As the Information technology is applied more and more, enterprises will compete and develop under the circumstance of E-business. It is obvious that the customer-oriented re-management and flow-reorganization will be the important means of enterprises to break traditional rules and gain new competing ability. Moreover, information technology will be applied more extensively in the HR field.

E-time HRM of the enterprises will be established on the basis of intranet configuration and will break the organizational confine. The role of HR department will not be the layman of technology and cost section providing passive service any more. It will be gradually unbound from the operating and executive business and take more strategic HR management. As a result, HR staff gradually become the strategic partner of business department instead of the former un-mainstream functional department. HR staff takes more part in strategy and reformation of enterprises, establishment of competing advantage and technology spread. It also plays a role of informing and proposing, and is responsible for performance and productivity.

Inventec Introduction
Inventec was set up in 1975, mainly devoting to notebook, development of sever and software product, manufacturing and wireless solution. Currently, there are more than 8000 employees all over the world. Main factories are located in Taiwan, Shanghai, Houston in USA and Scotland of Great Britain.

To enlarge Greater China operation system, with Dual Tower Strategy and on the basis of rich experience in business, product development, manufacturing, Inventech established Inventec(Shanghai) in 2001,integrating research, development and manufacture .Benefiting from the rich human resources , it attracted and trained local IT talents of hare wares and soft wares. It is located in Caohejing Hi-tech District and obtained international quality certificate of ISO 14001 and ISO9000 international quality certificate in succession. In order to meet the productivity expand, a new branch was set up in Pudong, Shanghai, and start manufacturing in 2003, which is now mainly producing Inventec laptops and servers.

HRM crisis and challenge confronting Foreign-invested enterprises
HRM may be divided into two types: one operating type, another strategic type. The so-called operating item are traditional executive work, such as working rules, attendance rules, personnel filing and C&B management. For enterprises, the set and running of these basic rules are the basic work in personnel management and must be made according to the enterprise feature, local labor law and social custom. New-found companies may spend more labors, more complicated flows and more time on the setting and maintaining of such operating HRM item.

The prospective strategic item is the initial aim of HRM, including the constitution and execution of HR regulations, the shaping of enterprises culture which accords with the strategic demand of enterprises and the realization of performance management, the selecting and recruiting of core talents, employee educating, training, and career planning, organizational development planning, successor planning and talent-retention.

For new foreign-invested enterprises, to run the basic personnel management, hey must first face the cultural difference. Because the expanding of organization exceeds the planning and optimizing of management system, HR department always spends lots of labor and time on operating business. As a result, it could mot undertake strategic HR policies and development and it is hard to attract talents effectively. If the HR structure and talent qulity can not be promoted quickly, it would bring obstacles to the organizational efficiency.

What’s more, in the early founding period, Line managers are usually expatriated by the headquarters. Though they have rich experience, confronted with the strange environment and brand new local employees and unfamiliar with the local personnel rules, they would find it difficult to stabilize employment relationship and to enhance employee centripetal force if there is no perfect personnel rules management and instructing and integration of strategic HRM.
Generally speaking, the HRM challenges confronting foreign-invested enterprises are as follows:

1. The Re-shaping of Enterprise Culture and Value

As the reformation and opening accelerate, enterprise turns the core strategy from employment relationship to performance and customer-orientation. How to plant the business concept and value into every employee to make their work value integrated with strategy direction of enterprise is a big problem that the HRM encounters.

2. The Set-up of Enterprise System and Communication Model

For foreign enterprise, facing the difference of local laws and social value system, when it establishes branches in mainland on a large scale, the management of organization and flow must adapt to the local law and establish clear regulations on flow management instead of the past working habits and team cooperation. It is especially stressed in the employment strategy and establishment & communication of HRM, insuring the importance of manpower quality and talent creation.

3. Massive Demand on Talent with High Quality

The fast development of enterprise often causes talent lacking and high drifting rate. Lots of resource, time, cost and manpower are wasted in the recruitment of proper talent. It is hard to gain the positive effect if there is no organizational and work plan which meet the strategic demand of enterprise and the enterprise lacks perfect development system of function and qualification. Mis-choosing the talent or unable to retain the talent would be a disadvantage to the future development.

4. Cultivate Localized Talents

For foreign enterprises, the most important method to a maintaining business is internationalization of the business and localization o f talents. Localization of the talents not just means to employ local talents including cultivation and training of local experts and core management staff in enterprise management, expertise and cultural acclimatization. Rather more, the localization management competency of expatriated director and unceasingly self promotion during the period are also a very important task.

Strategy of Inventec HRM

1. Overall HR Concept

Confronted with the difficulty of multi-culture management, it needs fast and effective HR sales tools to help enterpriser with the execution of HRM integration and reformation, in which , various roles are involved, including enterpriser, HR managers, line directors and employees. This is the so-called overall HRM.

Under the ideal circumstance, there should be a benign HRM chain: HRM is the initial demand of the business; to meet the need, t he HR department designs and makes various HRM product (C&B system, performance system, etc.) and it analyzes the feedbacks to help enterprise promote the demand level. Meanwhile, HR department should cultivate the line manager to be the deputy of HR product, mainly stressing the line manager and facing the employees as end users.

Obviously, without the involvement of every employee, HRM will act blindly. If an enterpriser promptly carries out the overall HRM, the HR department can put more attention on the analysis of customers’ demand in the ecologic chain and continually uplift the ability to meet customer’s requirements so as to provide better product and better service.

2. Stress on HRM Core Competency

Those unimportant and operating traditional personnel business are outsourced or simplified and optimized via information technology. This is another jumping-off point for Inventec to promote HR competing ability. So, HRM must re-position the roles, release from the passed role of executive and general businesses, and turn to be the learning organization, education pusher, consultant of advanced officers, strategic partnership and the advocator of management and reformation.

Professor Ulrich of Michigan University thinks that as a second hand of enterprises, the HRM should stress the work output, not only doing the work well. According to the HRM strategy, executive efficiency, devotion and diversification ability, Ulrich concludes four basic roles in the HR management. They are strategic partner, management of firm infrastructure, management of employee contribution and management of transformation and change. (as in the following chart)

The Four Roles of Human Resource

Confronted with present HR crisis and challenge, HR department accordingly makes promotion strategy according to the four roles. (as in the following chart)

3. EHR----the best solution to HR management (chart)

And the next is execution. All roles, including enterpriser, HR staff, line manager and employees, should be involved in the realization of overall HRM via layout, organization, execution and supervision to accomplish the HRM strategy and activity, which are not just the work of HR department. Therefore, on the base of HRM promotion strategy, with information technology, relevant EHR project is developed (chart). It is the fastest and the most comprehensive in-depth way.、

HRM Value infrastructure Chart of Inventec EHR

What functions will EHR provide for different roles in realization of overall HRM?

3.1 EHR to HR department

The HRM activity of HR department includes all the HRM administration, such as HR plan, recruitment, on-the-job management (personnel information management, attendance and leave management, training management, performance management, and C&B management) and employee dismission. More and more HRM activity will be entrusted to line manager while the HR department will be focusing on the setup of management system, management of the activity plan, management of process supervision and the collection and analysis of the management results. Therefore, apart from the management of EHR system, the HR department do more in HRM activity plan, supervision and analysis instead of data maintenance, because the data maintenance will gradually distributed to line manager and employees together after authorized.

3.2 EHR to Enterpriser

First, enterpriser can integrate all the communications and elements of enterprise culture, managing strategy and goals with services and net feature via EHR, which can effectively convey strategy, instruct and appraise performance. Second, EHR provides HR information query and decision support. With the help of HR department, enterpriser can get the status information of enterprise human resource himself. If condition allows(perfect basic data of business system and financial system, integrated with EHR.), various KPIs of HRM strategy that help with the decision making can be obtained. What’s more, enterpriser can directly deal with certain HR management activity on the net via EHR when the flow comes to him.

3.3 EHR to Line Manager

For line manager, EHR is a platform to join HR management activities. Via the platform, line manager can make online query of his underlings’ information (such as personnel information, post information, and attendance information) in his authority, submit recruitment plan and training plan to HR department, make approvals on probation, contract management, training, leave ,dismiss, etc., and manage performance online.

3.4 EHR to employee

With the help of EHR, employee can look over management strategy, rules and regulations, organizational infrastructure, vip information, internal recruitment, personal C&B, attendance and leave information, submit application for leave, modify personal data, manage performance, communicate with HR department via electronic way, register internal training course, and even have online training.

It should be noticed that EHR is set up on the standard business flow, so it requires that personal habit submit to the unified management regulation which is an advantage to the unification of HRM activity. Management can reach the best efficiency once it becomes a unified habit kept by all.

Profits from EHR

Due to the introduction of a large number of information technology, via information methods, eg., integrated info database, automatic info disposal, employee self service, external help and shared services, etc., EHR can effectively help HRM with cost reduction, efficiency increase and improvement of employee service mode.

1 Cost Reduction

It is obvious that EHR can reduce cost. First, EHR is a part of info enterprise, realizing paperless office thus reducing the cost of office supplies. Secondly, EHR can successfully finish some executive work formerly done by a large number of manpower via software and internet, reducing the cost of executive staff. Thirdly, for some enterprises having branches all over the world, especially for multi companies, EHR can realize HRM via internet, which dramatically reduces the communication cost.

For example, since the application of recruitment test system in Inventec, it has tested over 4000 applicants, and have saved 3om’ administrative time, printing papers and manpower to score the test paper. The statistics shows that after the implementation of HR information website, the query calls of employees reduced 75%. In the second half year, 2.5 million HRM self service have been dealt via internet, saving papers and 80% of the manpower delivering process.

2. Ensure Information Delivery

EHR makes HRM successfully get close to every employee via internet, ensuring the HR information delivery. The traditional HRM is multi layer. All the HR policies and information must be passed from the highest layer to the lowest layer, which was very slow. During the process, information was inclined to be distorted and to be incomplete. As a result, the policies and information can not be realized or get distorted in the execution. The application of HER makes the relevant information and materials directly transferred from the highest layer to the lowest layer, benefiting the implementation of management and policies. Further more, EHR can collect all the information quickly and effectively, strengthening internal info communication. Employees can straight obtain what he needs from the system, thus HR info self service has been realized.

For instance, Inventec introduced HR information website and online monthly magazine, though which the statistic in 2003 showed that over 80,000 people entered initiatively or received passively relevant policies and HRM information, saving the fees and time on conferences, training and printing. Meanwhile, the disputes between employees and company or line manager caused by communication fall of policies and regulations have been reduced 90%. Apart from this, expatriated middle and top managers can also directly get information about the policy, discuss performance goal with his underlings, supervise the state of department and employee performance, saving 30% of the time to master policy goals and communication process.

3. Accelerate HR Value Transformation

In the traditional HRM, HR staff must always spend much time and energy on the daily administrative business, being confined to the trivial daily work and ignoring more important strategic work. The improvement of information technology finally liberated hands and minds of human resource and caused the reformation of HR work. In the EHR system, the administrative business can be accomplished by E-system which takes hr just a little time and energy to deal with. The core emphasis of HR staff may be put on the employee service, support strategic decision of the administrative level, and on the most important capital of a company----employees and employee intelligence with most of the energy put on providing consultancy and suggestion for the management level. The ultimate aim is to reform management concept, not just to improve management efficiency.

For instance, Inventec successively introduced different EHR systems. In 2003, it had optimized and simplified 55% of the operational personnel management, putting the saved resource and manpower in the strategic HRM development: strategic partner was been promoted 10%, Change agent 25%, employee champion 20. Meanwhile, it promoted HR staff quality. The number of experts with master degree and graduate degree increased from 20% to 80%.

EHR is becoming a developing trend which is caused by cost reduction, efficiency improvement and reformation of employ service mode. Employees are authorized to have self service, external help and share service. HR department is liberating from the trivial administrative business to play a strategic role.