HR software should come ready salted!

Salted-Featured-Image-HRHeadquarters.ie
HRHQ-Salted-Image

HR transformation is HOT at the moment. If you haven’t already enhanced your HR software last year, I almost guarantee that it is on your road-map this year.

I am anticipating a very busy year, consulting on HR projects of all sizes.

However, I want to note something that I observed last year, and I hope that it will give some of you food for thought when embarking on a game-changing project like HR.

Enhancing your HR software is an opportunity. It is an opportunity to also assess your HR policies in general. Some policies are simply outdated, unnecessary. SuccessFactors is only the tool – how you use it will be the difference. It will be futile for you to invest in any HR software, if you plan on polluting it with outdated policies.

Office-rules-image @ HRHeadquarters.ie
Office-rules-image

If you want your employee population to embrace the change of a new, EXCITING system, then you need to embrace the changes in how we interact & manage our employees in 2016.

Here are some HR policies on their death-bed:
• Multiple hierarchical approvals for simple requests
• Double-tasking, i.e.; “Book your annual leave on the system, oh and fill in the form & scan to HR…” Groan.
• Asking for hard-copies of candidate feedback, and filing it away. What good is that? It needs to be attached easily to their profiles for future reference.
• Emails for fun things! It’s time to use a business social tool like JAM.
• Onboarding starting on the first day. It should start a few weeks before!
• End-of-Year appraisals. They still happen, but the goals may have been updated along the way to make it more flexible to be successful.
• Expecting our Managers to be Shakespeareans. Appraisals don’t have to be tricky. There should be NO bias and there should also be guides that don’t necessarily pull HR away from their desks. Writing assistant tools & “legal checkers” should be included in your appraisal tool.
• Tracking candidates on excel – way too much room for human error and potentially overlooking the best talent.
• In fact, excel reports in general! (About time, right?)
• Voicemail… controversial, but it is true. SMS & social media are the way forward

So my suggestion is to not pollute your new, beautiful, HR tool with the inane. Keep what is important… but take the opportunity to reflect.

In other words, there is no need to add salt. Your new HR software should come ready salted!

Debate Q’s:
1. Have you noticed any other HR trends that are no longer relevant?
2. Do you think there are HR polices that will never be replaced?