From the Smog to the Cloud–Embracing New Technology

Seals, a senior partner with Mercer Atlanta, offered her tips at WorldatWork’s annual convention and exhibition, held recently in Philadelphia.

The New Model for Purchasing Technology

Seals’ chart shows how tech purchasing has changed:

Because of the move to a configured multitenant approach, Seals says, you can now cloud source compensation data. The host can aggregate the data from all or some of the tenants, and there’s a salary survey, crowd sourced, with reliable data.

You Don’t Have Enough Staff

You don’t have enough HR staff to do what you want to do without technology, says Seals. What’s driving this?

• Globalizing of talent markets requires technology intervention.
• Companies want integrated data about their employees.
• Business leaders want better tools to reward and assess employee performance.
• Social, user-friendly applications are needed to facilitate engagement.
• Access to HR information is moving to mobile.

Why an HR Technology Strategy?

You need an HR technology strategy because:

• It provides a focus for assessing new technologies.
• Legacy HR technology primarily was designed for on-premises access and HR practitioner use only.
• The “right” technology can be a key enabler of achieving business results through people.
• 24/7, mobile, collaborative workforce requires consumerization of HR technology.
• Portal, analytics, collaboration, and mobile initiatives will impact your workforce.
• Vendor strategies need to be aligned with your HR technology strategy.
• Cloud-based data integration and Web services are less costly than proprietary interfaces.

What an HR technology strategy does:

• Enables the execution of people-related programs
• Supports the business strategy
• Identifies specific processes supported by technology
• Defines success criteria for your HR technology
• Quantifies long-term support requirements
• Identifies short-and long-term implications of new technology
• Plans for risk mitigation

HR must have its own technology strategy—unique to HR’s situation, says Seals. It will be your guiding principles for assessing new technologies and for managing a complete portfolio of tools that are tied to the overall business strategy.

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Usability

One of the important keys to being successful with new technology is usability. For example, in a well-designed mobile app, there’s no need for training. Your mobile app has to be immediately usable and work the way the users expect it to work.

Users expect the same level of usability in their business apps as they have in their consumer apps. Users expect consumerization in their interactions, says Seals.

Of course, not everything works on mobile, says Seals; you can’t do market analysis on your iPad®. But the desktop tools are for HR, not the users.

Meet the New Boss: Big Data

Big data is in the news. Here are two of Seals’ examples of how companies are using big data to reform HR practices:

• Xerox® found that creative people were more likely to stay than were inquisitive people.
• Caesars Palace® found that raising pay to the midpoint was positive related to retention; moving pay beyond the midpoint had no effect.

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Gamification

Seals tells of how Marriott used gamification to attract 18 to 27 year-olds whom they wanted to recruit. They created a game that allowed players to simulate being in charge of a kitchen. The idea was to drive traffic to their website.

In tomorrow’s Advisor, we will give more examples of new technology at work, plus an introduction to a program especially designed for smaller or even one-person HR departments.