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Gaps between traditional HR software and the committee decision model
Read about five specific needs of the committee model used for academic evaluation, which are decisions that most HRIS leave unmet.
Is HR-driven software the wrong tool for academic hiring and evaluations?
As with large employers of all kinds, most universities use some kind of campus-wide or departmental human resources information system (HRIS) to handle the administrative details of their personnel. They rely on these broad-scope systems to store, update, and export information about payroll, time tracking holidays, leave and absences, and employee benefits for all staff at the institution.
However, academic promotion and recruitment decisions demand a deliberative process that generic HRIS are ill-equipped to replicate. Such processes virtually always call for collaborative peer review, involving a series of reviewers who must sign off in their turn. These decisions involve far more coordination than simply attending a particular meeting on a particular day.
Unfortunately, the current technology built to serve the needs of the Human Resources office simply does not provide for the workflow of academic evaluation. Users are left frustrated and piecing together their committee process over email, shared drives, and printouts. It’s essential to assess whether or not you’ve got the right tool for the job, especially when it is as high-stakes as your academic staff.
Here, we identify five gaps between a traditional HRIS and the committee decision model used for academic evaluation.
Gap #1: The committee member experience
Broad-scope HRIS lack “signposts” throughout the software to direct committee members clearly to their work. Instead, the interface often presents users with a busy-looking screen filled with text or drowns them in features or information not relevant to their role in the recruitment process. Committee members can take unnecessary effort to access candidate materials, especially with large applicant pools.
In addition, an HRIS typically doesn’t offer a good way to view dense academic materials and supporting documents within the platform. Committee members or administrators end up downloading—and perhaps printing out—piles of individual PDFs. Moreover, the software doesn’t make it easy for various committee members to be confident they’re reviewing the same materials, let alone record their evaluations and sign off that they have done their part. Committee members waste minutes every time they sign in just sifting through irrelevant records and verifying that they’re seeing all the correct documents, trying to pick up where they left off.
If software more clearly directed committees and support staff to the records and documents they need to review and gave them easy review and markup tools within the platform, it would start to be an asset to the peer review committee model—rather than an obstacle.
“In a faculty promotion action, as a file travels through its decision-making journey, that paper file goes through review and documents are added as it passes from one hand to another. All sorts of stuff happens to it. By the time the President makes a decision on it, it is not the same file the faculty voted on. There are issues of justice, equity, and fairness that get introduced into the process through having those paper files.”
AP
Associate Provost
Large Urban Public University, North America
Gap #2: Control over workflow
In most business software, it can prove challenging to replicate the detailed rules around review sequence and user permissions that are of critical importance in academic hiring decisions. In many cases, it’s not because of a lack of clarity about the rules. Most institutions codify which parties need to review which materials and in which order.
As a workaround, many universities turn to relatively simple filesharing platforms. It can be difficult to be confident that certain documents will be available only to certain people at certain times. To really leverage a digital platform for this kind of sequential review, you should be able to establish the review pathway in advance and define a specific range of motion at each step. Right now, that’s not something most HRIS are built to do. For a platform to adequately support academic recruitment, it should offer a detailed workflow logic capable of matching that institution’s structure and very granular user permissions at each step.
Challenges in file sharing
Gap #3: Academic-specific data
In the typical HRIS, it can be surprisingly difficult to separate a list of academic searches from the general list of all current opportunities at the institution. Now, it’s true that from a Human Resources office perspective, there are many scenarios in which you’d want to see a list of vacancies, irrespective of whether they’re academic staff, full-time staff, administration, temporary, or casual staff. But from the perspective of academic leaders and reviewers, it can be overwhelming and cluttered.
Here’s a common scenario: When you sign in, you have to search through menus and filters to find a list of only the committee-based searches in your institution or only the Lecturers or Associate Professors. You then need to validate that you’ve got all of the material submitted by the candidate (some of which, e.g., scholarly works and media, may not be stored in a typical HRIS). And you may have to do this whenever you have a question about those vacancies. What might sound like a minor inconvenience during a single-user session can add up to major friction when user after user has difficulty locating a particular position or key supporting materials. To be sure, the most patient users may dutifully attempt to adapt to the tedium of navigating the platform. But does it have to be that way?
Software for academic evaluation decisions should make it simple for users to view academic-specific data throughout a single session so that they can focus on comparing and considering the distinctive kinds of information and merits of the candidates.
“From a cost-benefit perspective, our faculty are one of our institution’s biggest investments. To not have that stewarded in some sort of efficient, professional tool, would be derelict on our part.”
SAVP
Senior Associate Vice President
Mid-Size Midwestern University, North America
Gap #4: Communication tools
Most HRIS in place at academic institutions don’t facilitate communication with candidates, recommendation writers, or peer reviewers in the way that these careful processes demand. Applicants need to hear from departments when they’ve submitted their applications and when further documents are required. Recommendation letter writers need to be notified when they have successfully submitted their letters (and when they haven’t). Reviewers need to receive the committee’s requests in a clear, compelling, professional manner and receive related notifications.
If you’re required to run your committee work through an HRIS, you’ll typically have to come up with a separate system for managing contact with candidates and shuffle files between the two. You’ll also have sensitive correspondence about various individuals’ career decisions scattered across individual email accounts rather than accessed by signing into the system where the rest of the application materials are stored.
Could all this happen through dedicated email accounts? Sure. Does that option serve the needs of busy committees and staff well? Not in the least.
Technology that better supports academic decision workflows must include tools matching the communication involved in these workflows. For example:
It should enable you to identify shortlists or subgroups of candidates to receive particular personalized messages.
You should be able to set up an automated series of messages to alert candidates about developments in the decision process.
The system should offer a record of all the messages sent concerning a specific decision or of only those sent to a particular candidate or reviewer.
Difficulties in communication
Gap #5: The candidate experience
Systems intended for Human Resources professionals characteristically place less value on the interface and tools for candidates. With most common HRIS, the candidate has a notoriously impersonal and irritating experience around things like:
Knowing in advance what they’ll be asked to provide (and how long that might take)
Checking different versions of the documents and information they’ve submitted
Making replacements to required materials
Cancelling a confidential recommendation request to send a new one
Verifying that they’ve done what’s required of them
A confusing candidate interface creates a redundant support burden for the department—meaning that the process takes longer, and staff members’ attention is spread thinly. It can also constrain an individual candidate’s opportunity to best present their character and contributions as a scholar.
Technology that truly supports academic talent must take seriously the value of an easy and straightforward candidate experience—and administrators should, too, when making their technology selections. Useful software for academic recruitment will provide the candidate with a path to submission, a well-labelled toolkit, and a straightforward way to double-check their activity and the distinctive kinds of information involved in these procedures.
“Instead of submitting an application to an email address, prospective faculty go to a site to work through a clear digital process, which makes requirements clear.”
AD
Assistant Director
Business School, Europe
Making efficient, strategic decisions
To put all this in another light: Because of the compliance and liability needs of large employers, the main objective of most HRIS platforms—including those marketed to higher education—is to make it more convenient for a central Human Resources office to catalog and retrieve various kinds of records. However, because these systems prioritize this business perspective, the interface and vocabulary frequently get in the way of academic users (rather than being an asset to them) when committee decisions are concerned. Such limitations suggest that the technology that looks best from a traditional HR perspective may, in fact, be hindering departments’ ability to make academic talent and evaluation decisions efficiently and strategically.
Technology that doesn't join up with the requirements for academic roles