Engagement HR Technology Supplement
says, adding that “time tickers” can also be
installed in offices to count down until
the switchover. Be completely upfront
about the fact that change will be hard for
some and identify “the bits that some
employees might not like, or will have
difficulty with”, Looney advises. “Don’t
mask the pain points, tell them what
you’re going to do to support them.”
The ‘WIIFM’ question
With any new piece of tech, HRDs can
expect to repeatedly come up against
‘WIIFM’: the ‘What’s in it for me?’
question. And if you can’t answer it, then
you’ve got a problem, says Michael
Moran, chief executive of 10Eighty. A big,
expensive, IT-shaped one. Moran believes
the reason HR often fails to engage the
workforce with its tech is because the
function is looking at the problem from a
management perspective, rather than an
employee perspective.
“Most HR systems are top down. Now
think about LinkedIn. Why are, probably,
98% of your employees on it and using it
frequently? Because they think it will get
them their next job. Employees will use a
system if it clearly enhances their career
prospects, enhances their job satisfaction
and/or makes their life easier,” he explains.
Kirsty Lynagh, chief people officer at
Nucleus Financial, agrees: “We, as a
society, have no issue engaging personally
with tech. So if the issue is HR-techspecific,
then perhaps it’s because it’s
not required? Or if employees need
to be trained in a system, then you’ve
not made it simple enough. Facebook
doesn’t require a training session, yet
one billion people around the world are
successfully using it. We could learn a lot
from that.”
An ‘HR thing’
Another major obstacle to engagement is
that the tech is often seen as an ‘HR thing’,
says Harmer. “If you open the
conversation by saying ‘I’ve got a really
great HR initiative’, then you can actually
see people’s eyes glaze over,” she says.
Robert Hicks, group HR director at
Reward Gateway, has an ingenious way of
overcoming this problem: he doesn’t pick
the system. “I didn’t have a vote,” he
explains. “Our system is not a Rob Hicks
system. It’s not an HR system, really. It’s
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