First HRIS at a 100-Year Company

What they had

The company had been in business for nearly 100 years and had never run on an HRIS. Leave balances lived in a shared Excel sheet that every employee could open, which meant everyone could see everyone else's time off. Requests and approvals moved through email chains — employee to manager to HR — and the spreadsheet handled different leave types with different cell values, with no real validation. Employment documents, salary letters, and increase records were scattered or missing, so employment history was often incomplete.

What broke

The old system worked only while the company stayed small and simple. As the organization grew, the cracks showed. Employees hunted through a shared spreadsheet to check their own balance. Managers opened the same file to see who was off. HR spent hours chasing email threads to confirm approvals. There was no single source of truth for personal or employment data, and onboarding was inconsistent because nothing was standardized.

What we chose

I led the implementation of Humi as the company's first HRIS. We focused on the highest-impact modules first: core HR data, time off, benefits, and managed payroll. We migrated the current year only and treated the cutover as a clean start rather than a historical reconstruction.

The implementation covered:

• Core HR. One place for personal, employment, and compensation data instead of scattered files.
• Time off. Self-service requests with manager approval workflows, replacing the shared spreadsheet.
• Benefits management. Enrollment and records in one system.
• Managed payroll. Payroll inputs tied directly to the HRIS data.

My role

I scoped the platform, designed the rollout, configured Humi, cleaned the current-year data for migration, built the approval workflows, trained managers and employees, and managed the go-live. The project was as much about change management as it was about configuration — a 100-year-old company does not switch its habits overnight.

Outcome

• Leave requests moved from email chains to a self-service workflow with manager approval.
• Employees no longer rely on a shared Excel sheet to check balances.
• HR has a single place for employee personal and employment data.
• Benefits and payroll are managed inside the same platform.
• Employment documents are now generated and stored consistently.