What better place to be writing an article on HRMS resources for college and university professors than right here at the 15th Annual Fall Conference and Vendor Show of the International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM). Toronto is hopping this week with several hundred HRMS professionals and over 50 vendor booths where the “Who's Who” of the HRMS world has gathered to discuss and show off the latest in technology to assist the human resources profession.

Without a doubt the primary reason for the majority of people attending the conference is the networking that allows them to keep up to date with the fastest growing segment of the HR industry, technology. As it turns out, the academics I had the pleasure of chatting with at the conference stated basically the same reasons for being at the conference. Like any annual gathering of professionals, participants were anxious to hear what is the latest in our industry; what are the hot new companies and websites; what case studies may have solved a problem that others are anxious to hear about; what panel discussion hit on the hot topics of the day.

It will probably not come as a surprise to anyone that when academics and others leaders in our industry were asked what were their favorite web sites for getting information on HRMS issues, two universal resource locators (URL's) were mentioned most frequently, http://www.ihrim.org and http://www.pmihrm.com. The first more than likely as it's the obvious one given that were at one of IHRIM's premium events of the year and the latter out of kindness to myself. But with that on the table, let's take a look at these two sites.

IHRIM's site, http://www.ihrim.org is probably the most frequently visited site by academics, students and indeed practitioners alike. “IHRIM Press”, a new section has been featuring weekly releases of each of the 21 essays written by industry leaders on 21 Tomorrows: HR Systems in the Emerging Workplace of the 21st Century, the organization's millennium book. The full articles are there, free for the reading, a new one each week, and several of the previous articles till on line. Topics cover the whole gamut of specialties within HR, including Compensation, Succession Planning, International Perspectives, etc. This book and a new one released at the spring conference, KnowledgeManagement: Clarifying the Key Issues by Scott Tannenbaum and George Alligier are amongst the many books available to members and non-members alike, on-line. These authors and others will be available for on-line chats through the IHRIM web page on an ongoing basis. By early 2001 there will be a new book on HR Internet/Intranets by a number of authors and edited by yours truly.

The IHRIM products and services directory includes probably the most complete directory of vendors and consultants in the industry. It is available for free to members and for a small fee to others. The list is continually updated by Advanced Personnel Systems http://www.hrcensus.com/.

The Publications Online section gives access to a library of excellent articles from previous issues of IHRIM's two publications, the ihrim.LINK and the ihrim.JOURNAL.

The Hot Topics section contains literally hundreds of articles of interest to those studying the use of technology in HR. For example, visit http://www.ihrim.org/topics/intranet/whyintranet.cfm to see the many white papers and essays on HR Intranets.

The other URL most often mentioned, especially by the academics is our own web site, http://www.pmihrm.com/ and its new sister site http://www.hrmsbook.com/. The newer site has resources of interest to those teaching HRMS in the classroom, especially those using the Human Resources Management Systems: A Practical Approach by Rampton, Turnbull and Doran. Under “Resources for HRIS Instructors” visitors will find power point presentations for each of the 14 chapters of the textbook. These have been used by a large number of instructors as an aid to teaching the course. Some of these instructors have started to share their own web sites here and visitors can expand their information library by visiting some very interesting related sites.

The HRMS book site also has a “book store” where the authors and other instructors list the books they recommend for extra reading. The site also links to our main site, http://www.pmihrm.com/ where extensive lists of HR sites are listed under HR Management. A number of articles published in Canadian and USA publications are located at http://www.pmihrm.com/articles.html.

Other very popular resources online for academics include:

HR On-line, a Canadian web site managed by Jeff Hill, this site presents a bit of everything in HR. Regular updates related to what is happening on the Canadian HR legislation scene. See the “Library” for a very extensive section of articles on many topics including HRMS and payroll.
HR.com is a relative newcomer on the scene, but has caught the attention of the HRMS world. Based in Aurora, Ontario, but addressing global HR issues, and with a major USA focus, this group caught a lot of attention with their booth at the IHRIM conference in Boston. Led by Debbie McGrath, this company and web site addresses pretty well all of the HR disciplines but does give good coverage to technology in HR, especially the .com companies. HR.com is building a library of HRIS information.
hris.com.au is an excellent site for HRIS resources from Australia. See the HRIS Toolkits.
Software Source from the United Kingdom provides useful information on hot topics in HR technology.
The William M. Mercer site is the HR portal for Asia.
Society for Human Resource Management. With over 100,000 members this site gets a lot of visitors. USA HR professionals in particular, count on this site to get the latest information on legislative change, just as Canadians visit http://www.hrpao.org/ or their applicable provincial HR association site. SHRM has a wealth of information available online, and even more if you're a member. Their Buyer's Guide is available for all visitors to see and is quite extensive.
Workforce Online. This site contains a lot of information one would consider of interest to generalists, but it often does feature in depth articles on HRMS issues such as Internet/Intranet strategies.
and http://www.hr-software.net/ are excellent portals to many HRMS sites.
Forrester http://www.gartner.com and http://www.saratogainstitute.com/ link to the three best known research sites. Forrester, Gartner Group, and Saratoga Institute are the most often quoted sources of benchmarking and other information on human resources.
Webfeet is a great source of information on recruiting on the internet.

The majority of these URL's also link to a number of other sites that provide a wealth of information. Some take a bit of digging but that's what surfing is all about, it's supposed to be fun! It will be interesting to see what develops between now (November 2000, the time that this article was prepared) and June 2001 when IHRIM holds its annual spring conference in San Diego California. Academics, students and others will be watching http://www.ihrim.org to see what the hot topics will be as we move through 2001.

-Al Doran is President of Phenix Management Int'l, a Toronto, Ont. management consulting firm specializing in HRMS issues. He is co-author of the HRMS book published by Carswell, “Human Resource Management Systems: A Practical Approach”. He may be reached at: aldoran(at)pmiHRM.com and his home pages are http://www.pmihrm.com/ and http://www.hrmsbook.com

 -Al Doran, CHRP
Copyright © 1998 Phenix Management Int'l

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