Use of electronic human resource management (e-HRM) offers the prospect of enabling the human resource management (HRM) function to take on a strategic partner’s role in organisations. Despite the pervasive expansion of e-HRM use, there is no clear understanding of why organisations are not achieving e-HRM potential. We address this issue by investigating e-HRM adoption factors and their influence on information technology (IT) use potential to automate, informate and transform the HRM function in a sequential manner. In particular, we examine HRM professionals’ experiences with e-HRM use, including challenges, successes, and outcomes. We identified e-HRM adoption factors that that enable and that constrain each stage of e-HRM use. With a focus on the inhibiting factors, our findings suggest that e-HRM potential hindered already in the automation stage diminishes e-HRM potential to subsequently informate and to transform the e-HRM function.