Defending Technology
Posted April 14th, 2009 by Yvan
I found 'Steve's' blog today and for the first time I read one of his articles called "Defending technology". His article explains that "the lack of understanding of available technology solutions causes many HR departments to continue with inefficient processes, collaborate with each other and the rest of the organization primarily via e-mail, and get stuck waiting for corporate IT to come to their assistance time and time again".
You're right Steve, "HR" and "Technology" needs to get along together and unfortunately this is far from being the case all the time. I regularly implement HR systems (ERPs like SAP or PeopleSoft) within large organisations. Getting the HR Team to use these new systems is a challenge. But just getting them implemented is another challenge! Why? Simply because we've got less and less time to deploy these huge systems. The only way to achieve these tight deadlines is to have the project team, including HR professionals, rapidly onboard and constantly up to date. This is where your articles make a lot of sense to me. We do have technologies available today that could help us to do so. You mentioned some of them..."Yammer" to connect and share..."Rypple" to gather feedback and lessons learned..."Twitter" to keep others up to date with what you do. All these systems should be tools to help us achieve better results rather than being barriers. HR professionals should be at the forefront of using these "connection" tools simply because HR is about... communicating, consulting & managing change!
Defending technology
As someone with 30 years experience in HR Transformation I wonder if putting forward a technology solution for a non technology oriented function might not risk adding to the problem? Transforming HR often requires establishing a new and very different operating model with associated new organisation, skills and culture as well as new systems and processes. That means either making tough and objective resourcing decisions or accepting a watered down "three legged horse" solution. Frankly there are too many of those. Senior HR folk tend to be very ER oriented and highly valued for their abilities in this area - just look at the job adverts! An efficient model would mitigate the need for reactive ER thus undermining their whole raison d'etre. In order to overcome resistance therefore Transformation requires a really strong mandate from the top, which I fully agree includes setting realistic timescales for both defining, planning and implementing a robust change programme.
DavidE
Re: Defending Technology?
I absolutely agree with David that putting technology up front leads to strategically wrong decisions. Technology can and must be an important influencer and implementer, but the way it is treated as an end in itself isn't doing hr-transformation any good, if it is supposed to go beyond cost saving.
However, in respect to driving change, putting technology up front can be a double edged sword. On the one hand, I agree it can create resistance and set wrong priorities.
On the other hand, it often seems the only way to drive any real change at all in HR, because this is a field HR can accept 3rd party expertise. They are often very reluctant to accept it on a strategic or even process level, because they want to be seen leading in people management processes and HCM strategy (sometimes they are, sometimes not). So, I've seen many change projects running on a pure ERP budget with ERP being not much more than a fig leave either because of HR pride or because the board wouldn't give them any budget, if not IT related.
Anybody with similar or contradicting experiences?
Any ideas how to get around it (the easy answer being: transforming People Management in a big way needs to be sponsored by the CEO).
Sven Ringling, iProCon HCM - website: www.iproconhcm.co.uk
blog: www.iproconhcm.co.uk/insightblog