What are the secrets to HR Technology Success?

By Snehil
11 Min Read
secrets to HR Technology

It is no new development that technology with its gems of change and improvement is affecting every possible work sphere, however big or small. The same cannot be overlooked in the Human Resource Department too.

Human resource leaders have greatly benefited from this and have added an extra responsibility on the HR department’s shoulder worldwide. This key task comprises of how to go hand in hand with technology towards success. There are no magic words for this. Simply strategizing and putting in data and analysis will be helpful enough. The quickly switching workplace environment due to technology, require and need policies and plans to function in a proper manner. 

For this reason, Stacey Harris, VP of Research and Analytics at Sierra-Cedar Research which is a US-based research house that looks and follows adoption, approaches deployed or implemented and the value achieved with the help of HR technologies. 

Advertisement

Her findings range from a huge number of organizations, 14,000 to be exact, which participated in the longest-running global HR systems survey prevailing in the market. 

As per Stacey, she has broken down the elements to the foundation level and the balance that needs to be maintained in accordance with employee aspirations, creating a stable business and the suitability to integrate all this in business applications. 

She has given a blueprint of the Human Capital Management that is optimal and functional in its very existence. 

Foundation of the HCM Blueprint

At the Sierra-Cedar 2028-2019 HR Systems Survey, questions were put across regarding the primary six Categories and the 54 particular application areas which included, the Emerging Technology areas, which are given enough emphasis in the Human Capital Management (HCM) Blueprint. 

Not only this, but the survey also collected all relevant details that fall necessary to the HR System Strategies, vendors, processes, security implementations, expenses, Change Management and the adjoining supporting resources. 

The Sierra-Cedar HCM application blueprint which was devised and updated and was presented at the survey is in careful collaboration with the growing trends of usage of applications which they gained insight into by pursuing the organisations through their annual plans for adopting and deploying HR applications. It showed in the survey, that while some organizations had a clear cut strategic agenda or plans for purchasing and stationing HR applications, the others depicted an organic growth model which was appertaining to immediate needs and funds. On a whole, it is solely company decision on what path to choose, that goes in accordance with an individual situation which is dependent on strategies in place, culture, and data management approach. 

To trace the shifts due to technology, that are very much visible in every organizational ecosystem, the Sierra-Cedar HCM Application Blueprint was fabricated in line with it for 2018. 

The blueprint is made up of many squares which start from the block level and slowly rise to the levels above. 

Square One – Strategy, Data Governance and Culture

At the centre, the three foundational elements that lie are –

  1. Data Governance
  2. Culture
  3. Strategy

Organisations need to come up with an enterprise HR Systems Strategy that will put into place the above HR solutions and will integrate, configure and use them. This becomes a much-needed task to be implemented due to the change of administrative tools, that were initially being made used in the HR department, to the ones which are more strategic and finally tuned to give optimal results by refining the workforce. A full and thorough understanding of the consequences of the usage and implementation of these HR applications should be done by the organisations and companies. As it is these applications which make the centre of the managerial aspect of any organisation. 

An organisation should focus on the outcome that an HR Technology will give in respect to their prevailing work culture and its unique markings too. Only getting the desired functionality shouldn’t be the aim. All-around research before employing HR Technology should be made. A particular technology should perfectly be in sync with the current scenario of the operating organisation. Then only it will work to its highest potential. 

Data pertaining to employees and the workplace which is highly sensitive should be maintained and managed with integrity and safeguarded in the most professional manner because it is a crucial element of the HR technology ecosystem.

Therefore, at square one of the HCM Application Blueprint, data governance, culture and strategy all come together to form decision if some considerable HR Technology will work diligently in accordance with these three.

Moving on, there are other 6 categories that enclose the foundational elements as listed above. 

Square two – Application Environments

The square two comprises of all those categories and types of applications that encircle the foundational level elements listed above. Which are –

  • Administrative
  • Service delivery
  • Workforce Management
  • Workforce Intelligence
  • Emerging technology
  • Talent Management

The above listed are application categories that are made use of in an HR organization. They come together to make the ecosystem of the application and the company together. It is a fairly difficult process to make them perfectly fit the organization, user expectations and changes behaviour wise in a workforce. There are other elements that affect their functioning. 

Administrative –

Building a technology’s ecosystem is hard but is totally doable. For the same many companies harness the power of technology to their administrative section. 

These administrative solutions that a technology caters to are majorly payroll solutions. To automate the administrative process is to simply contract technology at the basic level i.e administration. Statistics display that somewhere around 90%  surveyed HR companies make use HRMS which is implement payroll solutions. 

This HRMS is what makes the crux of many HR systems and efficiently manage the workforce data, sharing it and synchronising it with other HR applications. 

It has been a pattern where the use of HRMS has expanded and it is seen responsible to look into data management of the enterprise employee force. Also, it has been noted that smaller organizations find it extremely helpful and convenient to implement HRMS. 

The Benefits Administration application is yet another tool that is highly consumed by the HR department and is totally outsourced by Total Benefits of Outsourcing (TBO). 

Service Delivery –

By making use of technology and apps, namely HRMS payroll and benefits administration automatically the companies become smooth in their HR operations and as a consequence attain the standard, idealistic efficacy. 

But there in the HR ecosystem a key element that should look into employee-facing factors and shouldn’t be undermined. There are employee communication platforms that offer much personalization like Employee and Manager Self Service, Portal Technologies, HR Help Desk and much more. These applications services are much influenced by the growing fad of mobile facilitation and consumer-based HR practices

Such platforms are useful for the processes of data collection and sharing. 

The organizations which bring into action the service delivery applications are the ones which witness an increase in employee engagement and system endorsement. 

Workforce Management and Talent Management –

Both Workforce Management (WFM) and Talent Management (TM) tools or applications become highly successful as they look into an organization’s business needs. These WFM tools and applications are judiciously made use of in areas like Time, Attendance, Absence, Leave Management and Scheduling. Talent Management likewise is diligently employed for the purpose of Recruiting, Onboarding, developing compensation and movement of critical talent in a workforce. 

Both talent management and workforce management run together and look for employee culture and engagement solutions

Small firms are also making use of these applications but taken management and workforce management tools are largely seen essential for the functioning and management of a gigantic workforce, prevalent in large organisations. 

Workforce Intelligence –

Data force intelligence applications can be considered in their developmental phase. They do not stand alone and are seen as a combination of many technologies, solutions and tools. Workforce intelligence is optimal to an HR to chalk out business data. This will result in business decisions made accordingly to impact business outcomes. The tools that workforce intelligence comes up with also give an insight into the near future by making an analysis of the prevailing scenario along with a combination of the key significant data both inside and outside the organization.  

The Final Element

There is a grey coloured outer area that further surrounds the six enterprise HR System Application as mentioned above and this is called the enterprise standard. It is these enterprise standards that define to what extent the success or failure of an application will prove. Such enterprise standards are ones which intermingle with a ton of enterprise system environments alone. It is congenial to blend HR systems to enterprise standards as they will give the organisation smooth safe and functioning HR solutions that can be used in workplaces, quite competently. 

Share This Article
By Snehil
Snehil Prakash is an HR editor and Product marketer at CuteHR which is a time tracker based HR business tool. He ideally works on scaling small businesses but when he is away from his workplace then it’s all about reading, good coffee, and music.