Inside the Headlines

Local homegrown HRIS is still best for Philippine businesses

Filipinos are quite different from the rest of the world, no matter what other people say. Our ingenuity may be coined as good ‘copy cats’ but the fact remains that we always find ways to address our problems and issues, sometimes at the most uncommon and unexpected way. Addressing human resource issues and problems or challenges that come with them are but few examples of difficult situations calling for different solutions.

Talking of work environment, there is nothing like the Philippines. Working with small and big businesses for more than 15 years proved how challenging our work environments are. There are more exceptional cases than standards, and sometimes, the exceptions to the rule become the rules themselves because of our remarkable tolerance of the deviations. This reality is hard and difficult to follow even to the most advanced organizations with highly advanced technology making businesses here in our country. This, however, does not necessarily or consistently make our employees work better, that is why understanding and looking for the best way to handle our workers persist to be a dilemma in the workplace.

Dealing with everyday challenges of the workplace for many years now, we have discovered that perhaps, the initial stage of solving our HR issues would be to identify these problems and understand why they occur, when they occur, and how they came about. When you come to understand the problems, figure out when, why, and how they occur, then you will know where to start solving the issues and problems. After that, everything will rightfully fall into places, just like a jigsaw puzzle. The choice of what strategy or technique to use to solve these problems is no longer a major challenge as all of them are found in any business or management books, if not, you will hear them from consultants with competencies in strategic formulation and planning.

Nowadays however, it is the choice of technology strategy that can spell the difference. The power of information and data banking has never been that important in corporate environment than it is today. That is why the choice of systems has become a major issue in the boardroom. For human resource management, the day-to-day challenges require an exceptional system that is flexible enough to adjust to any work environment and the culture of each organization per se. No foreign software solution is flexible enough to help you figure out your company’s HR concerns. International technology firms do not have the time, resources, and patience to change their systems just for you. If they do, it will cost you an arm and a leg, something your organization will hesitate to spend. On the other hand, not all local software providers are better options. Any local HRIS provider whose competencies do not include both exceptional technology skills and human resource management competencies will also be a poor choice. Customizing systems for your specific needs requires special skills, track record, and depth and breadth of experience in dealing with our kind of work environment.

Choosing an HRIS provider is like choosing a lifetime partner. You have to have an exceptional understanding and acceptance of the best and worst of each other, before you can work together comfortably and successfully. There are no perfect relationships, much more in business. But mutual understanding, respect, and trust that each partner will continue to strive hard to become a better partner is the key to any successful relationship, even in business.