What is HR Technology?

Traditionally HR tech has been understood as the technology used to automate tasks performed by the HR department. So it was essentially a technology tool created for HR professionals. However, in recent years this definition is being challenged. This fundamental shift is a great opportunity and cause of concern for many HR professionals. So what really is HR tech? And what can HR professionals do about it?

Changing World and Definitions

When I started my career in 1998, computers were new in the world of work and so was email. In 2002, the mobile phone was an expensive proposition and a thing that people showed off.

A lot has changed since then around these technologies and now in 2019, we have a new wave of technological innovations that we all are talking about, hearing about and sometimes scared about.

But a fundamental change has happened regarding our interaction with technology. We have got technology so deeply ingrained in our daily lives that it has almost become a necessity. Growing up we learned that humans need food, water, and shelter- probably in that order. In this new age, we seem to have added devices and internet to that list of fundamentals.

The advances in technology have altered my behavior, my needs, and even my self-image. I routinely observe people in public places like metro stations, malls, and parks. I find an overwhelming majority choosing to engage with their device, even when around a group of people.

So how has this all impacted what we considered as HR Technology?

What is HR Technology

In simple words, any technology tool or solution used to automate an HR related process is HR technology. In this definition, we are primarily considering the software and are not considering the hardware. It is just assumed to be there!

So, what changed since 1998? Josh Bersin has captured these changes and he has named these phases – System of Record, System of Engagement and Systems of Productivity. In this article, while he buckets these by timelines, I believe these are essentially evolutionary paths.

There is nothing wrong with your organization if you are in the system of record phase in 2019. Maybe your business currently does not demand those higher skills from HR or from the business leaders.

The key change in the last 15+ years is what people expect their system of record to do. In the early part of my career, most interactions about technology were focused on solving the problems faced by HR professionals. Today, while that’s still a conversation starter, many HR and business professionals are willing to consider the employee perspective.

Earlier, the automation decisions were taken within the respective functional silos, now people are beginning to think of the end-to-end process. They wonder and worry about how these multiple moving parts will work together to improve the whole. Its giving rise to different conversations and creating exciting new roles within the HR function.

Once you consider this wide perspective about HR technology, the boundaries start to blur. Should we use email or a collaboration tool – is this business technology or HR technology or both? In the mobile first environment – what tasks managers and employees can do on their mobile- is this just HR technology question or a wider one?

Questions

Here is a list of a few questions for you to consider when you are implementing HR Technology

• Have I mapped all stakeholders of the system? Have I considered the end-to-end process including the upstream and downstream processes which I do not control?
• What problems am I trying to solve? And what problems my solutions might create for other parts of the system?
• While structure influences behavior, what am I missing or ignoring when I am assuming that people will just fall in love with this new piece of technology and use it for its intended purpose and even beyond?
• What problems am I solving for myself, my team, my function, my employees and my organization? Is this validated by others?
• How will this piece complete the puzzle? Or will it puzzle the puzzle?
• What time horizons have I considered?
• Have I considered the “tribal” knowledge accessible in the system? What do I know about earlier technological implementation efforts? What worked? Why? What didn’t? Why?

The Gaia Hypothesis

Typically, when technological implementation fails, the most commonly blamed entity is the solution. Organizations will routinely say the product did not do what it promised and/or as it promised. The latest example of this is the $32 million legal suit filed by Hertz on Accenture. While I do not know specifics of this case, what I am referring to is the system archetype of “shifting the blame”.

Let’s consider the Gaia hypothesis which suggests that organisms co-evolve with their environment. It believes that organisms influence their abiotic environment, and the environment, in turn, influences the biota by a Darwinian process.

If one was to apply this hypothesis to technology implementations within HR, we can postulate the following:

• The piece of HR technology is a foreign object brought inside the living organism called the organization
• This foreign object will adapt to the new environment while the environment also adjusts to this object
• In the fight for survival, the fittest of the two is likely to win. Hence if the organizational environment rejects the object, one must consider what caused this rejection before blaming the object. Just changing the object from A to B may yield similar results
• It would make sense for us to look at the wholes within the whole rather than focusing on parts within a whole

The Idioms

Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In our quest to implement HR Technology, we must not forget the current context of our organization, its structure, culture, and our own self. The technology partner also brings in all these variables and it’s the interaction of these two wholes with each other, that creates a new whole or a hole.

In conclusion, I would draw from Rabindranath Tagore’s famous poem – Where the Mind is Without Fear. I am reproducing a part of the poem here and have taken the liberty to change the last few words to fit our context. You can read the original full poem here.

Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Friend, let my HR tech awake.