Assume you are an HR practitioner for a medium-sized retail fashion company that employs a total of 500 employees in New York City, Houston, and Montreal. The owner is considering the implementation of an HRIS to generate, track, process, and report the results of the annual employee performance appraisals. As the organization grows, and hopefully expands to other major cities, the goal is to be able to obtain company-wide data to (a) provide information concerning current individual employee performance, and (b) identify employees for future management positions.

She has asked you to prepare an overview of the factors that should be considered in her decision. Your response is to include, at a minimum, the following:

· How such a system would affect the HR department

· Advantages to the employees and the organization, and

· Ethical and legal issues

Your response should be written from an HR viewpoint, not from that of an IT or project management professional. In other words, you should concentrate on HRIS’s impact on HR practices, not on the minute technical details of implementing such a system.