We sat down with Shayne Brown, one of Australia’s leading Chief People Officers, to dig a little deeper into how HR Tech works, and doesn’t, in organisations –and what it takes to make that technology indispensable.
Are there common threads that come through regarding HR technology?
On multiple levels, people are generally dissatisfied with their HR tech company and their internal HR around the process, rather than the technology itself. Ultimately this comes down to the partnership between the stakeholders within the organisation and the HR tech company. Drilling down, operational GMs would complain about the implementation and the actual use of the technology, whereas CPAs who are HR experts have more of a bias towards the partnership aspect.
How important are the stakeholder relationships within the implementation process?
Implementation of an HR tech system can take a significant amount of time depending on the size of the organisation which inevitably means the people involved come and go which changes the relationship. Managing that process with different people can be make or break. People get frustrated at the tech but it’s really the ongoing relationship and stakeholder management that’s crucial. There has to be proper handover, training and implementation across all stakeholders from HR, to finance, to executive and beyond.
And it’s a continued partnership, it’s not set and forget. All the stakeholders must be getting back together to review, refresh and look at the total investment and that also included the HR tech company itself to come and sit on the panel every couple of months to see how things are going. These are important and expensive pieces of infrastructure that need aftercare.
This is the sort of forum that identifies pain points, allows the users to have a voice and tracks how it’s going and what’s actually going on internally, capturing information.
“AbilityMap addresses pairing the person with the environment so that you improve your churn and your employee happiness and increase productivity.”
What makes a successful HR Tech implementation?
Every organisation is different. Some are advocates for the transparency of accountability and full governance, others not. I think everyone should have successful implementation as part of their ongoing KPIs, particularly if you’ve got a short-term incentive attached to it as well. Irrespective of that, there should be a measurement of successful implementation, even if it was introduced by a predecessor.
The other way to do it is what you’d call front end loading, where all the stakeholder engagement is done beforehand with a business case, the buy-in of the C-suite, the dialogue and evaluation of preparing the ground for the tech implementation. This behavioural economics evaluates the technology you think you need.
Do you feel that we’re at a stage where technology is indispensable to the HR function?
Technology prevents a lot of error and standardises process from a transactional point of view. The better the technology is in creating a holistic narrative of the organisation (which is very time consuming), the more indispensable it becomes.
Who does AbilityMap help within an organisation?
The basic premise of AbilityMap is that it’s an HR tool that assesses what people need in a unique company environment, looking at job, function and team to identify the potential a person, or group of people, have what’s needed for that role.
With that in mind, it’s specifically technology that can help at an HR level, but more broadly it benefits everyone in the organisation. It’s important to canvass a range of opinions from board members, CIOs, CTOs, Heads of Data, Heads of HR and operational GMs, about what HR technology means for them.
Is there inertia around the adoption of tech that addresses performance and role fit that AbilityMap does?
Not really. AbilityMap addresses pairing the person with the environment so that you improve your churn and your employee happiness and increase productivity. Then you must look at engagement surveys, performance management systems, talent management and succession management so it becomes part of something.
You can’t leave out the natural dynamics of teams though and that the goalposts move all the time with people changing, managers changing, the commercial landscape changes. You have to go back to the governance process to ensure things are scrutinised. The elements of AbilityMap are very powerful qualitatively. You need strong operational guidance on using the software to ensure you get the most from it.
Do you want to explore how AbilityMap can improve churn, employee happiness and increase productivity? Click here for a demo
