Struggling to adopt your HR tech? You're probably making this big mistake

At the beginning of COVID, there were a lot of knee-jerk reactions made regarding tech

BY Jodi Walters 12 Jul 2022

The immediate need for new technology through Covid meant organisations had to, very reactively, implement solutions to sustain or initiate virtual ways of working. In some cases, the change was literally overnight, accelerating digitalisation roadmaps at rate that meant organisations had to make snap decisions on technology to keep their workforce productive.

“There were a lot of knee jerk decisions made about technology,” said Arj Bagga, Director of Advisory at technological research and consulting firm Gartner. “Now, as hybrid ways of working are becoming fully embedded, they’re starting to revise and review exactly what technology they should be leveraging to sustain those ways of working moving forward,” he continued.

New research from Gartner revealed that around a third of the HR budget is spent on technology products the same research also found that despite the heavy investment, in the past twelve months, only 34% of employees reported using the core tools provided by their organisation.

What went wrong with technology adoption?

“The key thing that companies have got wrong with adoption is that we’ve tried to drive adoption using compliance-based change management and the other thing that happened, is a lot of companies selected technology that required most of their workforce to learn about the new technology,” explained Bagga.

How can we fix it?

Gartner found that the companies that’re using technology which already utilises existing digital skills are the businesses seeing those high levels of adoption.

“Existing digital skills are skills that employees have built as consumers or at home. Those are the technologies that have truly been adopted because the hurdle or the barrier to adopting it for the workforce is much lower because they don’t have to learn new skills,” said Bagga.

Businesses are starting to turn the needle on technology adoption by moving away from compliance-based methods and into communicating the utility of the platform and educating employees on the actual usefulness of the technology and the risks of using old manual systems moving forward.

The right employee feedback is key

Most business ask for adoption focused feedback from their employees, however, more progressive businesses are pivoting away from that and focusing feedback questions on technology experience.

“So, what are the pain points and experience, what would make this a more seamless experience for you? How can we increase the usefulness of the technology in your job? - Treating it like an element of the employee experience rather than a technology solution,” said Bagga

Another thing businesses are doing is using the early adopters in their organisations almost as consultants or advisors to get other more reluctant employees on board.

The role of leadership

“The number one resistor to change in an organisation is its leaders,” said Bagga. “The first thing you need to do is get your leaders on board.”

Then there are a few things that leaders need to think about when it comes to their role in implementing technology.

Role Modelling – leaders need to actively be using the technology in their day-to-day workflows, and actively encouraging employees to leverage it.
Leaders need to sustain the change – Once the technology is adopted, what are the practices that you’re using to ensure employees don’t bounce back to manual ways of working?
Help employees understand the value proposition of the technology platform

Assessing your business needs for technology moving forward

Review workflows - Interview senior business leaders and managers to get an understanding of what processes are manual, clunky, or slowing work down.
Prioritise – Identify and prioritise the top 4 key gaps.
Conduct vendor selection – Interview a range of vendors with a fixed criteria with what you’re looking for from the technology. That fixed criteria would include the business needs you’ve scoped from your leaders and managers and a range of talent management functions that you’d like the technology to play.
Implementation and change management – once you’ve invested in the technology, drive adoption of those platforms from the workforce, so employees don’t continue to use the old, manual ways of working.