Let’s examine some facts. 

Businesses today exist in a state of change. Most powerful among these changes, is the changing expectations of the workforce from the organization. This force of change requires organizations to adapt and yet manage to achieve their objectives. Between supporting the achievement of the business goals and meeting the expectations of the workforce, is the space in which the HR function of the organization operates. One key resource that the HR function relies on to deliver value to the business and the people is the suite of HR Technology solutions that it adopts. Modern HR Technology applications are a far cry from their predecessors.

Evolution of HR Technology

There has been steady and yet accelerating pace, at which technology is entering the world of HR. From its early predecessors which were focused on supporting the HR needs, today’s HR solutions are more inclusive - facilitating the HR needs through the enablement of a workforce centric approach.

Impact on the HR Professional

In this continuum of HR technology evolution, there has been an underlying shift in the role to be played by HR professionals and IT professionals in enabling HR Technology solutions. The early HR applications required extensive dependence on IT professionals to configure and modify them to meet the business needs. Moving to the present day, the applications have become more configurable and adaptable, leading to lesser reliance on the IT professionals to modify them. What this implies is that the scope of the HR professionals’ role in HR Technology deployment must change.

Technology Skills Expected From HR Professionals

The change expected is that HR Professionals must take on a more active role in HR Technology deployment. This entails:

• Taking greater ownership of the HR Technology decisions
• Shifting from operating as a domain specialist to becoming a domain specialist with a technology mindset
• Understanding the intricacies of the application used to leverage them in supporting decision making
• Being able to connect the business problem with the technology solution

Having provided context to some of the shifts in capabilities expected from HR professionals, let’s look at how technology can support the organization if deployed with diligence. 

Defining the expected outcomes: Designing an HR Technology landscape that can support the organizational needs and the workforce needs, begins with the strategy. The strategy comprising of what are the expectations from the HR function and how technology adoption can facilitate the strategy. Simply put a clear destination and the contribution of technology needs to be clear.

Workforce Experience: The next logical step lies in understanding how the workforce fits in this picture. What is the expectation that the business has from them, how will they achieve it, the environment in which they can achieve it, and what they need to achieve it.

Operationalizing the Strategy: Once these are understood, the processes and policies can be defined, and requirements clearly understood

Identifying & Adopting The Technology: This then leads to identifying the application or applications that fit into the HR Technology landscape, deploying them, maintaining them, and looking for opportunities to enhance their value to the organization and the workforce.

The technology capabilities of HR professionals at the strategic, operational, and transactional levels obviously vary, but it is essential that all levels of the HR organization are involved in the effort to adopt and adapt technology in the flow of work. Without involvement at all levels, disconnects are created and the initiative fails to live up to its expectations, leading to significant financial losses to say the least.

While there might be a strategy and processes and policies, most failures occur when HR fails to translate them to the technology layer. An analogy would be look at language translations. Translation works only if the person translating understands the nuances of expressing the concept in a different language. This is precisely where HR professionals need to develop their capabilities.

Developing the Technology Capabilities

This requires their ability to understand how HR Technology functions work and how they can adapt them. Just as learning a language requires a structured approach for us to be proficient in it, so too does HR Technology adoption. Before we can look at how strategy, employee experience, process and policies, can be linked to technology it is essential that the language of HR Technology be understood.

The HR Digitization Blueprint course is a foundational course that takes you on the journey of how Technology supports HR in the context of a business, the evolution of HR Technology solutions, and introduces to the building blocks required for technology understanding. Its singular purpose is to help you navigate the world of HR Technology with ease.

As they say, teach a person to fish, and you make them self-reliant for life. So too is the case with this course, teach a person the concepts of HR Technology and they can then apply it in any HR Technology context.

I invite you to take the first step to developing your HR Technology capabilities by enrolling in the course. My promise to you, is that I will be there to support your learning.