HR has four roles in David Ulrich's model.

1. Strategic Partner
HR must ensure that its practices, processes, and policies complement the overall organizational strategy. It needs to develop a capacity to execute that strategy, and minimize the time it takes to implement it.

2. Change Agent
All organizations change. The rate of change continues to increase dramatically, due in part to the internet and globalization of the economy. HR's role is to facilitate change in organizations. This includes modeling change to other departments, advocating change across the entire organization, resolving issues that arise from change, and institutionalizing change by implementing efficient and flexible processes.

3. Administrative Expert
This role involves HR infrastructure, such as recruiting, hiring, compensating, rewarding and disciplining, training, recordkeeping, and terminating, and any other process that involves people. HR must ensure that these processes are efficient and optimized, which requires tracking, monitoring, and continuously improving. "You have to deliver on the basics," says Ulrich, "because it is much easier to change when there is confidence in the infrastructure."

4. Employee Champion or Employee Advocate
To be employee champions, HR must know the employees well and spend time meeting with and listening to employees. HR must promote communication, which can include employee surveys, employee suggestion programs, all-employee meetings, on-going communication of business status, and any other program that can make employees feel part of the team and dedicated to customer service. This role also includes ensuring that employees who are having problems get a fair hearing.

1. Strategic Partner role
HRSource™ HRIS provides management with valuable and current information needed for strategic planning (e.g. turnover trends, recruiting and hiring statistics, employee compensation and benefit costs and trends, employee demographic changes, etc.).

2. Change Agent role
HRSource™ HRIS provides valuable and current information to monitor the progress and
impact of change.

The HR Portal supports the Change Agent role by providing instant communication of changes to employees, as a supplement to face-to-face communication. The communication can be detailed or general, and updated or revised instantly and in real-time.

The web-based SelfSource™ allows employees and managers to receive and update information on a real-time basis.

By implementing some or all of these software tools, HR demonstrates its commitment to change and process improvement and is a role-model to the rest of the organization.

3. Administrative role
HRSource™ is a complete HRIS system that can significantly reduce administrative burdens by optimizing data-related processes such as applicant tracking, government reporting, and management reporting.

The HR Portal provides instant information to others in the organization, thereby minimizing processing time. For example, it can reduce the number of phone calls and paper transactions.

SelfSource™ allows employees to review and update their own personal information. This reduces the time HR spends doing data-entry. By providing managers immediate access to key data on their employees, managers can make timely and appropriate decisions/recommendations on employee and applicant compensation packages. Workflow features such as Online Leave Request and Approval also minimizes paperwork and telephone tag.

4. Employee Champion role
The HR Portal is ideally suited for promoting communication and understanding within an organization. HRnetSource™ increases the efficiency of those performing the HR function, allowing them more time to meet with and get to know the employees.