HR Grease | Issue #001 | Monthly insights for people who keep the machine running
In this issue:
01 · The Grease — Configuration drift: why your HRIS keeps breaking after go-live
02 · Hot Take — The "adoption problem" is a lie vendors tell
03 · Quick Win — The 5-minute config audit every UKG Pro admin should run
01 · The Grease
Configuration drift — how orgs outgrow their HRIS setup post-go-live
Your HRIS worked on day one. You went live, the consultants left, and for a few weeks everything felt fine.
Then someone got promoted and their access didn't update. A new hire type got added and nobody touched the accrual rules. A workflow that made sense for 800 employees started throwing errors at 1,400. You fixed it. Then it happened again somewhere else.
This is configuration drift — and it's the most common HRIS problem nobody names out loud.
Configuration drift happens when the system stays static while the organization keeps moving. Headcount changes. Business rules change. Org structures change. But the HRIS config that was set up during implementation — built for the org you were, not the org you became — doesn't automatically follow.
The result is a slow accumulation of mismatches. Approval workflows routing to managers who left two years ago. Pay rules that apply to a job code nobody uses anymore. Self-service permissions that were never cleaned up from a pilot group. Each one is small. Together they create a system that feels unreliable — because it is.
Here's what makes this hard to catch: drift doesn't announce itself. It shows up as edge cases. One-off tickets. "The system did something weird" complaints that are hard to reproduce. By the time you notice a pattern, the drift has been accumulating for months.
The fix isn't a reimplementation. It's a discipline — regular config reviews built into your calendar, not triggered by incidents.
"Your HRIS isn't breaking because of the software. It's breaking because the organization it was configured for no longer exists."
Most orgs only audit their HRIS config when something breaks. The ones that run clean systems audit on a schedule — quarterly at minimum, and after any significant org change: a reorg, an acquisition, a headcount spike, or a new pay structure.
Treat config like code. It needs to be reviewed, versioned, and maintained — not set once and forgotten.
02 · Hot Take
The "adoption problem" is a lie vendors tell
The claim: Your employees aren't using the system correctly because they need more training.
I've heard this from every HRIS vendor at some point. Adoption dashboards. Change management toolkits. End-user training modules. All of it designed to solve one problem: users aren't doing what the system expects.
But here's what I've seen in practice — when users resist a system, it's almost never because they don't understand it. It's because the system doesn't reflect how their work actually flows. The approval chain doesn't match reality. The fields don't map to what they need to capture. The process the system enforces isn't the process the business actually runs.
That's not a training problem. That's a configuration problem.
Vendors love "adoption" framing because it puts the failure on users and HR — not on the implementation they sold you. Don't accept that framing.
The question to ask: Before you build another training module, ask — does the config actually match how this team works? If the answer is no, no amount of training will fix it.
03 · Quick Win
The 5-minute config audit for UKG Pro admins
For UKG Pro users
You don't need a full audit to start catching drift. Here are four checks you can run right now — each takes about a minute:
Workflow routing: Pull one approval workflow (start with time-off or job change) and verify every approver in the chain is still an active employee in the correct role.
Headcount rules: Check your position management settings — confirm that position counts still align with your current approved headcount structure, especially if you've had a reorg in the last 12 months.
Accrual rules: Filter your accrual policies by last-modified date. Anything untouched for 18+ months that still has active assignments deserves a second look — especially if your PTO policy has changed.
Inactive manager assignments: Run a quick report on direct reports whose primary manager has a terminated or inactive status. Fix every result you find.
Set a recurring calendar block for this every quarter. Thirty minutes, four times a year, prevents dozens of one-off tickets.
If someone forwarded this to you — welcome. Whether you're deep in the config or just trying to understand why the system does what it does, you belong here. HR Grease comes out monthly and it's free. Subscribe at the link below.
Hit reply and tell me: what's the one thing in your HRIS that's been driving you crazy lately? I read every reply, and the best answers shape future issues.
Next issue: the real cost of manual reconciliation — and why "we've always done it this way" is costing your team more than you think.
— JR
HR Grease
Practical HRIS insights for people who keep the machine running.