Am I out of my gourd? (HRIS Admin and Implementation)
I am a business analyst working for a nonprofit of ~2000 employees, which increases to closer to 3000 during summertime as we have a lot of seasonal positions. I was hired specifically to support our HR department because I have several years experience as an analyst in leave and accommodations. I knew at hire that there were plans to potentially roll out a new HRIS and I took the job. I was upfront that I do not have HRIS configuration experience but that I want to learn, and I think this will be an excellent experience.
I knew going in that I would be heavily involved in the implementation, and sure enough, a contract was signed between my offer acceptance and the start date. I had about a month's lull before the project got into full swing to get acquainted with our systems, teams, and processes. I also learned very quickly that things are a mess, everyone is stressed, and capacity is thin, which I was already primed for, knowing this is nonprofit sector work. However, things have gotten crazier, and I feel like I need a sanity check from someone not in the middle of this.
We are now about 5 months into our implementation with a go-live date in the fall. In March, our HRIS director quit. No replacement has been hired yet, and it took about a month before we were clearly told that leadership has no intention to hire a replacement. At the start of May, our HRVP quit. Both were major decision makers on the project.
Since this HRVP left, it's now myself and this HRIS admin who are being looked to for decisions when we hit sticking points. These include things like determining CRUD authorizations and role access as well as providing signoffs on configuration testing. On paper, my VP (VP of IS) is signing off, but she's not present and basically has no idea what's going on. Periodically, she's stepped in to demand additional approval, which largely means we then have to have half a dozen meetings just to bring her up to speed on the current context, and it wastes a ton of time.
Until a few weeks ago, we didn't even have an internal project manager; we went through two contracted PMs, the first of whom was an asshole, and the second of whom was juggling multiple clients and had limited capacity to provide support. He's been a massive help and has taken a lot of administrative load off my shoulders, as I was also being looked to as the primary POC for scheduling meetings and coordinating SMEs for the different modules across HR.
This brings me to our current state. Our "HRIS" department is me, that one HR admin who actually just went on leave because she's understandably overwhelmed by all this, and a temp who is being pulled more into the project simply due to lack of capacity from those already involved in it. I communicated my own frustration of how thin we're all being stretched to the VP today. I told her that we need leadership involved in this project that has the authority to direct some of this decision making at a high level, even if it isn't a director level role like the person who left in March. She basically said to me that it was always the plan for a BA role to do the job that this HRIS director was doing, never mind the fact that I'm paid a good 40k less and have been with the company for just barely over six months.
She essentially said that she wants me to be the HRIS admin AND a business analyst at the same time, while ALSO being the primary contact on this implementation project. Which, again, is my FIRST major system implementation. My first month on the job, I had started evaluating areas that needed major support (we have no system for LOA, a ton of manual processes to pay benefits including some that still use paper forms, and about a bajillion excel trackers that are all reworked every year or two when staff turnover destroys all institutional knowledge). I joked that I would never run out of things to do, no matter how many processes I automated. Joke's on me, because all those projects have ground to a halt, and are unlikely to ever resume if the entirety of HRIS actually gets dumped onto my plate.
I knew nonprofit would be a bit crazy. Is this anything like normal nonprofit levels of crazy, or am I being thoroughly taken advantage of?
Minor edits made for clarity.