Data tell stories. Human resource departments should aim to catalogue data in a way that allows for accurate stories to be told about the organization of which it is a part and to collect those data at a relatively low cost. Meeting those goals requires recognizing that making small investments now can lead to cost reductions and benefits that will pay dividends in the future.
Let’s face it, though. The operation of successful data management systems is like using a television remote. We take it for granted when the systems work as expected, despite problems lurking out of sight. However, when complications of a data management system are revealed, frustrations rise quickly as valuable time must be burned to find solutions to problems that already could have been solved. Just like when the remote fails to work right before the big game starts, weaknesses of data management tend to reveal themselves at the most stressful and difficult-to-navigate moments organizations face.
No system is perfect, but organizations can make smart and disciplined investments to improve the management of HR databases. Here are some simple investments to consider implementing to improve your organization’s HR database management. File these investment ideas under a dash of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Investment 1: Take every precaution to avoid employees entering data directly into a database. People make mistakes. Mistakes are expensive to correct and can lead to wrong conclusions if not discovered. Instead, find ways in which employee records can be uploaded directly to the HR databases. These types of records might track performance, work history, or numerical summaries of evaluations.
Obviously, many kinds of data still need to be entered by hand, so a wise investment is to find ways to mitigate the chance of errors occurring at the entry point. Systems that allow for dropdown menus to be used in replacement of typing entries are such an investment. Birthdays, start dates, performance records, and pay data are examples of fields in which data entry can be made more accurate with small changes to the interfaces with which workers interact.
Investment 2: If at all possible, avoid the use of qualitative variables. Occasions in which employees enter descriptions or observations about themselves or other employees or the work they’re doing will be full of mistakes and difficult to interpret in meaningful ways. Again, these types of entries cannot be entirely avoided, so steps should be taken to find ways to normalize input protocols for these kinds of observations. Train employees to use keywords that can be searched and tabulated easily when necessary. A good example of such observations are job titles, which are often incredibly important in organizations with hierarchical structures but perhaps hard to reconcile across divisions within the organization. Finding ways to normalize titles can be incredibly helpful when occasions find organizations and require them to produce accurate analyses of employee records.
Investment 3: Schedule consistent audits of the databases. Modern data analysis tools can be used to spot problematic entries at a relatively low cost. So…it turns out that sales associate is not earning $360,000 this year. And…it seems that person did not start working here in 1919. Consistent audits are a lower-cost way of finding errors and carry the added benefit of allowing perspective to develop organically about ways your database management system can evolve. Incremental adjustment is usually easier to handle than wholesale change.
These low-hanging, high-return investments offer a host of payoffs besides making it more likely that your organization will avoid steep costs at stressful moments. First, organizations should believe that keeping accurate depictions of employees’ histories with your organization to be appropriate stewardship of their working lives and valuable to the organization of which you are a part. These steps will help organizations meet that responsibility. Second, organizations can use accurate and well-catalogued records to avoid problems like bias or discrimination, perceived or otherwise. Mitigating these issues provide downstream benefits like improved morale that comes from employees believing they are being treated fairly or a reduced likelihood of legal challenges to the organization’s operating procedures, which means avoided stress and big payouts to legal teams and consultants. Organizations with burnished reputations for treating employees justly also have easier times recruiting and retaining talent compared to organizations with dodgier reputations. Finally, the whole organization can be improved with efficient HR data management because clearer correlations can be drawn between productivity and employees’ efforts.
In the end, those data are going to have to tell a story. There is no reason to rely solely on the hope that the story the data tell is easily understood and believed. Make appropriate investments now to sharpen up your organization’s data management practices to help make it easier for trustworthy stories to be told in the future.
