Your HR Technology Stack May Be In Need of an Overhaul
As companies increasingly invest in HR tech stack, driven by the pandemic, the complexities increase. In this article, E.J. Marin, director of solution engineering, HANELLY, Nakisa, talks about a few critical parameters based on which organizations need to reevaluate their HR tech stack and see if it needs an overhaul.
As companies increasingly invest in HR tech stack, driven by the pandemic, the complexities increase. In this article, E.J. Marin, director of solution engineering, HANELLY, Nakisa, talks about a few critical parameters based on which organizations need to reevaluate their HR tech stack and see if it needs an overhaul.
It’s not yet clear exactly how much the pandemic accelerated. One survey estimates that COVID-19’s economic fallout fast-forwarded the adoption of technology to digitize operations by as much as six years. HR was no exception; according to SHRM, even in an uncertain economic climate, HR teams continued to invest in new tools and update existing systems. digital transformation
If your company increased its HR technology stack over the past couple of years, you may find that data integration is your most pressing issue. Larger companies typically have more than a dozen core HR systems, and many HR professionals are using spreadsheets to integrate data across disparate solutions, which opens up the possibility of manual data entry errors.
That needs to be addressed because the overused phrase “the future of work” is now obsolete; we’re living that future right now. Our present challenge is to make sure we have the right strategies and tools to support organizational goals in the months and years ahead. So, this is the perfect time to reevaluate your HR technology stack to make sure it’s meeting your company’s current and future needs. Let’s do some spring cleaning!
Learn More: COVID-19: Could HR SaaS Investments Continue To Deliver Business Value?
Does Your Current Technology Accommodate Changing Job Design Needs?
The unprecedented mass experiment in remote working taught millions of organizations that remote working is effective. But it’s not always smooth sailing. For example, burnout can become a real issue when employees aren’t able to disconnect. Change of such magnitude is hard on multiple fronts, and HR pros are in the thick of it, looking for ways to redesign work so that it’s functional in this new environment.
There’s increased focus on the employee experience today, and as a result, roles are less structured than they once were. The data that’s driving HR decisions is also less structured. With newer tools coming online like Microsoft Viva (the employee experience platform in Microsoft Teams), companies are capturing HR data outside of the usual HR systems, and integrating that data into a single location will be important.
One point to keep in mind when evaluating your current HR tech stack: Does it support your job design needs and accommodate relevant data from multiple sources? You’ll need strong organizational design capabilities to build out new ways to communicate, designate space for onsite and offsite work, create compensation structures that make sense and continuously measure the employee experience.
Learn More: How To Compensate Employees in the Work-From-Anywhere Era
Does Your HR Technology Stack Support D&I Objectives?
The move to remote working wasn’t the only seismic event in the workforce in 2020. Leaders in the U.S. are more engaged with social justice issues and how they impact the workplace. Reporting requirements and regulations from the EU’s Gender Equality Index and new pay data reporting obligations in states like California and Illinois have put D&I data front and center.
Meeting D&I goals requires technology that produces the relevant hard data while enabling HR to aggregate it in meaningful ways. Organizational design technology can help you understand your current company structure through a D&I lens and plan where you want to be in the future. The right technology can also reveal patterns in employee data that humans might miss. That lets companies investigate trends and determine if people in protected groups are advancing as quickly as peers and receiving equitable pay — and if not, why not.
It’s important to keep in mind that D&I is also about perceptions of fairness, not just numbers. For example, one insurer with very progressive values had seemingly achieved gender parity in pay and management representation. But despite the positive hard data, company leaders found that the organization was still rewarding the same traditionally “masculine” traits — assertiveness, aggressiveness, etc. — and that women, therefore, felt compelled to take on those qualities to succeed.
The ultimate goal of a diversity program isn’t to change data; it’s to bring in and benefit from diverse perspectives. In that spirit, the insurance company embraced its core values, e.g., empathy, trust and collaboration, which allowed it to truly achieve diversity. Keep in mind that this type of transformation requires technology that can measure the less structured phenomenon, such as perceptions.
Learn More: Tracking Your Employees’ Whereabouts: What’s Acceptable, What’s Not?
Does Your Technology Stack Support the Level of Agility Required To Succeed Now?
Doing business during a pandemic was a crash course in remote work, but it also underscored the importance of organizational agility in other ways. That won’t change when the virus is under control. Change has accelerated across marketplaces and organizations, and that will continue, so organizational design capabilities that enable rapid adaptation are now a must-have, not a nice-to-have.
When reevaluating the technology stack, keep in mind that people won’t necessarily come back to the same jobs they had before the pandemic. Think about what worked and what didn’t over the past year and whether your organizational structure is flatter now than it once was. Assess your modeling tools and make sure you have the capability to look at the impact of multiple “what-if” scenarios.
Here’s the bottom line: every economic crisis in modern times has been followed by a wave of activity. Does your organization have the tools to adapt quickly to changing business needs and organizational configurations? Can you demonstrate that diverse perspectives are heard and valued? Are you able to visually map data and design jobs and teams that fit rapidly evolving demands? If the answer to any of these questions is no, your HR technology stack may be in need of an overhaul.
