Why HR & IT Need to Be In Sync: A Harmonized Approach to Tech and Talent

HR Technology: Where do IT and HR Meet?

HR teams are currently navigating a complex mix of challenges. Remote work has upended how organizations manage their workforce and respond to its changing needs. Macroeconomic instability, rounds of layoffs, hiring slow-downs, and chronic skills gaps have left companies scrambling to retain their best performers and keep them working at optimum capacity.

Technology is central to navigating this new reality, helping HR teams manage scattered workforces, build new processes, and analyze data across the employee lifecycle to make decisions that help employees thrive.

But the velocity of these changes has meant HR teams haven’t had the time or resources to build the tech and data infrastructure that will help them better serve the needs of their workforce. The result? An overpowered, oversized tech stack, with multiple employee points of entry, and a whole lot of fragmented data.

In this context, aligning HR and IT isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a necessity for building an HR function that’s equipped for meeting the needs of today’s world of work. IT can help build the foundations for HR to get the best from its technology, breaking down information silos, streamlining processes, and giving HR teams a cohesive view of their workforce’s most pressing needs.

How Your Organization Can Benefit From Greater HR and IT Alignment

When HR and IT are in sync, it helps both teams do their job more effectively. With support from IT, HR teams can maximize the full power of their tooling and data. Meanwhile, IT teams can reconfigure processes and platforms for optimal security and compliance.

This leads to a few key benefits:

• Data security and privacy: Building a centralized source of employee data means HR teams have a more complete overview of the employee experience, while IT has greater control over who accesses that data, keeping sensitive information secure.
• Operational efficiency: Core HR processes, like onboarding and offboarding, can often create a huge additional manual workload for both HR and IT — not to mention a security risk if a former employee gets missed. When HR and IT stay in sync, they can rebuild key process workflows, automate manual, repetitive tasks, and improve speed and accuracy.
• User experience: Incorporating IT’s expertise into HR processes can also help to drive a better employee experience. Better integration between core HR systems will limit the amount of logins, help employees navigate essential processes more effectively, and create a better user experience.
• Business-wide dataflow: An effective partnership between HR and IT drives better data interoperability and flow across the organization, enabling HR to better connect its initiatives to business impact, and improve strategic decision-making.

HR and IT Collaboration Challenges (And How to Overcome Them)

HR and IT may seem like they’re speaking a different language — but at their core, they’re both process-driven functions focused on delivering essential services to the broader organization and its workforce.

But there are a few challenges both teams need to be aware of to forge the most effective partnership.

1. Permissions and Security

Employee data is some of the most sensitive information organizations hold. But in the data-driven age of HR, misaligned perspectives between HR and IT can hamper attempts to collaborate effectively.

IT’s core focus is making sure this data stays secure, private, and that any systems housing this data are compliant and regularly maintained. But from an HR perspective, this data is a rich source of information on the employee experience that helps drive decision-making and support business strategy. They need some flexibility around data access controls and flow between tools, as well as self-serve data functionality.

2. Systems Incompatibility

HR and IT often use different systems and platforms for managing and processing data. But when one system isn’t compatible with the other, it can lead to data silos, or inaccurate, out-of-date data. It's an issue that's especially prevalent in organizations that are still using legacy software as part of their tech infrastructure.

Systems incompatibility doesn’t just lead to the potential for errors, it also significantly increases the manual burden needed to make up the shortfall.

For example, working with two incompatible systems could result in HR needing to manually send onboarding reminders to the IT team to order the tech and set up new hires’ user accounts. Long term, systems incompatibility could result in a cascade of manual input errors that not only impact efficiency but compromise the employee experience.

3. Competing Priorities

HR’s primary focus is people. It’s making sure employees get paid on time, are able to work at their best, and have opportunities for growth and progression.

But the IT team sees things differently. They want to make sure the compensation software employees get paid by is secure, keep the organization safe from cybersecurity threats, and ensure employee devices are up-to-date and functioning.

Aligning HR and IT for Mutual Success

Solving all of these challenges hinges on HR and IT finding common ground by aligning mutual business objectives. Developing joint KPIs, whether qualitative or quantitative, will help both keep actions aligned to support business success while driving process changes.

For example, setting a mutual goal to improve the employee onboarding experience can help both departments unify on a common objective. For HR, the primary goal is creating a smooth onboarding experience and improving time-to-ramp, while IT can build workflows to ensure new hires have access to properly configured tech and essential platforms from day one.

How the Right HR Tech Can Make Collaboration Easier

Forging a more effective partnership between HR and IT teams is an equal balance of aligning people and processes. Getting the tech right can be helpful for sustaining this partnership work long-term.

Implementing an integrated HR solution that manages key processes including talent, performance, compensation, and core HR, provides both teams with a centralized system that unifies data in one place.

From the IT side, it’s easier to manage implementation, automation, and database maintenance. Meanwhile, for HR leaders, it offers a more cohesive way of storing, analyzing, and reporting on employee data, as well as a simpler employee user experience.

If an all-in-one platform isn’t the right fit, choosing tools with solid integration points will keep data flowing between HR and IT, and help teams avoid data lock-in. This approach reduces the need for advanced management on the backend if tools or data formats don’t work together well. It also helps both HR and IT maintain essential data touchpoints without the need to commit to a single platform.

As an example, implementing an access management tool that syncs your HR data with your Active Directory can help both teams better manage and automate software access for new hires while minimizing security risks from insecure employee passwords.

Learn More: Two HR Technology Trends for 2024: From AI to EX

Building A Partnership Between HR and IT to Drive Business Success

Partnering with HR enables IT to build more responsive workflows that address gaps in core processes impacting the employee experience — while for HR, it’s an opportunity to unlock greater value from workforce data and the HR tech stack.

Making this partnership sustainable long-term requires mutual goal alignment, and building a tech infrastructure that prioritizes process efficiency, compliance, and business outcomes.

Paylocity’s Access Management helps IT and HR build this partnership by helping each manage core people processes in one place. Access Management helps teams: 

• Sync HR data to the Active Directory and manage access controls.
• Provision access to over 7,000 platforms, including Office 365, Zoom, and Google Workspace.
• Automate new hire account creation while prioritizing data security and privacy.
• Onboard new hires more quickly and improve their time-to-ramp with a centralized suite of tools.

Find out more by requesting a demo.