To be honest, we would like to make more people happy for less effort and get guaranteed dynamic and objective feedback about the result of our efforts. But is it that simple? Does the method carrier know how to correctly use IT tools? Does the creator of IT tools know about the availability of unique (and not so) methods? Does HR know about the existence of one and the second and most importantly - does the business know about all this? How to make sure that we at least learn to ask the right questions to the right people? How not to miss the effect that occurs when we want to use all the richness of the IT landscape to solve HR problems?
First, let's think about what effect we want to achieve in our wildest fantasies?
- We want to solve problems with the help of IT here and now, installed and use.
- We want different IT solutions to interact with each other and not distract from actually solving practical problems.
- We want to make the IT solution work does not turn into an independent task.
- We don’t want to think how difficult it is to get a colorful IT landscape to work together.
A good example is working with a banking terminal. How does this happen in life?
We approached, leaned against the phone, deposited money, instantly received SMS and we can immediately solve personal financial problems from the phone.
Inside, it is very difficult and there are a lot of organizational-legal-IT-methodological-safe-political decisions and tasks. BUT - specifically for us here and now everything is solved very simply. We do not think about all these problems. We are relaxed and confident in the normality of what is happening. For us it is commonplace.
Let's compare with the task, for example, the formation of a personnel reserve in an average company? In the best case, it seems to be there, but this is not a continuous process, based on the totality of IT tools in the company. Managing this process every time as in a fight for the last time. And for all participants.
In order to try to understand the situation, let's take a short flight and see how IT technologies behaved yesterday, how they behave today, and how they should behave tomorrow.
What happened yesterday
Separate solutions, closed to the solutions of specific discrete problems.
There was nothing and everything that was done was better than nothing :). It was a fun time experimenting. A free field of creativity and illusions like “One continuous television”.
Specifically, I started with test automation. Hooray, tests of company history can now be taken via computer! Hurray, the company now has an adaptation course that helps the mentor reduce the time of this adaptation itself! We felt joy from the very fact of the appearance of such a hitherto unprecedented opportunity.
Wow, now the whole company can go to the HR portal and not forget when employees have a birthday! Joke.
Have you seen? Now the company has an assessment that can be run at one point in time, and after the end we will immediately see the results in the report, and not 3 months after converting the printed form into XLS files ?!
Yesterday, e-learning, HR automation were the lot of enthusiasts, experimenters and geeks.
Also yesterday there was an active resistance of the people we call - users, they didn’t really use it, they just didn’t have such a habit. By the way, more recently, people who actively use a smartphone, we called hipsters and "programmers." Today, every lady and worker at the factory is the same hipster in this sense :).
Yesterday there was no term itself - hrTech, edTech. But the terms appear to generalize a certain objectively functioning entity.
What is today
A colorful blanket of various solutions, including large solutions, most of which are located in the clouds: HR systems, talent management systems, LMS systems, test systems, expert evaluation systems, libraries of ready-made online courses, HR content video storage, content development platforms , MOOC systems and of course social networks and instant messengers.
All of them, with rare exceptions, are designed to solve one or more applied problems and in no way, absolutely do not take into account each other's experience, data and methods. Separate attempts by industry leaders to collect data from different systems in their custom solution do not count.
Important - now an ecosystem of electronic content consumption has formed (networks, computers, tablets, mobile phones, social networks, online stores, video hosting of corporate networks within companies, national platforms, etc.). This is the result of just this 20-year work in all IT areas.
What is the problem of today's HR-Digital market?
Customer, IT and Consulting (Trainers and training companies) are not connected in a single infrastructure.
- Customers want specific solutions. Better here and now
- Technique carriers are generally not experts in using IT systems.
- IT systems owners are not methodologists
- All together, as a rule, they are not assembled in one environment, and as a result, the customer uses good methodological solutions, poorly supported by IT and recruitment.
Oddly enough, but in my opinion there is no mutual trust between HR-tech and T&D. The methods cannot make friends with technology in any way, although technically we have all reached the right age for maturity (if you understand what I'm talking about :)).
And this gap is widening. Technique carriers remain simple users, and IT systems go further and further, realizing the purely final potential that modern technologies give us (high speed communications, powerful mobile devices, user-friendly neural network user interfaces, etc.). We IT people say - see how we can! See how we manage big data! And what's inside the data? And what conclusions can be drawn? And what to do next with all this? My teacher said - don't give free rein to IT people! How to give these tools to methodologists? How do we get real marvelous use cases by methodologists, trainers, HR specialists?
In my opinion, the task to be solved can be formulated as follows: IT solutions should provide a low threshold for entry in terms of IT competencies and continuity of HR processes as needs arise. Starting to use them should be as simple as registering on a social network or sending a message from your phone.
One of my acquaintances trainers conducts time management trainings. It takes place in full-time format. My acquaintance is an excellent methodologist and an excellent speaker. But this program is not supported at the system level by HR-tech (e-mail and instant messengers do not count :). Well, so that there is a blended learning program, and IT solutions are organically woven into the full-time training format. And by the way, this is not so difficult.
Although each of them (both the speaker and the listeners) has, for example, a technically incredibly complex device with huge information processing capabilities (I mean a mobile phone of course), but we don’t think about it, we just take photos from this training, We post it on Instagram, tag it and all our friends can immediately take part in the discussion of this photo. Yes, you can immediately do cross-hosting in FB and VK so that you don’t get up twice and there will be different audiences ... :).
We don’t think about how difficult it is, we use a user script that everyone understands, and both IT specialist and HR specialist and trainer will do it in exactly the same way, and only content and audience will matter!
What tomorrow
The complexity of IT solutions should be hidden from end users (trainers, HR specialists), we must jointly create HR scenarios that use the entire available HR-tech landscape in such a way that the actions themselves take the first place.
Tomorrow we must stop noticing the boundaries between: face-to-face training - online courses - assessment - watching videos - gamification - assessment - getting into the personnel reserve - feedback - personal coaching. It should be a single continuous and organic process, where, under the hood, an HR specialist has a full range of tools available on the market and a single end-to-end analytics system that allows you to build new user scenarios.
Our way
Our task (in the broad sense of the word) is how IT create HR-tech services and user scenarios in the broad sense of the word, mutually complementing each other, forming a continuous IT landscape for the end user.
We are working on such solutions and we hope that our experience will contribute to the solution of this problem of tomorrow.