Case Study: You are the HR Technologist for an organization with 1200 employees.  You receive a call from an employee that claims that their department data is incorrect in the employee directory.  You check the HRIS system, and it appears to be correct.  What can be going on?  How do you approach this problem?

I like this case study because I have experience in troubleshooting problems like this. There could be a couple of things going on. It could be the software or even hardware issues. To approach this, I would do the following and would stop if I found the problem.

• First, I would check the software, make sure that the software isn’t using a “nightly upload” system. If it is, the employee might have updated the info, but it hasn’t updated yet. It could also be something else in the software, but without more information, I can’t be sure.

• Second, I would check the process. There could have been a disconnect in whatever the data entry process is. By double checking all the steps, you would be able to see if something was amiss. If that’s where the problem was, you would be able to restart the process and correct the data discrepancy the employee claims to have.

• Lastly, I would check the hardware on our end first (meaning making sure the server is up and running) and then the hardware on the employee’s side. Their computer may not be connected to the internet. In that case, we would fix the hardware and then have them resend the data.

That would be my basic approach. If I had more information, such as what the specs were for both the hardware and software, I could come up with a deeper approach.