What is an HRIS? - Human Resource Information System (HRIS)

An HRIS (Human Resource Information System) is HR software that holds an organisation's employee database digitally on a single cloud platform, enabling HR activities like recruitment, records, leave, and performance to run electronically. It organises data, cuts paperwork, and frees HR for strategic work.

Quick Summary

• HRIS is the exchange of human resources and information technology through HR software, making HR processes electronic.
• Benefits: organised, searchable data instead of filing cabinets, and fewer operational tasks so HR can focus on strategy.
• Value added: less paperwork (businesses spend $8 billion a year on paper), better compliance, oversight, onboarding, and productivity.
• 11 crucial HRIS features to check, from master data management and self-service to appraisals and analytics.
• HRIS vs HRMS: an HRMS adds talent management and human capital management on top of HRIS capabilities.
• Cloud HRIS replaces cumbersome Excel tracking and standardises everyday procedures like holiday approvals.

What are the Benefits of an HRIS?

The two headline benefits of an HRIS are organisation and economy: data becomes centralised, categorised, and searchable, while HR sheds operational tasks and gains time for strategy, retention, and human capital management.

There are many benefits of HRIS software, and they may differ depending on the modules you choose, but here are some of the main benefits.

HRIS software contains the features needed for end-to-end Human Resources Management (HRM). It has a system for recruitment, performance management, learning & development, and more.

Get Organised

Collect data, track, update, and search in an organised manner. With HRIS, you don't have to search through filing cabinets or different versions of spreadsheets. Your data are correctly categorised.

Be Economic

Having HRIS means less operational tasks for HR, which means more time to work on strategies that improve business outcomes. The team can focus on techniques for retention, employee orientation, and human capital management.

There's a compounding effect too: organised data makes every downstream process cheaper. Payroll inputs arrive clean, audits close faster, and reports that once took days assemble themselves in minutes.

How Your HRIS Adds Value to Your Company?

An HRIS adds value in five measurable ways: it decreases paperwork, ensures greater compliance, improves oversight, enhances the new-hire experience, and boosts productivity across the team.

Decrease Paperwork

Businesses spend upwards of $8 billion every single year to manage paper. HRIS decreases the HR department's contribution to the regularly increasing writing collection by enabling employees to create and store forms online.

Ensures Greater Compliance

It's not enough to sign and deposit the right paperwork. Those documents need to be completed on time, filed with the right business or departments, and be immediately accessible for government audits or other legal concerns.

Improve Oversight

Executives and business owners can save innumerable hours by relying on an HRIS for maintaining the application and interview procedure, setting and tracking training goals for new employees, and scheduling reviews.

Enhance Customer Service

Using HRIS to implement and manage a tricky onboarding and training process gives new hires all advantages to communicating with their potential.

Boost Productivity

New employees get hired to fill vacancies left by other staff. When an employee quits or gets fired, the remaining staff combines to fill the departing employee's shoes and their own till a new team member is hired and trained.

When seeking for an HR platform, these are the most crucial HRIS features to keep in mind:

• Master data management
• Organisational management, such as positions and departments
• Employee and manager self-services
• Absence and leave management
• Benefits administration
• Workflows
• Performance appraisals
• Recruiting and applicant tracking
• Compensation management
• Training tracking and organisational development
• Reporting and basic analytics

Use this feature list as a scoring sheet during vendor demos: mark each item as available, configurable, or missing, and the right platform for your organisation becomes visible on one page.

What is the Difference between HRIS and HRMS?

The difference between HRIS and HRMS comes down to scope: many experts consider an HRMS the bigger system, adding talent management and human capital management (HCM) options on top of the record-keeping and automation an HRIS provides.

Exact definitions for HRIS and HRMS vary, but many experts believe that an HRMS offers greater features by adding talent management and human capital management (HCM) options to human resource information systems (HRIS).

An HRIS or HRMS typically helps improve HR teams work efficiently, productively, and correctly by holding secure records and automating essential processes.

An HRMS or HRIS systems is a powerful source of insight that improves workforce planning by showing employee engagement HR trends and behaviours and measuring satisfaction and productivity with an accessible depository of data.

Both cloud HRIS and HRMS are widely used terms representing software platforms that help People and HR leaders in commercial and public organisations to take care of their workforce.

A simple rule of thumb: if you mainly need clean records, reports, and core process automation, an HRIS fits. If you also want payroll, attendance, and the full employee lifecycle in one system, a full-suite HRMS is the natural step up.

Conclusion

Working with a cloud HRIS has various advantages for the organisation, HR, and the employee. At this time, maintaining the necessary information in Excel becomes cumbersome and easy procedures like approving employee holidays can be standardised. We hope this article gave you a reliable overview of what an HRIS is, its main functionalities, and the benefit of implementing such a system.

For many years, HR & Payroll software like greytHR have been in this industry to provide the right solution that you are looking for in your small business, located in 150+ cities, including Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, and many more. greytHR not only helps you to process accurate payroll every month, but it also comes with in-built statutory compliance, expense management, leave, and attendance management modules.

If you are on the lookout for the best HR software, don't forget to review greytHR.

See how greytHR brings payroll, leave, attendance, and compliance together in one place. Explore greytHR, the full-suite HRMS, or start a free trial to run your entire people operations on a single platform.

greytHR is India's leading HR and payroll platform, offering 50+ Hire-to-Retire tools that automate recruiting, onboarding, payroll, attendance, leave, and compliance. Trusted by 34,000+ businesses, it manages over 3.2 million employees across 25+ countries.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an HRIS in simple terms?

Software where human resources and information technology meet: employee data and HR processes managed electronically in one central cloud system.

What are the main benefits of an HRIS?

Organised, searchable employee data, less paperwork, stronger compliance, better oversight, smoother onboarding, and more HR time for strategy.

What features should an HRIS have?

Master data management, self-service, leave and absence management, workflows, appraisals, recruiting, compensation management, training tracking, and reporting.

What is the difference between HRIS and HRMS?

An HRMS adds talent management and human capital management options on top of an HRIS, alongside payroll and time management.

Why choose a cloud HRIS over Excel?

Excel becomes cumbersome as headcount grows; a cloud HRIS standardises procedures like holiday approvals and keeps data current everywhere.