Scott, suggest a few things for your consideration:

1) Define accountabilities up front; who has process and user support accountability now and why? As you implement an integrated process, system and

employee experience, who should lead this. At HP this was clear that the business process and employee and manager experience was an accountability

of HR.

2) For HR resistance to learning what you deem 'technical'/system functionality; suggest you include your SMES if you have not already in defining the new

employee & manager experience which includes the process and system configuration. Be sure to involve more than HR SMEs in your big picture design

as this will help when you need HR & Managers to be involved in supporting and championing large scale change. It is important for a manager and

employee regardless of who supports them, that they are getting accurate and timely responses to their inquiries and this includes a skillset that

understands the overall business & HR approach, process and supporting system. You may also want to consider other options for process and user

support such as outsourcing. This will depend on your culture and the skills, capabilities and requirements you define for the support function.

3) On manager delegation of using the system; it is important that managers know what people outcomes they are accountable for. They process and system

is a means to get there. That said, you may need to ensure you have proxy or delegation capabilities available so managers can have their administrators

help them get data in the system. I don't equate managers using the delegation functionality with not being accountable for the people related discusions,

decisions and taking action. Naturally, it depends on your culture and where your managers are at today relative to where you need them to meet your

business challenges.

Hope this was helpful. ~LJD