How Will HR Software Trends Affect HR Professionals?

While conducting research for our latest Buyer’s Guide to Core HR Software, we observed a few key trends in the HR software space. Most notably, HR software is becoming more usable and more able to provide strategic insights.

We asked three HR experts, Tim Sackett, Jon Ingham and Bryan Wempen about the changes they are seeing in HR software and how this is going to start affecting HR professionals and departments.

Here are three major takeaways from their answers: 

1. HR departments will need to hire more and more professionals who are strategic and forward-looking because software is reducing the burden of administrative tasks.
2. HR architecture is going to have two significant parts: strategic and transactional. With changing software landscape, HR departments and managers will need to figure out which parts of HR will remain strategic and which of these will become transactional and process driven.
3. In the long term, HR will become a function of finance or marketing.

Read their full responses and their explanation:

Tim Sackett

A 20 year HR/Recruiting Talent Pro with a Master’s in HR and SPHR certification, currently residing in Lansing, MI.  Currently the President at HRU Technical Resources – a $40M IT and Engineering contract staffing firm and RPO. He tweets at @TimSackett

HR software is changing HR departments by being inexpensive enough that almost all HR shops can now afford to have technology.  This eliminates much of the administrative tasks that many HR professionals associated with HR.  This forces HR pros to become more strategic in their function.  This also forces organizations to hire a higher level HR professional. If your software is handling the administrative, tactical work of HR, you no longer need HR professionals who are most comfortable with doing that work. You need HR professionals who are willing to lead their organizations into the future.

Jon Ingham

Recognized by HR Magazine as the 7th Most Influential UK thinker and by HR Examiner as the #1 top global online influencer in talent management (2010) and a top 100 global influencer in HR. He tweets at @joningham

New HR systems are making the jobs of HR functions and individual practitioners easier and more impactful, which is all good news.  The one piece of the jigsaw, which is missing in my view, is greater clarity over what parts of an individual organization’s HR architecture is strategic, and which is transactional.  The transactional piece just needs to be delivered well by an efficient system.  The strategic piece is more difficult and more critical and may need a different, specialist best of breed system/ module on top of the integrated platform.

Bryan Wempen

Bryan Wempen is CEO of Assessment Research and Development (ARD), ceVoke Speakers and Thug Metrics Media. He tweets @bryanwempen

HR and the HR function will continue to get better at working with technology but no significant change will happen in the next 5 years. I envision at some point in time that the HR function will be productized and rolled under Finance or Marketing within organizations, mainly because Finance and Marketing are more connected directly with revenue strategy and execution.

For more on these trends and how to select the right HR software for your use case, take a look at the TrustRadius Buyer’s Guide to Core HR Software. The guide includes three key topics that are relevant to HR pros today:

• Factors to consider when purchasing Core HR software
• A table showing each vendor and the capabilities they offer
• A distillation of 290+ reviews and ratings from real users of 10 Core HR software products