HRIS Selection
HR technology reviews
Review installed HR tools using record accuracy, employee tasks, duplicated work and measured effort. Decide what to keep, change or investigate.
Review installed HR tools on three tests: dependable records, whether people can finish their work, and whether running them is justified. Decide what the review must answer: keep the arrangement, reconfigure it, reduce overlap or investigate replacement. A feature list or user rating cannot settle that decision alone.
Set the review boundary
List the tools, their owners and the processes they support. Include spreadsheets and manual handoffs that people rely on. For each important employee field, identify the authoritative source and any copies. Choose a review period and a few processes that matter now, such as a change in working hours, a leave correction or an employee leaving.
Focus on how the installed arrangement works. Selecting a new product, negotiating a quote and planning a rollout are later tasks if the review points towards replacement.
Follow work to its result
For each chosen process, inspect a suitably protected request, decision, resulting record and handoff. Include an exception or correction. Ask employees, managers, HR and receiving teams where they need help or repeat work. Record the configuration examined and anything the team could not verify.
| Question | Evidence to inspect | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Is the resulting record right? | Approval, dated history and receiving value | A successful transfer does not prove the receiving value is correct. |
| Can people finish the task? | Task observation, support requests and feedback | A completion status may conceal a manual workaround. |
| Is work duplicated? | Field ownership and repeated entry | A controlled copy may have a legitimate purpose. |
| Has effort improved? | Comparable measures for one complete process | A faster HR step may shift work elsewhere. |
| Can the service be maintained? | Configuration ownership, support and retrieval routes | Documented capabilities may differ from the purchased setup. |
For applicable Fair Work record-keeping obligations, consult the Fair Work Ombudsman’s record-keeping guidance. Identify where relevant records will remain retrievable before retiring a tool or archive.
Where payroll is part of a reviewed process, check the installed Single Touch Payroll pay-code setup and whether the software is up to date. The ATO advises employers to use up-to-date STP-enabled payroll software and check their STP pay-code setup.
Key Compliance and Performance Indicators for HR Systems
- Fair Work Record-Keeping Obligations
- Required for all employee records, including pay and leave
- ATO STP Pay-Code Setup Check
- Must be up to date and verified regularly
- OAIC Employee Records Exemption Guidance
- Applies to certain internal employee records
- Cloud Shared Responsibility Model
- Employer and supplier share security duties
Interpret claims and feedback
Separate a supplier’s documented capability from a result observed in the employer’s configuration. Check the module, permissions, integration and contract involved. Record an unshown outcome as unverified.
Ask employees about a specific task and where they became uncertain or stopped. Compare their accounts with support issues and the final record. A small group may expose a serious barrier without showing how common it is.
Have the privacy owner assess how feedback is collected and shared. The OAIC publishes guidance on the employee records exemption; assess its relevance to the employer and the information being handled.
Record the next action
For each material finding, record the affected process, evidence, consequence, owner and check after any change. Determine whether the cause is guidance, configuration, data ownership or a product limit before assigning a remedy.
- Keep
- when the defined work is supported and remaining effort is acceptable.
- Reconfigure
- when a supported change can meet the need and be maintained.
- Reduce overlap
- when repeated entry can be removed without losing needed records or handoffs.
- Investigate replacement
- when a critical outcome remains unsupported or repair appears disproportionate.
Set a measure and review date for an agreed change. Assess record accuracy, staff effort and employee experience separately. For a cloud service, check the supplier’s and employer’s actual access, configuration and recovery responsibilities.
In this guide
- Auditing HR tools that duplicate employee recordsMap repeated employee fields across HR tools, trace updates and decide which copies need a controlled handoff or can be retired.
- Measuring time saved in a defined HR processDefine one complete HR process, compare cases before and after a change, and report staff effort, rework and quality together.
- Reviewing employee feedback on a new HR systemCollect task-specific employee feedback on a new HR system, investigate barriers and check whether the response improved the task.
- Deciding whether to reconfigure or replace an HR platformDiagnose an HR platform gap, compare repair with replacement and decide what evidence is needed to protect records and handoffs.
