I’ve spent much of my career implementing and managing HRIS platforms. One of my biggest frustrations was how much implementation time went to anticipating every future need, because changing things later was so hard.
And the consequences of those decisions don’t end at go-live.
At a previous company, our engagement survey came back with a clear message: our people were burned out. Leadership took that seriously and decided to increase annual PTO from 15 days to 20. I remember feeling proud to work for a company that asked for feedback and acted on it.
But almost immediately, I thought about what the change would take and what it would mean for my team.
What should have been a simple policy update became an IT project. We had to coordinate with IT, update accrual rules, account for different employee populations, and test everything to make sure we didn’t break something else. All to give our people five more days off.
And that’s the tension I kept running into throughout my career. Doing the right thing for employees and the business often meant creating more work for my own team. More manual tasks, more time spent troubleshooting, and sometimes longer hours just to make a positive change possible.
We were trying to give employees more time away from work to recharge, and I was worried about how much additional work it would create for the people responsible for making it happen.
For years, I had an idea in the back of my mind: build the HRIS I wished I had, one that worked for me instead of against me. That’s a big part of what brought me to Sol.
What it looks like when the system works for you
Let’s replay that PTO change.
In most HRIS platforms today, the decision is the easy part. The real work is translation. Which accrual plans does this touch? Which employee populations? How does it interact with carryover and tenure rules? What does IT need to change, and what do we need to test? People Ops knows what we’re trying to accomplish. The system needs to be told how to do it, step by step.
At Sol, we’re starting from the outcome instead of the steps. I should be able to describe the decision the way I’d explain it to my leadership team: starting January 1, everyone gets 20 days of PTO instead of 15. Sol should be able to interpret that request, identify which policies, employee populations, and workflows are impacted, and propose the necessary changes. It should surface exceptions, flag anything that’s unclear, and identify who needs to make a decision based on their authority, accountability, and understanding of the business.
I should be able to review what’s changing, understand the implications, and make the decisions that require human judgment. Sol handles the configuration and execution once those decisions are approved.
The same idea applies everywhere. If a request needs sign-off from someone in Finance, I should be able to say that in plain terms and have the right approval workflow follow.
HR still makes the important decisions about how the business runs.
People Ops should be able to focus on what we’re trying to accomplish, not the technical steps required to get there. And importantly, the technology should make our decisions easier to put into practice without taking away our ability to make them.
Implementation shouldn’t be a one-way door
A system that’s easy to change does more than save time on policy updates. It changes what implementation can be.
But I think there’s an even bigger implication. Over time, the limits of our HRIS start to shape how we make decisions. We aren’t just thinking about what’s best for the business. We’re thinking about what our systems can accommodate and how difficult it will be to change later.
Anyone who has been through an HRIS implementation knows the feeling. In a few months, you make dozens of foundational decisions: how to structure the organization, how to model jobs and compensation, how approvals flow, how time off accrues. You make them before you’ve lived with the system, under a deadline, often with consultants on the clock.
And every one of those decisions feels permanent. Changing them after go-live means change requests, outside help, and another round of testing. So teams treat each choice as a one-way door and try to get everything right up front.
That’s a big reason implementations are so hard. The volume of work is part of it. The bigger part is the pressure to get it all right the first time, for a business that’s going to keep changing anyway. Six months after go-live, you’ve reorganized, changed an approval process, or introduced a new policy. The system is built around a version of your company that no longer exists.
Organizations are constantly evolving, but we’ve spent decades implementing HR technology as though we’re configuring a fixed version of the business.
For someone who’s spent years implementing HRISs, the idea that you don’t have to get every decision right the first time is incredibly freeing.
Imagine approaching implementation knowing you can make the best decision with the information you have today, without having to anticipate every possible future need. And when the business changes, you can change your technology without another complicated project.
That’s the real shift. When change becomes easier, many of those one-way doors become two-way doors. Implementation no longer needs to be about getting everything right the first time. It can be about getting the business where it needs to be today, knowing the system can evolve alongside it.
Go-live becomes the starting line instead of the finish line.
Built for what’s next
I think back to that PTO change. We were trying to do something good for our people, and our HRIS made it harder than it needed to be.
That’s why I’m so excited about what we’re building at Sol. We’re building a system that aligns what’s best for employees and the business with what’s possible for the People Ops team. Doing the right thing shouldn’t mean creating more work for the people responsible for making it happen.
You shouldn’t have to anticipate every future business need during implementation. You should be able to make the best decisions with the information you have today, knowing you can change your mind tomorrow.
And when the business evolves, your technology should evolve with it. Without the friction, the workarounds, or the fear of how much work the next change will create.
