Managing (human) Resources in the Cloud

Managing Human Resources in the cloud is becoming a huge trend, according to this blog post, but also according to my own limited experience. Whether you are managing talents (what we used to call Hiring), train employees, are involved in performance reviews, or handle payroll, pretty soon these activities will reside in the Cloud if we have to believe SAP or Oracle, and we would be wise to believe them.  

In my previous place of enjoyment (sorry, employment) we handled all travel expenses online, including approvals and electronic deposits. At my new place of employment (sorry, enjoyment) we stopped receiving pay stubs six weeks ago. The Sigma-Aldrich Corporation announced the change one time and hasn't said anything about it since. When it comes to money, employees learn quickly. They know that if they want to see how their paycheck ended up being more or less than last time, where to find, and download, the answer. 

It seems like a natural extension from what has finally started to happen in the health care sector, sharing data between stakeholders. Although for an company's HR department there is probably less concern about privacy as each company only manages its own human resources. No need to get approval from all stakeholders, such as would be required in a democracy. If a company believes that it can reduce cost by beaming up its employee records, and apparently that case is not that hard to make anymore, it just does it. My employer never asked its employees whether they thought it was a good idea for the employee to access their pay stubs online. And so far all seems hunky dory, that is until someone hacks into one of these systems and reveals how much the top tier makes in Your Company. But is that really different from that nosy HR employee who continues to wonder why you are making as much as you do?

This Cloud business is a lot bigger than we think. Remember the talk fifteen or so years ago about dummy terminals that would run on distributed software over the Internet? It didn't happen then, but it is happening now. For America to continue to lead the exploration of the Cloud Frontier it is high time to replace our Leaves-To-Be-Desired wireless infrastructure. It makes you realize how forward looking this country was when telephones came on the scene and the decision was made that all citizens were to be equally well connected. Let's not forget how amazingly well that worked out.