Human Resources Information Systems in S.M.E.’s

Information Technology (IT) is a critical resource for today's businesses (Pearlson, 2009). It supports a large amount of an organization's resources such as people, money and machine. Technology facilitates employees at their workplace. Employees could focus on their time and value - added work by integrating Human Resource Information System (HRIS) into their organization's set up. The main purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which SME's have adopted human resource information systems and to examine its uses, benefits and barriers in this industry. Based on previous studies, a structured questionnaire was constructed and a pilot test was conducted. Based on the results, it was then modified to capture data of HRIS users in SME's. The main findings of this study revealed that quick response and access to information were the main benefits of HRIS implementation. Inadequate financial support, intricacies involved in changing the organization's culture and lack of assurance from top management were some of the barriers to HRIS implementation. The current study attempts to help Human Resource Management (HRM) professionals to get greater understanding of the current HRIS uses, benefits and barriers and also to help to gain some insight into the performance and applications of HRIS in SME's. This could, in turn, help in improving the effectiveness of HRIS in this industry.