5 minutes
Since its inception in the original tech boom, the enduring challenge for HR technology has been to find a way to deliver an exceptional user experience. HR leaders want employees to use technology to increase productivity, streamline processes, and generate meaningful data but, until recently, the technology offerings on the market were too complicated and too process–not people–oriented to be seamlessly integrated into daily operations.
Vendors tried to convince HR buyers that the issue was a complex technology footprint involving multiple vendor tools. Their proposed solution was greater consolidation to ensure all information came from a single vendor. But as HR buyers began the vendor consolidation process, they found there was still a major gap between user expectations and the value the newly consolidated HR technology was delivering. That gap is reflected in an average Net Promoter Score (NPS) of -31 in the HR technology category.
In 2014, HR buyers shifted their focus to the end user and began to seek new solutions designed to support people rather than just processes. This change in focus enabled a whole new relationship between users and their HR software. All of a sudden employees were using HR technology because they wanted to, not because they had to! These developments are shaping the way technology trends are playing out in 2015.
Increased Transparency
Just as the retail sector has had a wary relationship with review platforms, like Yelp and Trip Advisor, that enable customers to sound off on service and quality at stores and restaurants, HR professionals have cautiously approached employee review sites like Glassdoor, which posts job openings alongside reviews and comments from current and former employees. As many businesses have found to their great cost, a spate of bad reviews by disgruntled customers can have a significant negative impact on sales. HR leaders have traditionally feared similar fallout from social media complaints about employers.
But it’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle, and just as savvy retailers have leveraged social media platforms to capture new business and build a positive brand image, HR leaders are increasingly realizing that employee feedback can work in their favor. Forward-thinking HR professionals are now embracing a more open workplace culture and empowering employees to share positive news. Greater transparency helps HR teams build a more engaged workforce that can serve as an indispensable recruiting ally.
Improved Employee Engagement
Virtually every HR leader talks about increasing employee engagement, and it’s easy to see why: In the U.S., employee disengagement has a staggeringly high price tag of $500 billion per year. But for too long, companies have been talking the talk without walking the walk: Most spend more time and money measuring employee engagement than actually doing something to increase it.
The tide is turning this year, with HR leaders deploying innovative technology solutions like HireVue, SmashFly, and Limeaid, that allow them to broadly connect employees across multiple business units, reward productivity and innovation and align workforces with company objectives.
At Achievers, we’ve seen our wellness partner, VirginPulse, seamlessly integrate into our recognition platform to track employee participation in wellness challenges and reward them for making health a priority. 2015 is shaping up to be the year that organizations use HR technology tools to increase engagement across the board rather than simply measuring it.
Greater Insight From Data
“Big data” has been a relentless business buzzword for the past several years, and HR professionals have been eagerly waiting for the promise of analytics to be realized in their field. But most HR departments aren’t equipped to generate and parse huge datasets to glean meaningful information, and they shouldn’t have to. No one should have to go through voluminous data to reach conclusions – that’s not effectively using the power of computing. Just like in our consumer lives, machines should understand big data behind the scenes and be able to provide us with valuable insight when and where we need them, not produce reams of non-deciphered data.
As 2015 progresses, more HR professionals will finally start to see the benefits of data through increased use of sophisticated, user-friendly HR technologies, like recruiting platforms, recognition programs, and performance management and learning systems that deliver insights exactly when they’re needed.
Instead of reports that show what happened last year, new HR technology solutions are crunching the numbers in real time and delivering relevant insights people managers can use today to build programs and develop future-looking strategies that improve knowledge, retention and efficiency.
Achievers offers an Engagement Pulse feature as part of our platform that regularly reveals employee engagement across the organization, enabling leaders to quickly respond to trends, facilitate open dialogue and increase trust. Managers are able to compare top line metrics—team engagement pulse and trends—with the rest of the organization’s averages.
Deeper analysis with full reporting data can be segmented by any HRIS field, enabling HR to coach managers with low team morale in the moment, rather than waiting for an annual survey, when it’s too late. This kind of analytical insight enables organizations to adjust their engagement approach and achieve an agile engagement strategy.
This shift in focus from processes to people that occurred in 2014 accompanied a change in HR technology buying strategies, with more HR professionals bucking the consolidation trend and adopting solutions from multiple vendors that are designed to integrate and complement other solutions. This mirrors the way consumer technologies are built to integrate with other platforms, and companies of all sizes are adopting a new multi-vendor approach to gain a competitive advantage through better people management.
Steven Parker is VP/customer success & business transformation at Achievers, where he uses his 20+ years of global HR leadership and experience in driving employee success to help change the way the world works.
Credit Union Management’s online-only “HR Answers” column runs the first Tuesday of the month.
