The impact of human resources information systems and business process management implementations on recruiting process performance:

1) Introduction  

Business process management (BPM) is a combination of tools and measures to enable effective and efficient business processes and to gain a competitive advantage (Hung 2006). It is intensely discussed by IS researchers and practitioners since the late 1980s and especially since Hammer and Champy (1993) introduced the business process reengineering (BPR) approach. BPM approaches are often applied in the industry context primarily focusing on customer-facing or operational processes (Kohlbacher 2006). BPM approaches focusing on secondary service processes are not often reported in the literature and are often neglected by managers in organizations (Kohlbacher 2006, Ulbrich 2006), as BPM is based on the BPR approach which focuses on a radical change of an organization’s core processes.  

For example for the secondary support process of human resources management (HRM), “no one seems to have developed a business process model of the HRM business processes” (Cakar et al. 2003, p. 191), although “treating the HRM process as a support process [provides] critical support to the key valued add processes” (Cakar et al. 2003, p. 191). Some of the first ideas analyze the effect of business process standardization on business process performance of the recruiting process (Munstermann et al. 2010). Although, these approaches still only provide snapshots of particular granular effects of BPM for a secondary service process and the positive effects provided by adopting a holistic process view as suggested by BPM are still unclear (Houy et al. 2011). Moreover, these approaches ignore the implementation of respective information systems that support the corresponding business processes. For example, in a HRM context it is shown that the implementation of human resources information systems (HRIS) provide benefits for the organization (Lang et al. 2010, Eckhardt et al. 2012, Eckhardt et al. 2014), but the full potential might only be realized if a BPM approach is established as well, which has not been intensively focused on by prior research (Houy et al. 2010, 2011).  

            Hence, further research is necessary to analyze the success of information systems (IS) and BPM implementation in organization, which is why our research aims at contributing to IS research by examining the following research question while focusing on the success of a HIRS and BPM implementation in a particular organization:  

2) What benefits do HRIS and BPM implementation provide for secondary service processes such as the recruiting process?  

This research question will be evaluated using a case study focusing on the implementation of a HRIS and BPM implementation for the recruiting process of a financial service provider. The frame of the paper is as follows. In the following section we introduce relevant literature on business process management and the recruiting process in order to develop a research model of business process management in secondary service processes and the corresponding impacts in section 3. Section 4 presents the results of our case study, which will be discussed in the concluding section of the paper. 

3) Business Process Management

 Definition “Business Process Management” 

 In general while conducting BPM, it is important to acknowledge that not all processes are equal (Lee and Dale 1998). Most BPM approaches start with an inventory of the organization’s processes in order to identify the core processes for improvement. The core process owner and the BPM team document and analyze the processes, identify performance problems, select an improvement strategy, and implement changes to the process (Detoro and Mccabe 1997). However, these activities which are mainly based on BPR approaches are only one side of BPM. The other side includes a continuous monitoring of process performance, the assessment of results, and continuously implementing improvements (Detoro and Mccabe 1997). Hence, BPM is both, a set of tools and techniques for improving processes and a method for integrating the whole organization. 

Hence, BPM concepts can either be defined as “a structured systematic approach to analyze and continually improve the process” (Palmberg 2009, p. 204) labeled as BPM in the large (Houy et al. 2011) or as “a holistic manner to manage all aspects of the business and a valuable perspective in determining organizational effectiveness” (Palmberg 2009, p. 204) summarized as BPM in the small (Houy et al. 2011). Whereby, BPM in the small concentrates on single processes or scenarios, comprising a few isolated processes, BPM in the large focuses on handling complexity and dynamics throughout the whole BPM life cycle including collaborative modeling, configurable process models, and process mining. 

As our approach is to analyze the impact of BPM in secondary service processes the following focuses on BPM in the small (Houy et al. 2011). The core activities of BPM in the small involve an understanding and definition of the process, its key activities, and the process architecture (Houy et al. 2011). Moreover, the ownership of the process must be established by defining and appointing process owners. Identifying performance measurements and targets for controlling the process is one key activity of BPM on an operational level so that process improvements can be identified and implemented (Palmberg 2009). Moreover, Netjes et al. define the BPM life cycle for managing business processes with five aspects: Design, configuration, execution, control, and diagnosis (Netjes 2006). Zur Muhlen and Ho (2006) introduce a BPM lifecycle including organizational analysis, specification and modeling, workflow modeling and implementation, workflow execution, controlling and process mining, and business activity monitoring. Houy et al. (2010, 2011) integrate these and other BPM approaches and introduce the concept of BPM containing the following steps: strategy development, process definition and modeling, process implementation, process execution, process controlling, process optimization. 

We will adopt the definition of BPM in the small and will focus on the different steps explained by Houy et al. (2010, 2011) in order to investigate the effects of BPM in secondary business processes. Before, we introduce some first ideas of BPM in the recruiting context the following section summarizes prior approaches to illustrate the impacts of BPM on business processes in general. 

4) Impact of BPM on Business Processes 

                Several authors argue that BPM enables a variety of benefits. For example, Hammer (2007, p. 111) highlights that “in virtually every industry, companies of all sizes have achieved extraordinary improvements in cost, quality, speed, profitability, and other key areas by focusing on, measuring, and redesigning their costumer-facing and internal processes“ (Hammer 2007). In this context, scholars name reduction of cost, increasing cycle time, improvement of customer satisfaction, and improvement of quality as the main benefits organizations can realize by implementing BPM (Kohlbacher 2010). Several scholars (see Kohlbacher 2010 for an overview) report that BPM enables positive effects such as speed improvements, increasing customer satisfaction, improvement of quality, reduction of costs, and improvement of financial performance 

5) HRIS and BPM in the Recruiting Processes

 

            The conducted interviews and the provided materials of the organizations have been coded and structured according to our research model. Hence, we will describe in the following for each step what the organization has implemented in order to enable HRIS and BPM in the recruiting process. 

• Strategy Development  

                        During the Strategy Development step one uses the business strategy and objectives as well as the requirements of key business processes to formulate the strategy of the recruiting process and to set objectives of the process. The requirements for the recruiting process are mainly determined by the labor market conditions. The organization realized the “war for talent” has gotten worse during the last years and several target groups like sales or IT are especially challenging in the context of finding qualified candidates. Moreover, the recruiting process was only supported by IT for a few tasks and every decentralized HR subsidiary has implemented their own processes and tools, for example some published job ads on internet job boards while others remained with advertisements in printed media. Hence, the organization develops a strategy to implement a centralized recruiting supported by a single applicant tracking systems in order to provide better information and services to its candidates and to optimize its personnel marketing activities. As the implementation of the new strategy required a radical change of the recruiting process the organization started with a BPR approach in order to develop a new way of managing and executing the recruiting process.

• Business Process Reengineering  

                        The basic idea of the BPR project was to implement an applicant tracking system and to manage the recruiting process according to BPM principles. The first step was to define the new process and to integrate the process in a newly implemented applicant tracking system. Afterwards, the new process and the systems were rolled-out to all subsidiaries making all HR employees have to work in the same process using the HRIS. Moreover, key performance indicators were defined and their measurement has been implemented in the new system in order to enable a continuous improvement of the recruiting process. 

• Process Definition and Documentation  

                    The process has been defined consisting of six sub-processes: Plan, Attract, Relate, Select, Win & Hire, and Onboard. In the Plan step the requirement amount of personnel resources is defined and corresponding budget is approved. In the Attract- and Relate steps the organization uses different channels to attract potential and qualified candidates using passive (e.g., job boards, social media, websites) and active (e.g. searching and attracting actively candidates) recruiting measures. For the Select step the organization uses online applications where incoming applications are automatically stored in the applicant tracking system and can be evaluated by the recruiter. In the Win & Hire step the organization provides the selected candidates a job offer and the contract is signed. In the final step the organization supports new employees during their onboarding activities. For each process step the organization has documented the tasks and activities. 

• Process Standardization  

                    The newly defined recruiting process has been standardized as it is implemented in the new applicant tracking system and each subsidiary is expected to work with the new system and the new process. This enables an organization-wide integration of tasks and information of the recruiting process. Furthermore, each subsidiary can benefits from the experiences of the organization to continuously improve the different steps of the recruiting process.

• Process Controlling  

                        A major component of the implemented BPM approach is process controlling. For managing the process the organization has defined key performance indicators in order to continuously improve the process based on observable facts indicating inefficiencies in the process. Based on the developed strategy the organization has defined key performance indicators for time, quality, cost, and satisfaction dimensions like “Talent-on-Time“, “Brand Strength“, “Offer Acceptance“ (ratio of signed working contracts with the company and the company’s made offers), “Efficiency“, and “Quality of New Hires“. The collection of these key performance indicators started with system implementation. 

                        In the Attract and the Relate phase the number of the job ad page visits is observed. Additionally, the new approach offers the possibility to track the number of these online applications, which have been completely filled out by the applicants. This helps the company to monitor how many job views are necessary to generate completely filled out applications. Moreover, the applicant tracking system in use offers the information, via the media channels the candidates are attracted to apply and these applications are gathered. 

                        For the HRIS and BPM approach, it is essentially important to track down the time of each process step in order to avoid process inefficiencies. Therefore, the Time-to-Hire was split up in granular single process steps to provide transparency in terms of overall and individual process step time. Cost transparency is another important issue during the Win & Hire phase. On the one hand, the company gathers information on the cost for open unfilled positions, as well as on the other hand on the cost of each individual process step. For a further improvement of the recruiting process, the company also evaluated the candidate experience with individual process steps in the Win & Hire as well as the Onboard phase. The system also provides the possibility to ask candidates for reasons why they rejected a contract offered by the company in question. 

• Process Improvement  

                        Based on this knowledge, the company also started to further improve and revise their process steps. First evaluations after the system implementation showed that candidates are satisfied with the information provided but are slightly dissatisfied with the company’s response time concerning their submitted application. In relation with the gathered key performance indicator Talent-on-Time, this led to a further process improvement initiative, as both stakeholders (candidates and operating department) were dissatisfied with the status quo. 

                With the help of the gathered process time, the company was able to increase process efficiency, as too much time went by between the incoming application and a first evaluation by the responsible recruiter. As a result, the company focused and improved this process step. In general, the organization started to improve the newly implemented recruiting process based on the information derived from the different steps of the BPM in the small approach. 

6) Business Value of HRIS and BPM in Recruiting

 

                    Both the implementation of the HRIS and the use of BPM have led to several significant improvements and value contributions for the company. Starting with the implementation of the new system and the BPM approach it was first made possible to reveal the value contribution for the company. The company was able to assess that they reduced their total cost in staff recruitment by fifty percent between 2007 and 2010. Especially, the cost for job postings and the cost per hire could be reduced, as depicted in Figure 3 (left side).  

                    Furthermore, the HRIS also helped to reveal a value contribution in personnel marketing. The number of visitors of the career website increased significantly as well as the impressions per job ad (see Figure 3 – right side). Based on the key performance indicators gathered in the process controlling the company found out, that adjustments in the personnel marketing strategy (e.g., reduced number of offline job ads and increasing use of online job boards) led to more visitors on the career website and to less impressions per job ad.

7) References  

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