Thinking of the next wave of HR technology innovations, I thought of my hope that more HR teams will do a better job of planning their implementations. Today’s HR teams can’t afford to use outdated thinking when they make technology changes.
When we dig into history, we find that digitization began in the mid-20th century, but it was slow. The change was an upheaval that happened every few years. The pace of change is speeding up—it’s now so fast we call it a transformation.
Buckle up. It’s going to get faster.
Customers drive the change, and their expectations have never been higher. They have become connected and informed technology users, and they expect the companies that serve them to lead the way.
According to Salesforce, 70% of consumers say that new technologies make it easier to switch, and we know that most of them will if they have even one disappointing experience.
Customers, whether they are consumers, businesses, or governments, expect the companies they do business with to keep on innovating Your employees have the same expectations.
So, you may look at your current technology to see if there are better ways to do business. You might even think it’s time to make a change.
Old Ways of Thinking
Over the past 23 years, we have seen many struggles. Part of the problem years ago was that the new cloud vendors and their partners often pushed all the change management thinking and planning onto their new customers. When their customer satisfaction feedback began telling them what was going on, that practice changed.
There was another issue. Many implementers ask customers to analyze how they did business and configure their new software to duplicate it. Many still do it that way.
That way of thinking doesn’t help your team prepare for the future. HR teams need to be thinking of how they will serve customers next month, next year, and three or more years from now—and how they can adapt to changing expectations.
We’re going to have to get out of our comfort zone and make our organization and process changes before the implementation.
A New HR Mindset—Lead the Leaders
MIT Sloan Management Review surveyed 4,394 global leaders and followed it with executive interviews and focus groups of emerging next-gen leaders. Their results give us reason to be concerned
(Figure 1)
These results show us that digital transformation is not all about technology. To transform the business and the workforce, we as leaders need to transform ourselves.
The immediate and ongoing future requires a fresh way of looking at the organizational design, corporate culture, talent management structure, and related processes. It is up to HR to lead digital transformation efforts by leading the organization’s leaders.
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