A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives, a curated forum for enterprise technology leaders, nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the CIOApplications Editorial Board.
COX Enterprises
Are your Business Leaders Asking HR Technology for Employee Collaboration Tools?
As I said goodbye and walked back to my office, it struck me: Our communications team owns employee collaboration tools, but my customer assumed we (HR Technology) owned them.
It’s the following Wednesday, time for lunch with another customer, the VP of HR Service Delivery. I start probing her on employee collaboration tools and to my surprise, she says, “Yes, why doesn’t HR technology own that?”
It made me think: Where does HR stop and other departments begin? How is the role of HR technology transforming? We are in a state of constant change.
Below is a diagram from Bersin that reflects the shift in the future of HR Technology tools.
Now I am not saying HR must own the tools, but we are critical boundary partners that should be involved in the decision making. Let’s think about what we know TODAY:
• People are spending more and more time online.
• We are moving away from traditional email and toward collaboration applications like Slack, MS teams and Workplace by Facebook.
• Companies are beginning to shift from traditional hierarchies to team or project based assignments.
• Millennials want real-time purposeful feedback.
• HR software vendors are actively partnering with collaboration tool vendors to improve productivity. Slack is partnering with Workday to provide real-time relevant people information as you collaborate .Workplace by Facebook has multiple integrations including MS SharePoint, ServiceNow, Jira, Trello, Amplify and others to create collaboration flexibility. This list goes on.
HR technology must deeply understand the value and appropriate use of collaboration tools. HR Technology must partner with internal Communications and IT to develop a purposeful strategy to implement collaboration tools in the organization. This gives your HR technology teams an avenue to drive productivity, integrate with HR applications and overall contribute to create a better experience for the employee.
Begin thinking about how collaboration tools integrate with goals, performance, coaching and areas to retain and promote talent within the organization if you have not already. Initiate the conversation with IT and Communications on the plan for collaboration tools. Let’s be part of the transformation in how employees will work in the future.
