One must ask questions such as: How will the platform/app/technology support higher productivity, drive higher engagement, provide talent insights, facilitate cross-collaboration and improve business results? It is important to build the right business case for digitization to support business goals and remain competitive.
Another way to look at it is to focus on high-impact HR activities that can create significant value for your business. It’s important to consider how scalable the solution is and how easily, efficiently and effectively it can be adjusted to your business demands.
One of the eight golden rules for successful HR technology projects UNLEASH shares in that same insights report is to focus on outcomes. Whether you are at the beginning of your HR technology transformation or not, you must ask yourself what you are trying to achieve. Clear objectives will ensure that the right technology is implemented in the right areas.
Simply layering new technologies over old processes without understanding the benefits and capabilities of such advancements is detrimental to the progress of your business.
Engage Employees And Enhance The Employee Experience
It’s always about people. It could be a massive cultural shift for the organization as a whole and affect different employees differently. Let employees cocreate the design and implementation plan with you. As more technologies and platforms are integrated and implemented within the organization, employees will need the necessary skills, resources and understanding of how to navigate this new digital landscape. Employees work in an increasingly complex HR infrastructure, and the organization’s focus, therefore, must be on the employee experience.
Another question HR leaders should ask is how this technology can benefit an employee’s experience. Engaging employees during the planning and execution stages can go a long way toward a superior user experience. It’s imperative to consider how the planned technology will improve the lives of the employees. Does it support their career planning and development? Does it make more mundane tasks easier for them? What HR-candidate or HR-employee interactions (employment brand awareness, onboarding, learning, employee well-being) does the technology make better?
As remote working becomes the new reality, many employees may feel disconnected or digitally excluded from the atmosphere that is centered in an office or workplace. More than ever, creating a sense of inclusion in a digital workspace is crucial to maintaining an open channel of communication between employees and senior leaders.
Create Coalition And Gain Commitment From All Levels Of The Organization
Ultimately, it’s about building a relationship with the digital world. It requires collaboration and alignment from all levels of the organization, from the executive team to key partners including IT. Increasing involvement from these teams will significantly impact the outcome of the HR project.
By collaborating with your teams, you will gain an understanding of the appetite for digital transformation and better define its scope. Cross-functional collaboration may seem like an obvious way to ensure project success, but it can easily be overlooked when concerns regarding time management and budgeting arise. You have to figure out what works best for your teams; there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model for collaboration. However, cross-functional collaboration will represent greater diversity and inclusion that will boost the success of your project.
As our ways of working are being reimagined and readjusted, it’s not enough to simply declare a new HR technology project and expect your teams and employees to adopt it immediately. Without clear objectives, stakeholder buy-in and employee involvement, it’s difficult to gain the traction needed during your transition into the digitally transformed workplace. Failure is expensive and disruptive, and it erodes the credibility of the people function.
Successful HR technology projects take time, coalition, commitment and perseverance, and in no way should you make any compromises.
