IT HR Considerations

The audience for this program are IT managers interested in enhancing their "people management" skills and effectiveness, and HR professionals (and other non-IT executives) interested in enhancing their support of IT employees.  In addition, all of the courses focus on understanding how to leverage emerging HR information technologies across the entire HR value chain.

  • Hiring, retaining, motivating, compensating, assessing, eliminating, benefits, and skills development are fundamental to every organization.  Compounding the importance and challenges of HR are the dynamics of the economy, diversity (e.g., sex, age, ethnicity) of the workforce,  sourcing alternatives, work at home, and the impact of emerging information technologies.


  • Established CIOs devote 13% of their time to managing their staff and 8% on HR issues. It is also noteworthy that the current economic/pandemic conditions have apparently lowered the priority of human resources (HR) considerations. IT HR considerations were ranked 17th among CIOs, down from among the top considerations prior to the economic and pandemic conundrums.
  1. Recruiting
  2. Performance reviews
  3. Employee onboarding/offboarding processes
  4. Employee engagement initiatives
  5. Talent development and training
  6. Workforce planning
  7. HR Chatbot’s and virtual assistants (e.g., benefits, policies, procedures)

HR solutions are usually cloud-based and integrated seamlessly across an organization's other applications and workflows, and designed with an accessible human interface.  It should facilitate all aspects of the HR value chain and consider emerging information technologies like AI. 

The entire HR value chain is addressed.

Select at least 4 courses from the following
(All courses are available live/synchronously face-to-face & online)

 1. Organizational Behavior

This course will provide participants with an overview of the individual and interpersonal factors affecting the operation of organizations. It addresses the individual, the group and department, and the overall organization itself. Topics to be covered will include a view of the organization as a structured system of groups and individuals, job design and job behavior, individual and group performance, motivation, job satisfaction, leadership, intra and inter-group conflict, communication, power & politics, and organizational design. The course will help participants assess their own strengths and weaknesses as employees, group members, and (future) managers.

2. Deriving a Sourcing Strategy

This course will cover the formulation of a sourcing strategy to include topics ranging from determining whether to source an initiative in-house or to outsource it, the evaluation of candidates for strategic sourcing through supplier selection and the transition to the new sourcing provider(s). Potential sourcing initiatives include all aspects of information technology (IT) – e.g. application development, maintenance, support services such as help desk, infrastructure (e.g., cloud computing and shared sourcing along with more traditional models), etc. Outsourcing options will include selecting vendors from onshore, offshore, nearshore, and rural. Insourcing considerations include staff availability and training demands. The emphasis of this course will be on the formulation of a strategy and the practical applications related to its execution.

3.  HR Processes & Services

The course addresses the techniques and concepts required to map, implement, automate, and evaluate HR business processes. These processes include hiring, retaining, motivating, compensating, benefits, assessing, eliminating, and skills development.  Focusing on the technical and implementation aspects of Business Process Management, the course leads participants from technical process design through the implementation and management of workflows to the structure of process-aware information systems supporting HR. It discusses the distinction between business processes and business rules and outlines how they can be supported by technology. It details the technical structure of HR process-aware applications and provides an overview of technology standards that affect BPM systems. Modules on the run-time monitoring of HR processes and post-execution evaluation techniques complete this course.

4.  Trends & Directions in HR

The dynamic business and technical environments demand that IT and HR work together to define the strategies for leveraging IT to enhance HR services. Understanding changes such as the shifting economy, globalization, different generations and staff diversity, work at home considerations, in concert with emerging technologies such as bring your own device, apps, and business intelligence has become fundamental. 

This course focuses on how HR and IT organizations can effectively and efficiently assess trends and emerging technologies.  Participants will learn how to help their organization define, select, and adopt new information technologies.

This course will introduce candidates to new directions in information systems and effective approaches for evaluating their relevance and applicability to their business environments as well as the new challenges and problems that they present. They will learn about emerging technologies and the latest design trends in data and knowledge, networks and applications in terms of what issues they address and in particular, how HR organizations can exploit them for competitive advantage.

5. Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS)

IT systems to support the HR processes are fundamental. Systems are available to support HR management, benefits, payroll, recruiting, employee-performance management, E-learning, employee portals/ self-service, workforce analytics, enterprise-incentive management, successor planning, travel, and vacation management. Sourcing considerations regarding make versus buy or in house versus outsource are essential. Vendors such as PeopleSoft, Lawson, Ultimate Software, let alone service providers such as ADP all demand consideration.

6.  Internationalization and Inclusion: How To Hire, Train, Retain and Value Diverse Talent

There is a lot of debate about diversity in tech, “the IT sector needs to promote more diversity”, “the IT sector is already diverse”, “diversity can foster creativity and innovation”… but what does it mean diversity and which challenges does diversity bring with it?

Companies and organizations nowadays operate in a global marketplace, they need to operate in and from different locations and across sectors interacting with different cultures and environments, globally and locally. Globalization has also increased cultural diversity in our societies, and companies and organizations are recognizing its value in terms of innovation and creativity. Having a homogeneous workforce can in fact lead to conscious and unconscious biases that can also affect the development of some technologies like facial recognition and cybersecurity, among the others. While diverse backgrounds, viewpoints and experiences can help to overcome the blind spots, develop new innovative, inclusive and comprehensive technologies and increase the level of protection and security.
 
But together with opportunities, cultural diversity brings also challenges: from internal organizational structure to company strategy, from human resource management to interacting and doing business across different markets.

This is why how to hire, train, retain and value diverse talents and promote an inclusive workplace is becoming more and more a priority for companies in all sectors.

The course will enable participants to:

  • enhance communication and productivity,
  • value and transform their diverse workforce into a real competitive advantage
  • be aware of the effects of conscious and unconscious biases and promote a diverse approach in all the stages of the process from writing a job description to the selection
  • identify critical aspects of the applicant’s culture and potential issues and clashes with the local and/or corporate culture
  • enhance awareness and understanding of the value of an inclusive workforce/meeting the needs of diverse service users and clients
  • learn effective cross-cultural communication strategies and diversity and inclusion practices in the workplace
  • develop intercultural competencies to form, engage and lead intercultural team
  • pave the way for strategies, tools and synergies, more successful teams and more sustainable results.

Human Resource Management Elective

This course looks at the management of people in organizational contexts to create awareness of essential organizational resources. The course highlights the most important elements and tools human resource (HR) managers can adopt, and discusses ways of maximizing their efficacy, focusing on IT considerations.


Learning Outcomes


Knowledge: On completion of this course the successful candidate will demonstrate:

  1. An in-depth and advanced knowledge and understanding of the key elements of HR management
  2. A systematic knowledge and sophisticated grasp of the different tools HR managers have at their disposal
  3. A critical awareness of the suitability and limitations of HR tools for different people management-related problems,  enabling them to recommend ways of maximizing the efficacy of different HR tools and propose solutions.


Skills: At the end of this course the successful candidate should be able to:

  1. Critically evaluate the role of HR in business organizations
  2. Assess the impact of different HR tools for key areas of HR management
  3. Research and appraise suitable HR tools for a number of different organizational problems
  4. Recommend appropriate HR tools for a number of people-oriented business problems and assess their impact
  5. Critically evaluate different leadership models and put forward approaches of leadership to professional situations in  case studies.


Course Topics Include:

  1. The role of HR in business organizations
  2. Recruitment and selection
  3. Employee induction
  4. Human resource development
  5. Performance management
  6. Reward management
  7. Leadership

Single course designed for executives interested in digital HR considerations

As IT skills, resources and sourcing models continue to evolve, and HR organizations continue to experience the digital transformation, they are focusing their investments in leveraging information technology to improve outcomes, improve the quality of their services, and lower overall costs. In today’s highly regulated, increasingly resource-constrained, and cost-focused environment it is essential to understand how to effectively and efficiently manage an organization’s information technology (IT) human resources. There are numerous strategic, tactical, and operational choices to be made about managing IT resources and it is essential to ensure that IT and non-IT executives across the organization work in harmony.


Experience has made it clear that organizations need well-conceived organizational structures, skills, processes, and decision rights to ensure that IT investments are appropriately leveraged across the organization, especially when considering the impact of emerging information technologies and the resources/skills necessary to support them. 


This course prepares executives/professionals (HR and non-HR ) by providing a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental decisions related to the management of IT resources in this dynamic environment. The course will also provide an overview of current and future relevant information technologies and their potential impact on HR organizations, and associated stakeholders.


IT-HR topics include:

  • Deriving IT-business strategies
  • Changes in digital skills and sourcing
  • Considerations for types of
  • organizational structure
  • governance (i.e., decision-making and decision rights)
  • roles/responsibilities
  • processes
  • Leverage emerging digital HR technologies
  • The business value of IT
  • The definition, concepts, and contexts of HR IT
  • Enhancing business-IT alignment
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