therefore, we do not find increased efficiency (with regard to HR headcount). Of the ten case studies included in this research, nine reported that they had experienced cost or efficiency savings as a result of introducing e-hrm. These savings included the reduction of HR headcount by some of these organisations. Specifically, interviewees suggested that the automation of processes and direct entry of HR information by managers (rather than by a HR administrator) had not only increased the speed of HR transactions but had also reduced the need for so many HR staff to be available. For example, interviewees in TfL suggested that they had achieved savings of over 8million per year through reduced employee costs and the reduced use of recruitment providers. Interviewees in Norwich Union explained that they had reduced headcount within the HR department by 4.0 full time equivalents as well as saving money through the reduction of paper-based processes. IBM, Cancer Research UK and BOC also stated that they had reduced HR headcount as a result of automating HR processes. This is in direct conflict with the quantitative survey results that suggested that there was no relationship between e-hrm and HR headcount. However, the qualitative study does also provide some insights into why it is that a reduction in headcount might not be achieved as a result of the introduction of e-hrm. The successful use of e-hrm and resulting efficiency gains are dependent on a number of conditions. First, that the e-hrm system is designed in such a way that

8 596 E. Parry promotes usability and lends itself to the easy achievement of efficiency gains. Certainly in one case study organisation, BOC, the system was seem as not being user friendly or intuitive to use as well as being slow and tedious according to one interviewee. This meant that interviewees were finding it difficult to use the system and, in the case of BOC, one interviewee actually suggested that this was increasing the amount of administration needed rather than reducing it. Efficiency gains may also fail to be realised where potential users are either not familiar with the technology or where they are not engaged with the introduction of the new system. In IBM, a number of interviewees suggested that the use of e-hrm was readily accepted and successful because of the already high level of technology use within the organisation. Within other organisations, such as BOC and Norwich Union, there had been difficulties in encouraging managers and employees to buyinto the introduction of new technology and to actually use the system. This meant that in some cases existing, paper-based or manual processes were still being used in parallel with the e-hrm system, meaning that the efficiency gains were not being achieved. Within BSkyB, a number of initiatives had been taken to ensure that potential users were engaged with the system this included staff briefings, articles in newsletters and on the intranet and comprehensive employee and manager training. The importance of employee engagement with a new technological system is supported by more general research into technology implementation and acceptance (Davis 1989). Reductions in HR headcount will only be achieved if those individuals who would otherwise be employed in undertaking the transactional or administrative HR tasks performed by the e-hrm technology are removed from the organisation. It might be that these people are actually redeployed into other roles rather than being made redundant and therefore that reductions in headcount are not achieved regardless of the fact that other efficiency gains such as a reduction in the use of paper and increases in the speed of HR processes are observed. With reference to the RBV this idea is related to the concept of removing unproductive labour and replacing it with differential labour (Bowman and Ambrosini 2000). Indeed, Burbach and Dundon (2005) suggested that the introduction of e-hrm often meant that HR practitioners were redeployed into technology related roles. The evidence for efficiency gains provided by these two studies is therefore mixed. However, the qualitative data suggest that this might be because the impact of e- HRM on efficiency is more nuanced than one that can be unearthed by a simple quantitative analysis. It should also be noted that, in most of the case studies, the impact of e-hrm on efficiency and costs had not actually been measured objectively. This meant that it was difficult to establish what the effects of the introduction of e-hrm on efficiency were. One of the benefits of e-hrm is that measurements of HR process efficiency can be built into the design of the system. Therefore other organisations should consider the need to assess the efficiency gains resulting from e-hrm technology as part of the design process.

9 e-hrm: A Catalyst for Changing the HR Function? Impact of e-hrm on the Quality of HR Service Delivery (Effectiveness) A second impact of e-hrm often discussed in the literature, is the idea that the use of e-hrm can help the HR function to provide a better level of service to its internal customers, namely managers and employees (Hendrickson 2003; Ruel et al. 2006). Past research has provided some evidence for a positive impact of e-hrm on HR service delivery through the simplification of processes or more accurate data entry (Gardner et al. 2003). More generally Bondarouk et al. (2009) found that e-hrm use was related to positive perceptions of HR effectiveness by line managers and employees. Our qualitative case study research discovered some evidence that improvements to HR service delivery were being realised. Indeed, seven of the ten case study organisations suggested that such improvements had occurred as a result of the introduction of e-hrm. These improvements were commonly in the form of the increased accuracy of the data entered into HR systems due to the removal of the need for duplicate information keying. In addition, users were allowed easier access to training or HR materials contained in HR systems and there was also more readily available information for management decision making. The quote below from a manager at Cancer Research UK, with regard to their recently introduced e-recruitment system, provides a good illustration of these improvements. Previously we would submit paper forms that would be passed from person to person. These would get lost and then we would get accused of never submitting the form in the first place. The new system means that we can find where an action is in the process at any one time It is worth noting however that it was suggested by interviewees from two of our case study organisations, BOC and IBM, that the introduction of e-hrm could actually have a negative impact on the standard of the service offered by the HR function in that it depersonalised this provision. Lepak and Snell (1998) discussed effects of e-hrm associated with service delivery such as the ability to provide managers and employees with remote access to HR information and therefore increase their ability to connect to other parts of the organisation and to other organisations, enabling them to perform many HR activities themselves. Lepak and Snell call these relational effects. This suggests an indirect positive impact on service delivery in empowering line managers and employees to perform HR tasks themselves. Indeed, Bondarouk et al. (2009) suggested that, in organisations where HR practitioners have used e-hrm to delegate their administrative HR tasks to line managers and employees, we might expect that the main goal of the introduction of e-hrm would be to improve the perceived effectiveness of HR to a range of stakeholders. This idea is related to the more general discussion of strategic HRM that includes the devolution of HR activities to managers as an important characteristic (Whittaker and Marchington 2003; Larsen and Brewster 2003). This might lead us to expect that a high level of

10 598 E. Parry e-hrm within an organisation would be related to the devolution of HR tasks to line managers. We investigated this suggestion as part of our quantitative study. Surprisingly, the results showed a significant but negative relationship between e-hrm sophistication and the devolution of HR tasks to the line, an association that was therefore in the opposite direction to that expected. The relationship between e- HRM use and devolution of HR tasks to line managers was also negative but not significant. Rather than e-hrm leading to the empowerment of line managers to perform HR tasks themselves, as suggested by Lepak and Snell (1998) this suggests that organisations are using e-hrm as an alternative to devolving HR activities to the line. This is despite the fact that the more sophisticated e-hrm systems commonly included manager self-service capability. The qualitative case studies also failed to provide strong evidence for the empowerment of managers to perform HR duties. Six of our ten case study organisations stated that the development of management capability to perform HR tasks was an objective for their introduction of e-hrm. For example, BSkyB suggest that they wanted to: Improve customer satisfaction for different segments of customers so that line managers can do things quicker and more easily and also to respond to the needs of the business by enabling sickness absence to be managed more easily. Cancer Research UK suggested that they wanted to improve the credibility of the HR function through the use of e-hrm: Previously there were no reports to drive decision-making so management decisions were not based on reliable and accurate information. HR was seen as responsible for producing this information but didn t have the tools to provide it. The information needs to be accessible and self-service means that it is. However, only three of the organisations provided any evidence that this goal was being realised. These organisations were BSkyB and Nortel in which managers has been given increased HR responsibility and, due in part to the provision of online tools to assist and support them with these duties, had become proficient in conducting these activities. More specifically, in IBM, a range of HR information had been supplied over the intranet and this had led to a higher level of HR knowledge in both managers and employees. The evidence for the impact of e-hrm on service delivery or HR effectiveness is therefore also mixed. Again, this might be to some extent dependent on the usability of the technological tools themselves (particularly in the case of manager and employee self-service tools) and on the level to which managers and employees had bought into the use of such technology. In this case, the empowerment of managers to conduct a higher level of HR tasks is also dependent on their willingness to take on this responsibility. Indeed, within Norwich Union, a number of the managers interviewed showed some resentment at the expectation that they should be undertaking the HR departments work. It is also important to recognise that the improved effectiveness of the HR team depends on the skill

11 e-hrm: A Catalyst for Changing the HR Function? 599 levels and experience of the team. In the case of Cancer Research UK, we saw some evidence of improved service delivery through HR practitioners spending time working with managers on more value-added tasks such as supporting recruitment decision-making. However, it was also recognised within this organisation that this had required the HR team to develop new skills such as consultancy. Indeed, authors such as Zhang and Wang (2006) have commented that a lack of competent HR staff might impede the realisation of the benefits of e-hrm. 5 Impact of e-hrm on the Strategic Orientation of the HR Function The third area in which e-hrm has been said to have a potential impact on the HR function, and probably the one that has attracted the most debate, is that of a potential effect on the role of the HR function. A number of authors, including Ruel et al. (2004) have suggested that e-hrm has the potential to transform the HR function into one that is more strategic, whereby strategic refers to an involvement in the strategic management of the business (Wright and McMahan 1992). The HR function would therefore become one which spends less time focusing on transactional or administrative activities and more time focusing on activities that are central to the organisation s strategy (Lawler and Mohrman 2003; Hendrickson 2003; Shrivastiva and Shaw 2004; Ruel et al. 2006). This transformational (Lepak and Snell 1998) impact of e-hrm has been much discussed in the literature with considerable disagreement existing between authors about whether the use of e-hrm can really facilitate the transition to an HR function playing the strategic role of business partner. On one side of this debate, a number of authors have concluded that e-hrm can indeed help the HR function to play a more strategic role. For example, Ruel et al. (2004) and Olivas- Lujan et al. (2007) found a link between the use of e-hrm and the integration of the HR function with the firm strategy. On the other hand, Tansley et al. (2001) concluded that e-hrm had not yet realised its potential to facilitate a more strategic role for HR. Burbach and Dundon (2005) suggested that the focus of e-hrm was most commonly on administrative activities rather than on strategic decision making and Gardner et al. (2003) suggested that the use of e-hrm simply meant that administrative tasks were replaced with technological rather than strategic activities. Marler (2009) suggested that the impact of e-hrm on the role of the HR function was actually dependent on the nature of that function with administratively oriented HR departments being more likely to have efficiency related goals for e-hrm. Alternatively, HR departments that already function strategically were more likely to have strategic goals for the use of e-hrm. Our quantitative study investigated the relationship between the use and sophistication of e-hrm and an index created of variables often associated with

12 600 E. Parry the strategic nature of the HR function. These variables included whether the HR Director had a place on the Board of Directors or similar, whether the firm had an HR strategy and at what stage the HR department was involved in the development of business strategy. The results showed that the strategic nature of the HR function was positively related with e-hrm use but not e-hrm sophistication. The literature suggests that such a relationship is due to two factors: first, the fact that the use of e-hrm can release HR practitioners from the need to undertake administrative or transactional tasks, therefore freeing up time for them to focus on more strategic activity; and second, that e-hrm technology can provide the HR function with access to detailed and accurate data about human resources that can be used as a basis for strategic decisions. Our qualitative case study data might provide some insight into whether these two processes are indeed facilitating the transition to a more strategic focus for the HR function. Interviewees from seven of our ten case study organisations described effects of the introduction of e-hrm that could be related to an increase in strategic HR activity. In line with the literature, these changes were related to the increased availability of accurate and detailed HR information or to additional time available to the HR team as a result of e-hrm use. For example, the HR team within Cancer Research UK was able to produce a wide range of statistics relating to a variety of HR processes that were then used as a basis for HR and managerial decision making. Similarly, TfL had set up a group information management team who were responsible for producing data and identifying areas in which the business needed to improve efficiency. An interviewee from the CPS explained that the e-hrm system had been: Developed to provide strategic information on promotion rates, turnover rates and assist with modelling manpower systems for planning purposes. This will, for example, provide opportunities for exploring what if scenario planning when HR strategies are being developed. Also in TfL, the HR function had used the introduction of e-hrm as a foundation for the restructuring of the HR department so that it included a HR shared services department. Interviewees within TfL reported that HR practitioners were spending 70 % of their time following the introduction of e-hrm on strategy as opposed to spending 70 % on administrative HR tasks prior to e-hrm introduction. The data from both studies therefore provides some tentative evidence that the introduction of e-hrm might allow the HR function to have a greater involvement in the strategic activity of the firm rather than focusing purely on transactional and administrative tasks. In line with the RBV, the increased focus of the HR function on the delivery of the business strategy rather than transactional activities, moves the emphasis of the function from generic labour to differential labour, meaning that it may increase its use value to the organisation and be able to provide a more significant contribution to the competitive advantage of the firm. However, it should be noted that this evidence is mainly anecdotal and may not actually reflect an increased involvement in the development or implementation of business strategy. It is also interesting to note that in four of the seven case study

13 e-hrm: A Catalyst for Changing the HR Function? 601 organisations that reported an increase in strategic activity as a result of introducing e-hrm, this impact was unintended. In one of four organisations that had a stated goal for e-hrm of facilitating a more strategic role, this objective had not been realised. This suggests that the move to a strategic role for the HR function as an outcome of e-hrm introduction might be somewhat hit and miss. Perhaps if this was considered more carefully in the development of such a system, so that the ability to produce strategy-related data was incorporated into the system design, this might be achieved more readily. In addition, the move of HR practitioners into more strategic roles is again dependent on the skills and experience of those individuals. In order to adopt a strategic role, HR practitioners need a very different set of skills to those needed to fulfil a transactional or administrative function. The HR function will need to develop skills such as data analysis, strategy formulation and project management in order to be able to truly play a business partner role. 6 Conclusions This chapter has drawn on two previously published studies to provide further insight into the impact of e-hrm upon the HR function. Specifically, we have examined whether the introduction of e-hrm can act as a catalyst to produce a HR function that is more efficient, more effective and more strategic. The combination of a quantitative and a qualitative study has allowed us to look at both relationships between the use and sophistication of e-hrm and a number of potential outcomes related to efficiency, effectiveness and the strategic nature of HR and also to examine some of the mechanisms underneath those relationships. The results really show that the evidence with regard to the impact of e-hrm on the HR function is mixed. While past literature and our qualitative data demonstrates positive impact of e-hrm upon the efficiency and speed of HR processes and the capacity of e-hrm to reduce HR costs, the latter of these is not born out in our quantitative analysis of the relationship between e-hrm and HR headcount. Indeed we have shown that there is no significant relationship between these two. This raises doubts about the role of e-hrm in the efficient management of generic labour. Qualitative data suggest that the impact of e-hrm on HR efficiency might actually be dependent on the design and implementation of the e-hrm system. Our evidence regarding the relationship between e-hrm and HR service delivery is also mixed. While our qualitative results provide some indication that the introduction of e-hrm does allow HR practitioners to be more effective and to provide a better service to their internal customers, we did not find any evidence through our quantitative study of a relational impact of e-hrm in terms of empowering managers to conduct HR activities. Importantly, this relationship depends on the engagement of managers and employees with the e-hrm system as well as the usability of the technology itself.

14 602 E. Parry Finally, we find some indication that the introduction of e-hrm might have the potential to facilitate a move of the HR function into a more strategic role. Our qualitative data show that the availability of both time and detailed data might allow HR practitioners to focus more on the development and implementation of business strategy rather than on administrative or transactional HR tasks. However, it is also clear that this transformation is reliant on the HR team developing the skills needed for them to play such a role. This chapter has provided a simple introduction to the issues involved in achieving the desired impacts of e-hrm on the management of generic and differential labour. We have found that the use of e-hrm may help the HR function to increase differential labour and therefore increase its value by developing a more strategic orientation. This supports past literature on the use of e-hrm (Marler 2009; Martin et al. 2008; Ruel et al. 2004; Lepak and Snell 1998). The mechanisms by which the use of e-hrm might result in improvements in efficiency and service delivery and by which the HR function might transition into a more strategic role, remain unclear. Therefore more research is needed. First, future research could examine the actual impact of e-hrm on costs, speed of processes and HR headcount by making use of the metrics built into such technology. Longitudinal, or before and after, studies around the efficiency and effectiveness of HR practices and the impact of e-hrm on these are needed to examine exactly how these operational, relational and transformational effects might be obtained. A stakeholder approach to this kind of evaluation might be useful, in order to assess the impact of e-hrm technology on different groups of people such as HR practitioners, managers and employees. The comparison of the design and introduction of e-hrm with other technological advances in order to draw on what we know about the implementation of technology more broadly would also be useful. Finally detailed longitudinal studies of the role of the HR function and how this is transformed through the introduction of e-hrm are also needed. Despite the need for further research, this research does have some clear implications for practitioners. It is clear that the espoused benefits of e-hrm introduction are not necessarily achieved easily by organisations. Specifically, a number of factors have been identified that have an impact on whether the objectives of e-hrm are realised. With regard to efficiency and service delivery objectives, these may be in part dependent on the design and implementation of the e-hrm system itself and upon the thorough training of users of the system. This supports previous work on technology acceptance generally (Davis 1989). It is also essential that organisations take steps to obtain the buy-in of managers and employees when introducing an e-hrm system. The fact that fewer resources are required for e-hrm than to operate a manual HR system could allow the HR function to make a transition to a more strategic role. However, organisations need to ensure that the additional time available to HR practitioners is devoted to strategic activities rather than to improving service delivery. Both improved service delivery and the move to a more strategic role for HR might be constrained by the skill levels of the HR

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