The Marriage of Tech and People: Why effective HR needs both

Historically HR teams were the “people people.” We dealt with recruiting, retention, personnel policies and, well, people and all that encompasses. Then, somewhere along the way, all these technology tools came along and there was a pendulum shift that had many thinking that the HR function could be largely automated.

Now we know better. The ideal solution is a marriage of equals. An HR function that smartly uses technology to automate that which should be automated so that HR leaders can put more focus on the people and how to build strong cultures, thriving team members and make their company an employer of choice.

As employees at all levels are frequently being asked to “do more with less” it only makes sense to seek out options to make all processes more efficient and often those options include some technology.

Tech solutions for payroll, timekeeping, logging safety training and recording incidents? That all make sense. Though, depending on your needs, off-the-shelf solutions may not work for you and an inappropriate tech solution may create even less efficiency than no tech solution. If you’re just trading manual inefficiency for tech-driven inefficiency, then you haven’t achieved the goal of freeing up time to do the HR work that adds value and makes your organization a better place to be.

Integrating tech solutions smartly

Before evaluating tech solutions, you need to know what you’re solving and what unique needs your organization has.

Start with an audit to determine where your inefficiencies are to develop a wish-list of what you would like your solution to address. Armed with that list, you can start evaluating solutions, whether they be off the shelf products that fill your needs or custom solutions that address your unique use-cases.

Many companies we work with have specific and unique needs that an off the shelf product can’t address. In those cases, we build custom solutions with leading partners to meet their needs.

One factor to consider is ease-of-use. This is especially true of products that will be used by the entire workforce, such as timekeeping, training and development, etc. If you end up spending more time hand-holding team members who are challenged by the solution, then you’re no better off in terms of the allocation of your time. Of course, there will be some short-term pain while teams to adjust to the new products, but the long-term gain is improved communications and productivity.

Whether your solution is off-the-shelf or custom, the end goal is the same: use technology for those functions that it makes sense to automate so your time is freed up to do the work that you went into HR to do.