Adjustment management software: build, buy or configure your HRIS?

What adjustment management actually involves

An adjustment is not a single event. Someone asks, someone decides, something gets put in place, and then circumstances change: a new manager, a new desk, a new role. Managing adjustments means keeping all of that connected over time, with a record that shows each step happened.

Whatever tool you choose has to handle five jobs: take requests in a structured way, route decisions to the right person, record the reasoning, track implementation to completion, and prompt reviews before adjustments quietly stop working. Judge every option against those five jobs, not against a feature list.

Option 1: buy a dedicated system

A purpose-built system exists because adjustments have properties generic HR tools do not handle well. The records contain health information, so access control has to be tighter than for a holiday request. Decisions carry legal weight under the Equality Act 2010, so the audit trail has to be tamper-evident. And managers usually need guidance at the moment of decision, not a blank free-text box.

• Strengths: workflow designed around the three people involved (employee, manager, HR), built-in adjustment knowledge, audit trail by default, review reminders that fire.
• Weaknesses: another vendor relationship, another login, and a procurement exercise. If your organisation sees a handful of requests a year, the overhead may not be justified yet.

Option 2: build it yourself

Internal builds usually start as a form plus a spreadsheet plus goodwill. That works until the person who owns the spreadsheet changes jobs. The hard parts of an adjustments system are not the form: they are access control on health data, an append-only history, reminder logic that survives staff turnover, and reporting that anonymises properly.

• Budget for maintenance, not just the build. The system has to outlive its builder.
• Involve your data protection officer early. Special category data in a homegrown tool is where retention and access rules most often slip.
• Be honest about what a tribunal would make of the record. A spreadsheet with editable cells and no version history is a weak exhibit.

Option 3: configure your existing HRIS

Most HRIS platforms can be configured to hold a case type called adjustments. This is the cheapest route on paper and the one most organisations try first. It fails in predictable places.

• The HRIS access model is built for HR administrators, so restricting an adjustment record to only the people the employee has shared it with often takes custom work.
• The system knows nothing about adjustments. A manager facing a request they have never seen before gets a status dropdown, not guidance.
• Review cycles depend on someone remembering to configure them, and reconfiguration quietly breaks when the HRIS is upgraded or the admin leaves.

Configuration is a reasonable interim step. Treat it as one, with a named owner and a date to reassess, rather than a permanent answer.

How to decide

• Count your requests. Sustained volume, or a workforce where requests are rising, argues for a dedicated system.
• Ask what happens when a decision is challenged. If the honest answer is a search through inboxes, your current record-keeping is the risk, whichever option you pick.
• Check who would maintain a build or a configuration in three years. If there is no name, buy.
• Whatever you choose, insist on an export path. Your adjustment records must outlive any single tool.

This guide is general guidance on evaluating software, not legal advice. For advice on your specific obligations, speak to an employment law specialist or ACAS.