HR and IT - Part 2: Does HR need IT?

Last week the Creative Chaos Consultant guest blogged on the importance of the relationship between HR and IT, arguing that an effective partnership between the two departments is critical for long-term success and effectiveness.  And traditionally HR Technology projects have relied on this inter-departmental collaboration for many, many initiatives.Flickr- Bigarnex

Historically, HR Technology implementations followed a fairly common or consistent process. The HR leadership identified a business process or function it wanted to automate or enhance, the IT department was engaged and consulted in the RFP and vendor evaluation process, and once software was selected the IT staff would be responsible for installing and maintaining the new software. This installed software would then become just another part of the corporate systems portfolio that IT was called upon to support and manage.

But today HR Technology solutions that support traditional 'Talent Management' processes are primarily deployed in the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, (Taleo, Halogen, SuccessFactors , etc.). And there is a seemingly endless supply of either free or relatively low cost solutions available for internal collaboration and communication, that organizations and HR departments are increasingly evaluating and implementing. These platforms ranging from internal micro-blogging (Yammer), to wikis (like PbWorks or Socialtext), and activity steams (Socialcast) and almost always deployed in the SaaS model.  And on the surface, software solutions deployed in this manner, do not require significant IT involvement.

For example, I wonder how many organizations that have experimented with Yammer, have actually involved the IT department at all?  Signing up for Yammer is free, no specific software is needed, the solution is hosted by the vendor, and no integration is necessarily needed between Yammer and any other legacy enterprise systems. Similar arguments could be made for numerous other collaboration platforms, as well as some of the Talent Management systems that support functions like Performance Management or Compensation Planning.

Many organizations like to test these solutions in a 'pilot' manner, with a small group or department as kind of a proof-of-concept focus group.  Testing with pilot groups normally avoids internal IT involvement. User accounts, log in information, and 'core' HR data can often be manually created (or re-created) in the new solution, as the number of pilot users is typically kept to a manageable level. The lack of technical requirements for integrating or interfacing data to these new solutions can lead to IT being left out of at least the initial planning and testing of the new software.

So with the increasing ease and ability of HR departments to select, test, and deploy important new functionalities without significant involvement of corporate IT, does this mean that HR does not truly 'need' IT as much as in the past? 

Certainly in larger organizations, even solutions offered via SaaS and hosted by the vendor typically need some integration with enterprise directories for user authentication and possibly with the core HRMS system to pass important information like the organizational and supervisory hierarchy. These efforts by definition are the domain of IT.  HR departments certainly will continue to rely on them for these important activities.

But the changing nature of software licensing and delivery itself is naturally changing the ways that the internal dynamic between HR and IT will function. I expect that IT will be confronted with more and more instances of HR (and certainly other business groups) experimenting and deploying software solutions without IT's knowledge. The key question for HR will be just how early and to what extent to involve IT in these activities. 

I agreee with the Creative Chaos Consultant in that HR and IT need an effective partnership, but the changing nature of software deployment and the sheer speed that most organizations need to see positive results from new projects are forever changing the dynamic between the two groups.

Guest Post - Leveraging the Age Difference in HR

NOTE - This Guest Post is authored by Ben Eubanks, from the Upstart HR blog.  Ben is a young HR professional with lots of great ideas and boundless energy.  Have at it Ben!

"I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." –Ronald Reagan—

I hate to be forced into speaking for new HR people here, but I don’t see many others stepping up to take on the issues facing us today. HR is a tough career nut to crack. Getting in requires experience, and the experience only comes after getting in. It boggles the mind. Want to hear something interesting? I think that HR needs to open its doors to younger candidates. We have some valuable gifts to offer that are not normally seen in an HR department.

We are good with tech, but we don’t know the operations side of the business nearly as well as the veterans do. The veterans may know enough about technology to do their jobs, but the younger folks could probably teach them a trick or two. Both sides of the workforce have a specialty, and they also have an obligation to each other.

The seasoned professionals must teach the business and be open to change.

The newbies must be open to learning the business and propose change.

We’re young, (partially) reckless, and willing to try anything. The employees at Google get 20% of their time to chase innovative ideas. Some of their best products and applications have come from that block of time provided by the company. Sure, giving people the freedom to work one day of every week on their personal projects seems like a risk, but with great risk comes the opportunity for great reward.

We get the reputation of thinking we know everything. I don’t know who’s spreading that idea around, but it’s not true for most of us. Sure, we are great at lots of things, but if we’re going to go through the trouble to get into the HR field, we want someone to teach us how the business works from top to bottom. In recent weeks, I’ve had more than a handful of HR veterans tell me that one of the keys to being successful in HR is to get out of it. By that they mean that a truly successful HR professional will need to broaden his/her focus to see the company as a whole and adapt a human resources strategy to fit business needs.

Young people, are you with me? Stand up and tell it to the veterans in your organization. And to you senior HR professionals out there, I have four words for you straight from my generation. Teach us. We’re waiting.

Worlds are colliding, Jerry!

Last week I posted a question called 'Ask the Tweeps', essentially wondering where folks are turning when in need of information and expertise. As you would expect, the answers were pretty mixed, people rely on internal co-workers in many situations, and turn to their external networks for 'new' or 'different' questions that may not have in-house sources of expertise, or if they are interested in more diverse or alternate perspectives.

This is altogether natural and expected, and I think understanding the 'mix' of expertise and information requests in an organization could certainly become an important part of a company's talent management efforts. 

Just how often are our employees reaching outside the organization for information and advice?

What kinds of things are they asking?

Do we really have that knowledge in-house already, and our employees just don't know how to find the right person or resource?

And finally, how might the organization capture and leverage employee's external connections for longer-term organizational benefit?

Should they even try?

Lately a number of collaboration and information platforms that are designed to better enable employee communication and knowledge sharing have started offer at least some insight to these questions by  incorporating 'external' sources of content like Twitter updates, Delicious bookmarks, and FlickR images.  Solutions like Socialcast, Obayoo, and to some extent Socialtext all offer the organization the ability to combine or mash-up classic 'internal' content and communication with heretofore 'external' data that has been traditionally viewed as private or personal in nature.

Conceptually, this makes sense.  If knowledge workers find a great website that helps solve a problem, it should be bookmarked for others in the company to potentially leverage.  If an image on FlickR helps to explain a concept, then it would be great for the rest of the team to know that it is available.

But while the 'blending' of internal content (discussions, status updates, documents) with external content (Twitter feeds, RSS feeds from blogs, Delicious, YouTube. etc ) can make sound business sense, I wonder if many employees are prepared and comfortable to open up in this way.

These new collaborative tools try to help organizations exploit what everyone knows is going on: employees rely on external sources to accomplish their tasks. But will employees be willing to more fully open up their private and personal worlds to others in the organization.  Will they need to create dual accounts on these external sources, so that their 'company' Twitter feed can be shared with the organization and their personal Twitter feed can be kept private?

Worlds are colliding more and more each day.  It may not be as easy as it seems for organizations to take advantage, just ask George Costanza.

HR Happy Hour - Episode 3 - West Coast Special

We are back!

After a one-week hiatus the most popular live internet call-in show about HR and held on Fridays returns!

That's right, HR Happy Hour will be back live, this Friday, June 19 and this time my co-host Shauna Moerke (The HR Minion) and I have decided to push the show start time back to 9 PM EDT that is 6 PM PDT.

So West Coast USA folks, you have no excuse not to join in on the fun.

Here are the particulars:

If you want to listen live go to: HR Happy Hour - Episode 3

If you would like to call in and participate - call 646-378-1086 during the show, and you can chat with Shauna and I and whomever else wanders in to Happy Hour.

I don't really have an agenda in mind, just a casual and fun hour and hopefully some folks that I have never had the chance to speak to before will call in to chat.

After the show is over, you can listen back here:

See you at the Happy Hour!

Guest Post - HR and IT, Part One

Note - This guest post is from the Creative Chaos Consultant, a 20 year retail professional and HR practitioner. He currently works for a major fashion retailer with operations in more than a dozen countries. His focus is primarily on employee relations, compensation practices, change management, and compliance.

In this post, the Creative Chaos Consultant examines the relationship between HR and IT and offers some observations on how to enhance the partnership.  In Part Two, I will examine some of the current trends in this dynamic, particularly the issue of HR or the organization side-stepping IT in the introduction of new technologies.

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Aside from HR no other department gets more of a bad rap than IT. Blaming them for the bad day you're having is the game that everyone loves to play. Who else gets more angry phone calls and e-mails when the following happens:

• The network slows down, OR,
• the printer doesn't work properly, OR,
• you can't download porn to your work computer fast enough?

That's right, it's IT.

That's a big mistake to make, especially amongst us HR professionals. For one thing our roles tend to be more similar than not. The bulk of responsibility that IT and HR handles is administrative or tactical (although that's changing). Oftentimes both groups work without having enough resources. They don't always get the respect they deserve. And of course, they both utilize technology to get their respective jobs done.

Second, IT has one major characteristic (and advantage in my opinion) that HR lacks-they speak their own language. The field is a technical one at its core so the terminology reflects this. This works to standardize processes and ensure smoother operations. And while some terms have become more common, most of them are unique to the field. This is an advantage because it means that you have to work with them. This is a position that a lot of HR folks wish they were in. However, this adds to the frustration that people can have about IT, especially when things aren't working right.


Third, and most importantly, if the IT department doesn't support an initiative, it doesn't get done. Remember that fancy HRIS you want? IT plays a crucial part in the vendor selection process. If IT says no (for example, the organization can't support the hardware/software requirements) then you can't have it. They help to define what tools an organization uses. This, in turn, defines the organization's strengths and weaknesses.

HR pros must develop stronger partnerships with their IT brothers and sisters. This would help serve to bridge misunderstandings, get crucial projects supported, and lessen the frustrations that people may have with both groups. And the first step of the process is to understand the language of IT. With that, I know that  Steve Boese reviews most of the key tech-related terms that every HR professional should know in his HR Technology class, and it is certainly an essential first step in the Tech education of an HR Professional.