HR and IT must adopt more of a partnership approach if they are to maximise their value to the business, argues Linda Cooper
Software Source, 26 Jun 2002
HR and IT departments have more in common than either would care to think. Both perform a vital role but neither gets the resources or recognition it deserves. Company boards understand that both functions are important to the well-being of the organisation but rarely appreciate the constraints under which they operate. Both functions are used to taking the blame when things go wrong and get little recognition when they go right.
These similarities might be expected to make allies of HR and IT but they remain at odds. Ask any IT department to list its priorities for system development and HR will to be languishing somewhere near the bottom if it appears at all. There are three reasons for this.
* Perceived importance. HR projects are considered unglamorous. They are not the stuff of which high-flying careers in IT are made.
* Emotion. IT people, still regarded as a race apart in many organisations, feel a greater-than-average alienation from the heart of the business. They believe, sometimes with justification, that when it comes to personal development they are as close to the bottom of the HR department’s list of priorities as HR system development is to theirs.
* Ignorance. Even if we discount this mutual antipathy as fanciful, there is a third reason why HR and IT fail to have a meeting of the minds: no one has recognised the contribution that IT could make to the HR function.
The role of IT in finance, manufacturing, supply management, operations, sales force automation, marketing, customer service and other areas of business life is well understood. The trouble with HR is that doing things faster, more efficiently and more cost-effectively has limited value. There are processes and procedures to be followed but these are mainly concerned with the routine work of HR, the form-filling drudgery that prevents HR from working as well as it should – or could.
HR processes are heavily paperbound and most attempts to automate them have begun and ended with the paperwork. Sickness forms and holiday forms, time-keeping systems, employee records, training requisitions and reports – all these things can be consigned to greater or lesser effect to computer.
IT can be forgiven for approaching this drab roster of projects with little enthusiasm. As for the HR function, any reduction in bureaucracy is always welcome. While this kind of automation will make little lasting impact on the overall value of the HR effort, it does free up HR professionals and other managers to concentrate on more important tasks.
For technology-enabled change to be truly effective it has to address what HR really exists to do. This is not to act as a central bureau of statistics about employees, or even to develop the analytical capability to turn that data into reports on employee performance. It is to facilitate the development of the talent bank, to promote improvement.
Performance management is recognised as a key discipline in most large organisations and seen as well worth spending time on. But enthusiasm for the concept soon wanes when managers have gone through the long annual cycle of appraisal, feedback and reporting, which can take months to complete. The challenge is how to extract the greatest possible value from the process while minimising the tedium.
The dilemma is that while improvement is self-evidently important, traditional ways of achieving it have been at the expense of performance. HR is not only a department, it is also a heavily devolved function to which every manager and member of staff is required to devote time and energy. The organisation is understandably reluctant to let the process of improvement consume too much of these precious resources and let it interfere with people’s real jobs.
This is where web-based technology can make a difference. For the first time it allows open measurement, feedback and review channels throughout the organisation. The web browser provides a universally available, low-cost delivery mechanism for assessment applications that massively reduce the administrative burden of the process on the individual manager or employee.
From the point of view of the IT department, the job of rolling out this style of application is trivial. From the point of view of HR, web-based services can be delivered with or without the assistance of IT. Either way, the winner is the organisation.
Linda Cooper is director of consulting for Odysseyzone.
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