Few modern companies remain untouched by the urgency of innovation. When it comes to strategizing for a technological revolution, the question ‘whether’ often drowns out the question of ‘when’.
Unfortunately, it can be devastating to get the ‘whether’ right and the ‘when’ wrong. Most importantly, when the question that looms is, is the ecosystem ready to roll with technology? Tremendous forces are changing the world of work as we know it. Increased customer and client demand, shrinking margins and disruptions caused by technology are demanding a more agile workplace. Especially with the customers that HR professionals are providing services for adopting new technologies, it is imperative for the HR function to reinvent itself to offer high-touch and hi-tech experiences, even as millennials begin populating the workplace. While digital technology including social, gamification, cloud, mobile, big data is transforming how people work, HR is learning to keep pace through unified systems that use technology to make processes simpler for execution.
Unified Human Capital Management (HCM) systems that work along the HR value chain allow a similar experience across geographies, bring in much-needed democratization, capture employee voice, bring transparency to information sharing and enable report generation and talent analytics to permit informed people in the decision-making process.
Tapping skills anywhere, anytime, managing personnel as the ‘workforce of one’ (with customized employee experience solutions), leading and managing contingent workforces effectively — all require continuous access to technology and data to create an innovative contemporary ecosystem that attracts and retains talent.
Our romance with new-age technology whether cloud-based HCM Platforms, or using artificial intelligence (AI) along the value-chain, or deploying attractive training content from the internet to entice self-directed learning, are all attempts to innovate this space. However, innovation without the rigour of applying design-thinking solutions to industrial-era HR processes could bekey reasons why we appear to be hesitant adopters of new technologies.
The first fear with technology is being ready too late and missing the revolution (consider blockbusters, which failed because it ignored the shift from video rentals to streaming).
But the second fear is getting ready too soon and exhausting resources before the revolution begins (for instance, dot.coms in 2001). To understand why some technologies, replace their predecessors, while others catch on only gradually, we should consider two things: First, we need to look beyond technology at the broader ecosystem. Second, try to understand that competition may often take place between old and new ecosystems instead of old and new technologies.
This is why all tech implementation projects need to be managed primarily as ‘change management’ programmes rather than new technology programmes. All of thought-leader John Kotter’s eight steps for managing change will apply:
- Increase the urgency. Announce what’s coming with the new technology and why.
- Build a guiding coalition of key stakeholders and influencers.
- Develop a vision of what the new technology will deliver in phases and how will it be aligned to the overarching strategy for the function.
- Communicate, communicate and communicate to drive buy-in for change the new technology will deliver. Create excitement around the change.
- Empower action for task forces working to execute the ‘new way of working. Enable teams to ideate, innovate and explore new ways of influencing change.
- Announce and celebrate short-term wins
- Don’t let up, no matter what! Data integrity, teamwork, timelines for delivery are a challenge. Address these as opportunities to innovate, create and develop processes and interventions for sustaining change
- Make the change stick — which means there needs to be a well-articulated plan for adoption through an extended period after Go-Live.
The problem starts when Go-Live is seen as a destination place. Go-Live is the starting point to finally put all the ideas for innovation into execution. The real adoption is after that.
It’s a pity to see top dollar being invested in sophisticated technologies that can revolutionize the HR delivery model, which are eventually not used. Adoption challenges are so serious that at times companies go back to the safety of legacy processes and programmes instead of adopting new technologies.
Impacting the larger ecosystem to adopt new technologies without being surprised is key. Loading people with technology that appears too difficult to understand or use, tempts them to invariably resort to the safe haven of familiar legacy processes.
One HR head recently told me how their organisation was using AI along the HR value chain where bots would conduct interview assessments, on board new employees, conduct exit interviews and manage help desks. We discussed the opportunities and challenges of using bots when I enquired about the HCM platform being used for HR transactions and to manage performance and talent programmes. To my astonishment, they didn’t have any and were using Excel sheets and disparate technologies that were not only dated but cumbersome.
This is a classic case of romance with technology gone wrong. Appearing trendy or getting bedazzled by new technologies to appear cool can be a problem. A keen sense of priorities on investing dollars in conjunction with enhancing employee experience and managing employee data seamlessly is key. Finally, the objective of technology is to enhance quality, productivity, the efficiency of processes without compromising human and humane interactions. Besides, talent analytics and data that technology can produce can bring much-needed credibility and objectivity to people’s decisions.
The romance can work if the chemistry between why we need technology and how best we can deploy it in our ecosystem ‘for use’ is established. The success lies in delivering on the promise.
