Centralize users when you have multiple HR sources

Within companies, it is common to have multiple HR sources. Why?

Human Resources manages a payroll system in which they integrate employees when they receive their first paycheck. This only includes employees who receive a salary, which excludes interns of less than 2 months, temporary workers and contractors.

We call these people the 'HR board'.

For HR, managing these individuals directly isn't necessary, so it doesn't pose an administrative problem. However, for IT departments, the task becomes more complex because accounts must be created for these individuals, but the information isn't directly available in the HRIS.

Thus, it is incorrect to speak of an HR source since we are including people outside of human resources management.

At this point, a more or less efficient organization emerges in which HR personnel fill out a parallel Excel file with these 'externals' (outside the HRIS).

We therefore end up with two HR sources at the IT level:

• HR users
• users on the periphery of HR

Users do not all come from the same HR source

There are companies where the system is quite simple with one entity that manages employees and with Excel files for the HR side.

Then, there are companies that have several legal structures with multiple payroll systems. We may have a French, American payroll system, we may have a company acquisition with different payroll systems or even want to separate the payroll systems within a Group.

The sources of information then come from different places, and of course, to this must be added the HR side of these structures.

We therefore end up with multiple sources, employees who can change structures, and an inability to provide a workforce at a given time.

Basically, it's a mess.

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Users on the periphery of the HRIS

Users on the HR side (who do not have direct contracts with the company) are not listed in the company and no one is able to give reliable figures.

The problem of collecting information (arrival date, departure date, manager, account requirements, etc.) is complex because managers handle their temporary staff, interns, and contractors. HR does not want to hear about it as they are not within their scope.

However, these users, like the company's employees, need access accounts to various software applications. The IT department is responsible for creating these accounts.

And the IT department finds itself in a delicate situation between managers and HR.

The information arrives piecemeal and is often modified or supplemented later.

The major challenge is having centralized information in one place to say on the human resources side:

• How many are we? Who is here, because we need to consolidate certain points.

And on the IT side:

• Who arrives, who moves, who leaves, and what do they need?

Obtain a snapshot of its payroll at a given moment

Human Resources will want to know their workforce at a specific time and will extract information from each of their systems. It will be necessary to consolidate it by extracting the necessary fields, then deduplicate it.

However, a week later, the file is already obsolete, movements have taken place.

For their part, managers do not manage the list of people they manage; they manage operations. Everything related to cybersecurity, licenses, and access rights is not at all among their concerns and is therefore not addressed.

They will have human, non-administrative oversight of their colleagues who do not have direct employment contracts with the company.

Each manager will have their file, with their own nomenclature. The information is fragmented, without any coherence (without data consistency).

The difficulty of a centralized repository is total.

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When IT has to manage all users, it's chaos.

The IT department receives emails from HR regarding arrivals, moves, or departures. They receive emails about account creations for service providers by managers or operational staff, but rarely information about departures.

Generally, HR and operational staff need to call on IT to create accounts, but they do not need to call on IT to suspend accounts.

HR may be aware of account suspension issues, but for operational staff, it is clearly not their concern.

The IT department is therefore there to centralize the HR repository in order to correctly manage access rights in terms of:

• cybersecurity
• cost

In IT, it's a mess, it's almost assumed.

Often an input/output file is created, which is the reference file for movements. This file indicates who will arrive and who will leave.

The mess comes from the question of who fills this file?

Everyone:

• HR does double data entry: the HRIS + the IT file
• managers will complete the file

IT must regularly check the file to see if there has been any activity. Then, the copy/paste process begins for creating and modifying accounts...

We find in this joyful mess:

• errors
• oversights in account creation
• omission of information, inevitably leading to back-and-forth communication with request originators
• things ignored almost deliberately because it's annoying

This process is so restrictive that it leads to weariness.

It is important to remember the date the file was last accessed, the figures (were there any date changes, additions, or account creations?), and all the small details that create a subtle mental burden among everything else.

Of course, since no one can find their way around, emails are sent, phone calls are made, or people run into each other in the hallways to recall elements of the file.

And here, I've just described the rather structured process... because when it's not structured, the manager shows up in the office to request access on day one.

For departures, IT is informed when they take stock (every 3 to 6 months, or even 1 year), or when there is a farewell party (already heard!).

What are the benefits of an identity and access management solution in the management of HR sources?

Like other IAM solutions, Youzer manages the difficulties arising from dispersed sources.

The solution will connect to each of these HR sources. A connector will need to be set up for each payroll system:

• a connector to the HRIS
• a CSV import connector from a Google Sheet that manages temporary workers
• manual input via forms for managers to list the service providers they have

The identity and access management solution will consolidate all these sources to create a database that will then be deduplicated at the user level.

Payroll systems do not manage users but contracts.

Youzer will therefore count people and not contracts; this is where the solution's work comes in.

It is on this broad-based HR repository that we can drive the governance of identities that are created in different information systems.

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The implementation

Here's how we implement Youzer for a client with different HR sources.

1. Identify sources.
2. Connect all sources.
3. Take the raw information from the different sources.
4. Define the rule for handling duplication and prioritizing information.
5. Validation phase comparing the information collected in Youzer with the old file.
6. Youzer has become the reference because the information is always reliable, up-to-date, clear, and available.
7. Once the repository is clean and validated by the team, the automation of other connectors can be implemented.

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