Technology in today’s world not only makes everything easier, but is necessary to implement if you want to keep up with all of your responsibilities as an HR leader. Just about every area of HR can be improved with technology so that you can do what it can’t—focus on your employees. Recruiting? There’s tech for that. Maintaining compliance? There’s also tech for that. Performance management? You guessed it. There’s tech that can handle that too.
But there’s more to it than just selecting the HR software. After a few months of use, they sometimes fail to meet your expectations. Here are the top five reasons why your technology may be failing and what you can do to make it work.
1. You Aren’t Adequately Measuring Success
Without clear results, it’s all too easy to become discouraged about your new technology project. You may find yourself asking, “is it actually providing real value?” Before you’re ready to wave the white flag and give up on your tech, make sure you measure the ways it’s made a difference.
When you’re ready to implement any new tech, track the effectiveness of your processes as they are. After some time with the new technology, take note of how those processes have changed. Although it may seem like your new technology project isn’t giving you the results you anticipated, the data might tell a different story.
2. The Right People Weren’t Involved
Technology shifts involve more than just the HR team, even if it is an HR tool. The new tech will likely have to go through approvals across many different departments like Finance and IT to make sure it’s aligned with the organization’s overall goals.
Involve those that will be using the technology on a regular basis from the beginning, like in the research and selection phase of the tech implementation. For example, all of your HR staff in charge of onboarding will be able to provide the most valuable insight into what an onboarding platform should include. You already have experts on hand, so you should use them.
If you’re working on getting started on involving your HR team with the tech implementation, make sure there is space for an open conversation where anyone can provide feedback. You may want to discuss things like:
- Have you received enough training on how to use the new system?
- Is the new technology effective?
- What could make this tech implementation smoother for you?
When you involve those that will be using the new technology in every stage of the decision-making process, the tech implementation will be much more successful.
3. Tech Implementation Wasn’t Prioritized
Tech implementation can easily fail if it isn’t one of your top priorities. Technology exists to make your life easier, but that doesn’t mean you can purchase your tech and leave it at that. It will require some extra attention as you adapt your workflows to what your new tech offers.
To make sure it works for you, devote extra time to helping your team learn the processes and capabilities of the new tech. The learning curve is inevitable, so giving yourself time to understand the changes you’ll need to implement is the missing piece to HR efficiency.
4. You Lack a Change Management Strategy
Before technology was such an integral part of HR, you may have been fine to decide on one piece of technology and focus on just that. But in today’s world, there are too many pieces of HR tech to be able to get by without a well-thought-out plan.
Your change management strategy is completely customizable based on your organization and your team, but you must have some sort of plan in place to make it effective.
Your strategy may include short, medium, and long term goals in regards to your technology expectations. This way, you aren’t only worrying about the big picture achievements, but you’ll pay close attention to the smaller milestones that will get you there.
A change management strategy will focus on improved communication so you know how your team will respond to change before you’re already stuck in the middle of it. This will be critical to ensuring that your team can experience the positive impacts of the new technology as early as possible
5. You Might Not Have the Right Tech
Yes, there are many things you can do to make sure the tech you do have works for you. But on occasion, you might have the wrong tech and will have to search out a solution that actually fits your needs.
To avoid implementing the wrong tech for your HR needs, identify exactly what you’re looking for. You should know what problem needs to be solved with technology before looking into potential solutions.
For example, this HR experience identifies exactly what problem the team is dealing with instead of starting with the solution.
“We’ve developed a bad habit of keeping personnel files for much longer than necessary. We have files for employees that haven’t been employed here for 10+ years. I want to stop holding onto unnecessary files starting now. So I’d like to find a solution that automatically deletes those records.”
This HR team knows exactly what problem needs to be solved, so they can avoid falling into the trap of solutions that only offer fancy features, instead of what they really need.
Navigating the waters of HR technology is not an easy feat. Revver can automate your document retention and completely simplify all of your tedious and time-consuming paperwork processes. Discover Revver today.
