Technology Enables Strategic HR

“You may have the best-of-breed technology or application, but if you have to build additional layers of “wiring” to connect it to other current systems, it can make the technology cost-prohibitive”

Of course that seems archaic today, but that’s because technology has made the process more efficient, saving us more time for understanding the data at hand and proposing more high-impact solutions at all levels in the organization. That’s the payback…but there’s a flip side.

In an effort to ensure fairness, ease of use for people leaders, and overall calibration of raters, you could over-engineer the process. When that happens there’s a tendency to think you can just rely on the data. But, frankly, you can’t just take the data on face value. Looking at scores alone, for example, won’t give you the whole story. You have to know how to pull in qualitative data so you end up with a fuller profile rather than a one-dimensional report of numbers. You still need human analysis. When you’re ranking someone in performance systems, for example, are you going to take a 4.2 or a 4.6 on face value? Are you going to assume the data had more rigor than it was supposed to have or that the leader used consistent behaviorally-based rating scales to carefully arrive at these ratings? It may look like it’s measuring what it’s supposed to measure when it’s really false precision or the variance between raters calls for much more scrutiny.

Perhaps two of the most significant advantages that technology has brought to HR as well as other functions, are intimacy and immediacy. Together they make the world smaller, and that makes it easier to support global leaders. Technology that easily and quickly connects people around the world ‘face to face’ allows us to get far richer analyses; we’re not only hearing from the team in the room or in the building, but from far-reaching parts of the world. The implications cannot be overestimated. The ability to bring guests to the table virtually, from Atlanta to London, London to Shanghai, Shanghai to Sao Paolo, absolutely allows us to find the best HR solutions because we’re getting voices from different constituents and thus improving our analytical accuracy as well as a higher trust in the data being utilized.

Because technology is allowing HR to make such a dramatic shift in the way we support our organizations, the profile of an HR professional is changing. Strategic HR can be a challenge if the only reason you do HR is the classic “because you like people.” We do want strong people advocates, but we absolutely need people who can interpret data and connect the dots between analysis and solutions. I’m hopeful that students who are studying HR in their undergraduate and graduate courses are learning how to work with the new technologies that power HR today. They need to master data analytics, good research methods, and continuous improvement, all within a technology ecosystem supported approach. The HR professional of today is tech-ready, business-savvy, and hungry to add value, whether it’s cracking engagement opportunities globally, or challenging leaders when a default solution to manage cost is to cut headcount when the data analysis may point in the direction of a huge potential to increase productivity in the short-term. A ‘reflex’ to cut headcount, in this case, left unchallenged means a big hit on workforce planning and more cost even a year later.

Whether it’s better wiring for the business, better data for the function or the ability to make a global business a close-knit neighborhood of stakeholders, technology enables conversation. We need to spend more time having informed conversations with people if we, as an HR function, want to provide better service than we’re able to provide to date in many companies. That’s the future of HR underpinned by technology and here, at Newell Rubbermaid, the transformation is happening now!