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At the recent HR TechTank event held in Singapore, I was honoured to be invited to deliver my keynote message to a room filled with HR professionals, HR tech providers as well as investors. During which, I shared my thoughts on ways to navigate through the hyped up and crowded world of HR Tech.
1) Find the HR Tech tool that is simple to understand, yet easy to implement.
It’s easy to go for what everyone is talking about or one that has the highest adoption due to the supposed best features. However, if all the features are not comprehensible by you or if it’s simply too much for your needs, I’ll rather you go for something simpler and easier to implement.
After all, the purpose of technology is really to make your life easier rather than complicate it. Leave the complex coding and technical work to the developers because that’s how they earn their salary. On your hand, you just need to find something that can help you do your job more effectively. Simple enough?
2) Treat HR tech like talents, not tools
At the very basic level, HR tech is like a simple tool to enhance your capabilities at work and the providers are vendors to most organizations. But is that all they can do? Should we see it purely from that perspective?
If you treat HR Tech as mere tools and providers as mere vendors, what you get is simply something that is standalone and one that carries out basic requirements based on the contract. Do not expect anything beyond that.
But if you consider HR tech and the providers as part of your family and a talent where it comes with a unique set of competencies that adds value to your team, you will spend time building a meaningful relationship around it, explore opportunities to find win-win situations and eventually gain more than you can expect.
After all, similar to a talent, HR tech is now going to be a part of your family and deliver results with your organization, isn’t it?
3) Deliver experiences, not just tasks
Stakeholders are getting increasingly demanding. This means that fulfilling a task is now seen as a basic expectation. How do you then up your game and have an edge over your competitors? Think of how you can deliver a great experience instead of just mere tasks.
Consider how you can make a difference at the various touch points of the employee life cycle with the help of technology. For instance, chatbots can be incorporated into recruitment cycle to enhance candidate experience. On the learning front, mobile learning apps can be deployed to enhance the learning experience for employees. And the list goes on.
There are many ways around this but it can only be done if you deliberately design the experience while delivering the expected work task. During which, technology is a key enabler that can make things a lot more effective.
Closing thoughts
The HR tech space may seem crowded and complicated for most who are still finding their feet in this area. What you can do is to be clear when selecting, managing and delivering value with HR tech. That way, not only will you be more confident in navigating through this space, it will also ensure that you have a higher chance of succeeding with your respective organizations.
All the best and more soon.
People Mentality Inc is a HR Consultancy firm in Singapore. Our clients include Pfizer, Great Eastern, Accenture, DHL, Samsung, Coca Cola, Keppel, Loreal, Under Armour and more. We netted the HR Rising Star 2016 award and APAC Top 10 HR & Employer Branding Consultant 2020.
