One of the really cool bonuses of teaching a class at RIT, which has many deaf and hearing-impaired students, is that frequently classes are supported by a C-print Captionist. For those who are not familiar with the term, a C-print Captionist creates a complete transcript of everything that is said in the class, (similar to a court reporter). During class, the captions appear immediately on a computer screen setup near any students who need to rely on the captions to better follow the class dialogue. A day or so after class, the full transcript is converted to a document, which students can download, and that I also post on the class wiki. It is also interesting for me to take a quick review of the transcript to do sort of a 'self-evaluation' of sorts.
In class this week we were focusing on Performance Management as a part of an Integrated Talent Management strategy, and discussing the software solutions that support the performance management processes. Yesterday I was reviewing the transcript and came across this. One student, posed the following question:
If I have a small company and if I wanted to use regular paper or forms (for Performance Management), can I still be effective? Or is it necessary to use or incorporate technology?
In class, in real-time, with 20 people looking up at me for wisdom I gave the following answer (slightly edited for clarity, and to make me appear more intelligent):
Since you are in the HR technology class, I am going to tell you that you have no success using paper forms. (Laughter). It can be effective for small companies to use paper. But we for a larger organization (paper) is not going to allow a company to leverage their talent in a way to seize opportunities. If a company decides they need to exploit a new market and buy a new factory or hire a bunch of new people and you don't have systems like these in place, being able to deliver on those strategic plans becomes hard. Companies that aren't exploiting technology are at a disadvantage. Very small companies can live without this stuff. Once you start moving up the market in size and reach, especially global reach, this is important.
A decent answer, I think in the moment. If I had more time to reflect on the issue and the answer, I might have talked about the Gen Y worker not wanting to work for an organization with such primitive processes, or the efficiencies and cost savings that can be derived with simple automation.
But at the core the question of how much HR Technology an organization 'needs', has to be answered by each organization individually. I don't think there can be a generic 'blueprint' that says, if an organization has 1,000 employees, then they must have systems for X,Y, and Z processes. It just is not that simple. Which is why I suppose we have an HR Tech class, and why there are several consultancies that assist organizations develop their HR Technology strategy. The uniuque characteristics, challenges, and culture are all factors in the discussion.
How much HR Technology does your organization need?