The 3rd Australian HR Technology Report found “lack of  Management Buy-In” and “no HR Technology Strategy” were the 3rd and 4th highest roadblock organisations faced around investment in HR Technology.

A HR Technology Strategy for your organisation does not have to be overly complex of require significant resources to develop. This is evident in the definition from Wikipedia:

A Strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. Strategy is important because the resources available to achieve these goals are usually limited.

Like all strategies, your HR Tech one needs to be developed from a business perspective and adjusted as the environment changes. It can be as simple as a one page description of your plans to achieve specific goals or a comprehensive document with detailed actions and plans.

The key is to have one!  Below are a number of tips that will help you develop your strategy:

Focus on the business

• Understand your company’s current and future business plans. Get a deeper understanding than just reading PowerPoint presentations, speak with the Executive team.
• Understand how the HR Strategy supports the broader business plans.
• Develop a vision for the HR Technology program. This will help in communicating with the broader organisation why change is necessary.
• Build a business case for your program of work that demonstrates real business value – showing a reduction in costs or increases in revenue will help gain the support from your CFO.
• Your HR Technology strategy should allow for constant improvements. Don’t have a strategy that requires the organisation to wait years for success.  Instead look at incremental wins of new apps and features every few months.

Governance and Control

• Implement an governance process to ensure changes to existing HR Technology applications and projects are controlled in the context of the overall strategy.
• Develop a data governance process to ensure you are keeping your core HR Master Data clean and up to date.

Managing Change

• One of the critical success factors of any technology program is change management ensuring impacted parties are fully aware of the implications of the change.
• Communicate with the broader HR team your progress as often as possible.

The Delivery Schedule

• Learn your own team’s capabilities.  Don’t over promise a program that you are not capable of delivering.
• Develop a detailed understanding of the local HR technology marketplace. Reviewing international reports is only one part of the picture, they often do not include local products that might be suitable for your organisation.
• Develop a clear program of work around how analytics will be used and the benefits for the broader organisation.
• Be flexible and take a business view of your HR Technology program, constantly reviewing the program against your overall business case and broader business strategy.

Many of the above tips might seem simple and easy to undertake.

They are.

To often we work with organisations where a strategy is overlooked in favour of a “just do it” approach.

So what are you waiting for?