Technology & Hr-Leverage one for the other: "Technology and Hr are enablers of business. Integration of the two would mean not only harmonious co-existence but also leveraging one for the other. Leveraging of technology for Hr would mean digitizing the mundane Hr activities and automating the back office and transactional activities linked to recruitment, performance management, vocation planning, and succession planning, training and knowledge management. Leveraging Hr for technology implies managing change linked with technology by way of communication, training, hiring, retraining, stakeholder analysis and conscious keeping. Thus they can play complementary roles."
Technology and Hr both have one thing coarse i.e., both these are enablers of business.
In modern times, technology has become synonymous with information technology, as hardly any other technological amelioration of the past would have impacted all spectrum of firm as information technology has impacted. Irrespective of the kind of firm you are in i.e., services or goods, commodity or branded, trading or manufacturing, contemporary or original deployment of information technology in one form or the other is a foregone conclusion. To manage and deploy technology in an effective way, all firm Organizations would need knowledge workers. Managing of these knowledge workers is the accountability of Hr function. Hence the integration of technology and Hr is an absolute must.
Having understood technology and Hr in the gift context we must understand integration in this context. Integration would not only mean harmonious co-existing but would also mean one enhancing and complementing the other i.e., technology is used to heighten effectiveness of Hr and Hr functions helps in adopting and managing change which technology deployment brings in.
Leveraging technology for Hr
Hr management as a function is responsible for deliverables like firm strategy execution, executive efficiency, employee gift and capacity for change. All these are fulfilled, through what Hr habitancy do i.e., staffing, development, compensation, benefits, recap club design, high performing teams and so on. In majority of these areas technology is being deployed.
e-Recruitment
Recruitment is one area where all the clubs worth their name leverage It. There are two dissimilar models of e-recruitment, which are in vogue. One is recruitment through company's own sites and the other is hosting your requirement on the other sites e.g., monster .com, jobsdb.com, jobsahead.com, naukri.com, and jobstreet.com and so on so forth. The first models is more favorite with the larger clubs who have a brand pull for potential employees e.g., G.E., Ibm, Oracle, Microsoft, Hcl, Icici, Reliance, Mindtree consulting etc. Other clubs prefer to go to the job sites. Some are adopting both.
E-recruitment has gone a long way since its start. Now these sites have gone global. Sites like jobsahead.com and monster.com have established global network, which encompasses isolate sites for jobs in Australia, Denmark, Belgium, and Canada etc. Job seekers are able to quest job by region or country and employers target potential employees in specific countries. For example, 3 Com recently posted a firm profile on the Ireland site that highlights the contributions of 3 com's Irish make team in its global projects.
In the early days e-recruitment was plagued with flooding the employers with low-quality bio-data's. Again technology has come as a savior. Now pre-employment testing like the one introduced by Capital One, a Us based financial company, help in filtering the applicants. These tools test online e.g., applicants for call centers. 'Profile International' a Texas based supplier of employment assessments, has developed tools that allow instant translation of assessment tests in the middle of languages. Supplementary developments like video- seminar specialized sites, online executives recruitments and combining online and offline methods are leading to more and more clubs adopting e-recruitment at least as a secondary recruitment method. Arena Knights Bridge, a Us based It firm conducts video based interview of its prospective employees and only short listed employees are met in person. Even Cisco was to inaugurate the same.
Employee Self Service
Employee self-service is possibly one utility of It, which has relieved Hr of most of mundane tasks and helped it to heighten employee satisfaction. employee self services is a plethora of small activities, which were earlier carried out by employee through management wing of Hr. These are tour bookings, tour rules information, tour bills, leave rules, leave administration, perk administration, etc. Earlier all these rules and information were in the custody of Hr. Every user employee was predicted to reach out to Hr and get it done. Now with deployment of Ess in most of the companies, employee can ask for tour linked booking online, fill his/her T.E. Bills, apply for leave, log time sheet and see his perks value disbursed and due etc. E.g., in Ballarpur Industries Ltd. Leave management is thoroughly digitized in its corporate office. It is working towards digitizing tour linked activities, perks and even payment management and performance management administration. 'Digitize or outsource all the mundane and routine focus only on core and value add' - Vineet Chhabra V.P. -Pdc Bilt.
Communication
Communication which is most talked about management tool has all the time been a gray area in Hr management. In large clubs with vast geographical spread communicating with all employees had actually posed formidable challenge to Hr professionals. Technology has again come for rescue. Starting with telephones, faxes, e-mails and maturing into video conferencing, net cast, web cast etc. Transportation is one area of Hr, which has been greatly benefited by technology. Mouse & click clubs like Oracle, Ibm has an intranet which caters to most of the information needs of its employees. Brick & Morter clubs like Bilt also have made a foray into deploying intranet for internal communication, which has corporate notice board, media coverage, and knowledge corners.
Knowledge Management
Another area of Hr, which is leveraging technology, is employee development. Programmed learning (Pl) i.e. learning at its own pace is one of the most effective ways of adult learning. Use of technology for this purpose can't be over emphasized. Aptech Online University and 'The manage mentor' are some of the Indian sites, which are in this firm knowledge management, which is an integral part of any learning organization, which cannot become a reality without technology. clubs can harness the knowledge of its employees by cataloging and hosting it on the intranet. Talk to 'Big-5' or not 'so big' consulting clubs you will find that main stay of their firm is the knowledge repository. Technology has enabled them to retrieve it swiftly. In the competitive environment where speed is the name of game technology driven Knowledge management constantly provides a strategic advantage.
If you look at Hr module of Erp solutions like habitancy soft, Sap, Oracle and Ramco they contribute you with a allinclusive container which helps in man-power planning, recruitment, performance management, training and development, vocation planning, succession planning, divorce and grievance handling. A transaction happening in all these areas are digitized and form a fulfilled, loop ensuring employee database is all the time updated. E.g. A joining letter of a new employee is law generated. It will be printed only when all mandatory fields of information are entered. Similarly a change order or a divorce letter is issued from the law only if that transaction has been carried out in the system.
For vocation planning, success planning, skill and competencies matrix methods are used by most of these systems. They quest an employee with the required skills first in the in-house database of employees. Once put in convention in letter & spirit, this law not only enhances firm results by matching the right candidate for right job but also improves retention of employees.
Processing payroll, churning out time office reports, providing Hr-Mis are some other routine activities of Hr which have been off-loaded to technology.
Leveraging Hr for Technology
All Hr professionals, preaching or practicing, learning or experimenting, teaching or learning have experienced leveraging technology for Hr. But most of us come across a situation where we need to leverage Hr for technology. Let us understand what do we mean by this.
Whenever technology is deployed afresh or upgraded it involves a change. The change may be at the activity level e.g., applying for leave through the intranet or at the thinking model level e.g., digitizing the process succession planning which have been Hr professionals forte. The habitancy have all the time registered adopting change. This is one area where Hr professionals are to deliver i.e., become change agents and lead the process of technology and change adoption. The resistance to change is directly proportional to speed of change. Now speed of change has increased and hence resistance.
Just to take an example, most of Erp implementation in the world have not been able to deliver all the expectations. Some of these have failed to deliver at all. While analyzing the cause of failure it has been observed that 96% of failures are because of habitancy linked issues and only 4% are because of technology.
It is the habitancy who make the difference; hence Hr should exploit its expertise to facilitate the adoption of technology. I would like to put together some of the thoughts on what Hr should do for this.
At the time of recruitment, stop hiring for skills rather hire for attitude and a learning mind. Skills of today are no longer valid tomorrow. Managing ever changing change is the only criteria for success.
Functional or technical skills can be acquired while the job. Hence recruitment in the technology era needs to experience a paradigm shift i.e., from a skill/competency based it needs to be attitude and learning mind/ capability based interview. That would translate into hiring for skills for future. In Ibm every employee has to fill in his/her individual amelioration plan where the employee commits its learning one/two new skills every year thus remaining competitive every time.
If we look at the chemistry of resistance to change it is either a skill issue or a will issue. To address the will issue we need to work at a allinclusive explication Starting from recruitment (as discussed earlier), reward, payment and leading to club culture which promotes change. A living example is 3M, a Us based company, where innovation is way of life, where 10% of income must come from new products every year. For them change becomes way of life.
To address the will issue Supplementary club need to prepare a Transportation strategy which creates a 'pull' for the technology. For example, in Ranbaxy, when they went for Sap implementation they predicted resistance. To address this they started a house journal, which was aimed at educating the employees on the benefits, which will supervene from adoption of Erp, Sap. This created a need rather a potential need or a latent need was brought out. Adoption of Erp did not become much of a problem.
At times adoption of technologies is perceived as a threat by the employees e.g., automation leading to reduction in workers, office automation leading to retrenchment of clerks etc. Hr needs to be linked with the technical adoption right from the Starting till the end. At the selection of technical stage if Hr is associated, it can map the skills required and originate a pull while implementation and adoption. Post adoption it can release the excess non-re-allocatable employees.
To understand this process more clearly we can take example of Erp implementation. Erp is taken as an example as this is one technology adoption which effects employees across the org. Irrespective of function and position. Any other automation may have affected only a segment of organisation. Erp implementation in any club goes through the following stages.
1. selection of package
2. firm analysis
3. explication design
4. Configuration and customization
5. seminar room piloting (Crp)
6. Go-live and production
At each stage Hr has to play a role, which will help in mitigating resistance to change.
During selection process, the change agent can understand the firm benefit Erp would bring. This would help him to draw a allinclusive Transportation plant aimed at creating a 'pull' for the change. The Transportation plan may use its discrete weapons from the armory. The sure examples are Newsletters, Newsflash. In-house journal, addressing by the top management, web cast, open house sessions, meetings formal and informal.
During the firm analysis phase implementation team is supposed to analyse the existing firm processes. At times this leads to surfacing of some data which is not very desirable by the process owners, leading to resistance at this stage, Hr has to be again proactive and carry out a detailed stake-holder analysis. Such an analysis should give a lead to potential areas of question and potential champions of change.
Solution make involves defining 'To-be processes' i.e., the way firm would be carried out in future. At this stage Hr has to play the role of catalyst to turn the heat on. The idea is to ensure to make maximum out of an occasion of container enabled firm transformation. Hr can play a role by arranging to educate and train the right habitancy on best firm practices, just before this phase.
During the configuration and customization Hr has to keep on beating the drum, the customization of a thorough container is a big no-no. Similarly, while the seminar room plotting (Crp) it should help in identifying the right persons to be complex in Crp. A thorough testing at this stage would supervene in lesser pain at the time of going live. This is also time to focus on training of end users, the employees who are going to use the law once implemented. Training- retraining -training to ensure all the prospective users are comfortable with usage of software before the law goes live.
During the go-live stage Hr has to work over time to keep the motivation levels high. This is the time when management starts losing patience as one glitch after the other keeps appearing and virtually bringing the firm to halt. At this stage, Hr has to play 'conscious keeper' for the top management once into goods relocating the surplus is a challenge for which it has to be ready before it.
This examples makes it clear that involvement of Hr while the entire life cycle of technology is valuable. Erp is not an isolated case. It is true for any other technology adoption only finer details may vary. Hence Hr must play a proactive role rather than being just a silent spectator or mere executers of the wishes of firm or chief technology officer in case of technological changes.
Having set the case in dissimilar perspective, it seems only logical to leverage technology for Hr and vice-versa.
Leveraging Technology for Organisational Excellence