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Shannon L. is a visionary leader, known for transforming complexity into clarity by blending people insight with smart systems. She champions human-centric technology, builds systems that elevate every employee’s experience and leads with rare precision, empathy and strategic foresight, setting a gold standard for HR innovation and operational excellence.
Shannon L., Director of HRIS, Real Chemistry
Through this article, Shannon highlights how strategic HRIS leadership shapes decisions, which become a true enabler of organizational success.
Leading HR Technology with a Problem-Solver’s Mindset
After nearly a decade in Education, I transitioned into the corporate world, where I oversaw the configuration and adoption of a learning management system. This experience sparked my passion for technology-driven solutions and opened the door to the broader world of HRIS.
In HRIS, I found the perfect intersection of my strengths: problem-solving, continuous learning and teaching. Largely self-taught, I immersed myself in a variety of platforms, including applicant tracking systems (ATS), HCMs, LMS tools and payroll systems. I quickly learned that success with HR technology is never just about selecting a system. It’s about deeply understanding the business, its data and its future goals. Aligning technology with organizational needs is the key to choosing the right tools, scaling effectively and driving meaningful adoption.
Real Chemistry is the second company where I’ve been leading HRIS at a senior level. I started my journey as a business systems analyst, and over time, I grew into the lead of the HRIS team.
Today, in my role at Real Chemistry, I lead efforts to drive automation and integrate AI within our HCM ecosystem. My focus is on elevating the employee lifecycle experience by ensuring our technology not only meets today’s needs but anticipates the organization’s future.
From the classroom to corporate technology, my journey has revolved around one constant theme—leveraging knowledge, curiosity and innovation to create solutions that make work better for people.
Making the “Real” Impact
Challenges are my favorite part of the work. I love puzzles— the kind where you’re piecing together systems, people and processes to create solutions others can rely on. HRIS can be demanding and nonstop; when you manage people systems, the clock never really stops.
In my earlier roles, one of the biggest challenges was the lack of understanding around the true value of a human capital management system, which can be transformative for an organization when implemented well.
At Real Chemistry, the experience is completely different. Being part of the IT organization has been a game changer. My peers are technology experts who understand the importance of system integrity, and we collaborate seamlessly. I partner closely not only with HR leaders and functional teams, but also with finance and legal. I’m consistently in conversations where my input is sought out for strategic guidance, not just tactical troubleshooting.
I guide teams and leaders through system capabilities and process improvements that empower better decision-making, enhance automation and create more efficient workflows.
Anyone who’s worked in HRIS knows the irony. When everything works, it goes unnoticed, but the moment something breaks, everyone feels it. It’s a role where impact is often invisible unless something goes wrong. Here, though, the value of HRIS is truly recognized. The contribution of my team is understood and appreciated across the organization, and that’s one of the things I love most about working at Real Chemistry.
Shaping the Backbone of Enterprise People Systems
Real Chemistry has a history of growth, part of which is by acquiring and integrating businesses.
As a healthcare-focused marketing and communications company of more than 2,000 professionals, Real Chemistry leverages data, technology and creativity to improve health outcomes. The firm helps connect patients, providers and life sciences organizations through personalized, data-driven engagement.
As the organization expanded and its capabilities grew, the operational landscape naturally became more complex, prompting a focused effort to bring greater simplicity and alignment to internal systems.
Over the last 3 years, Real Chemistry has been on a journey of simplification for our technology and processes. By removing complexity in processes and duplicate technology, we’re able to focus on making the employee experience better.
Selecting technology for HRIS and across all functions is based on collaboration and trust. Our technology team is closely aligned with our HR leadership, and our roadmap and investment decisions are a team effort. Prioritization is always hard, but clear communication and realistic expectations are the key to making continual progress.
Our foundational technology architecture and investments, including our automation tooling, data management, BI and AI platforms cut across all our functions and are now enabling us to bring new capabilities and opportunities to the table. The tight relationship between IT and HR is enabling us to apply these capabilities in ways that add real value.
In my experience, having HRIS report into the IT function creates a more strategic and effective partnership for supporting HR. The IT organization brings deep expertise in system maintenance, resource planning, risk mitigation and understanding downstream impacts—capabilities that are critical for sustaining a healthy HR technology ecosystem. This structure ensures that systems are treated with the same rigor as other enterprise technologies, leading to stronger data integrity and more reliable long-term performance.
The IT team at Real Chemistry is strong. We have great talent and a culture of openness and helping one another. There are no silos between the different parts of our IT so it’s easy to connect with someone focused on automation, data, AI etc. to ideate without the blockers of formal processes.
We have a small and mighty change management team that plays a role in all our tech projects. This helps us introduce change in a sustainable way and reduce the risk of our initiatives not making the impact we want. We find it’s better to focus on fewer projects and have a big impact.
Building Systems that Power Enhanced Employee Experience
We recently implemented a new ATS platform and fully integrated it with our HCM, which was a major step forward. Right now, we’re in the process of connecting our HCM to our payroll system, an integration that will significantly reduce the risks that come with manual data entry, streamline workflows and ensure people are paid accurately and on time.
A critical part of every implementation I lead is ensuring data accuracy. Clean, reliable data is the foundation of a successful HR system, and I prioritize dedicating the time required to understand current data structures, uncover inconsistencies and build the integrity needed for systems to operate at their best.
At Real Chemistry, we’ve reimagined both our performance and compensation cycles. This past year, we completed a major reconfiguration of the compensation process—a truly large-scale effort. As we head into our second year with this new model, we’re already building on what we learned and enhancing it even further, which is incredibly exciting.
Toward a Promising Future
I believe HRIS is on the cusp of becoming a true strategic advisor, an essential partner in shaping business decisions. With the rapid rise of AI, we have an opportunity to elevate HR processes, automate intelligently and deliver cleaner metrics and stronger KPIs.
Looking ahead, within the next five years, HRIS will evolve as the core intelligence of the organization—where people data, automation and insight come together to guide the business forward.
The Sage Advice
Timeless advice I carry with me is to always listen first—truly understand the people, the problem and the data. Prioritizing data integrity, staying open to creative solutions and thinking beyond system limitations are essential, because the best outcomes often come from a thoughtful blend of people and technology. At the end of the day, HR systems are the glue that connects and empowers the workforce, and every solution should honor both the human and the technical sides of the organization.
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