Big Bad Wolves - Who’s Afraid of HR Technology?November 17th, 2009 |
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Michael Krupa’s post a little while back titled, “Is HR afraid of Technology?” highlighted something that really resonated here - HR generalists, managers and executives don’t tend, as a group, to be overly excited or concerned about the inner-workings of the HR technology that they are using.
Although our customers are using talent management solutions to effectively transform their processes and even their cultures in many cases, Michael notes that some HR implementations can be fraught with problems, leading to fear of failure. From Michael’s post:
We read story after story about how HR organizations purchase HR applications only to find out later that the application does not really meet their needs.
That’s exactly what we find when we are approached by organizations who have experienced a failed talent management software implementation and need to change. Sometimes it went wrong because they realized the vendor didn’t have insight into their specific market, or perhaps the product didn’t easily scale with them as they grew.
Steve Boese explained in the comments section of Michael’s post why these kinds of oversight can happen so easily:
In very small HR departments, the HR pro has so many things to worry about, that they tend to focus on their day-to-day tasks, and much less on the tools that they do use, or what ones could potentially be leveraged to support their processes more efficiently. And in many mid-size and large organizations, the HR technology responsibility and decision making has been ceded (largely) to the IT department.
That’s why we’ve always put major emphasis on flexibility and choice. We have talked here extensively about the concept of “on choice” implementation/hosting models (in-house, hosted by us, or a combination), and about the need for flexibility in an application. To us that means a customer can easily add modules, or more licenses and still get the same functionality, and that the application can easily support your previous forms and processes for continuity. We also advocate bringing IT to the table as often as possible, and early on, to ensure that your talent management system is suited to your business requirements.
Honestly, I’m not sure that the technology side of HR tools is ever going to be where the conversation rests for long. In the end, HR is about people, and the best HR people are focused, correctly, on engaging their workforces and meeting bottom line business goals through the management of a productive, cohesive team.
So we’re happy enough to keep focusing on that, and on delivering solutions that help HR increase their organizations’ success. We’ll take care of the details!
Tags: HR, talent management |
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