With the head in the Cloud: HR TRANSFORMER

Inspired by the action figures trend, I decided it is time to resurrect my set of blogs covering the post-go live of any implementation of a technology. The topic is based on my experience, and it can be applied across HR Tech tools and formats, and possibly beyond.

THANK YOU for taking the time to read my post. For more, contact me for advice, suggestions or collaboration, and/or join me on LinkedIn.

Why are you reading this?

You have either implemented or are in the process of implementing your new, awesome, responsive, interactive HR system; you are looking forward the expected accelerations that will be delivered by the new technologies, and even more so: by the decisions that you were able to take.

The new processes are going to make life easier and provide plenty of insightful data, support employee experience and entice your employees to use adopt the new methods. You have planned a launch, and a change management plan has been put in place to communicate, train, teach, share and capture knowledge (RIGHT? HAS IT BEEN PUT IN PLACE???).

So what now? As much as you would like to put all project times behind you, they are simply not going away. Much as after the implementation of any large system, even with cloud systems you will need to plan the next steps. You will have learnt that:

In your new system (most likely an HCM SaaS tool or set of tools), you will not need to know coding languages to stay ahead and keep up. Now it is all about configuration, so in other words, no coding needed.

Without regular upgrades to plan, and consequently less need for technical support services; and all administrative tasks should be undertaken by HR, and there will be no further need for IT involvement. Is it true???

There are still areas that require an expert eye, and whether IT or HR will be tasked should not be the most important question. It is a shift of work skills and priorities, but not a disappearing act! It needs to be budgeted somewhere, with the correct expertise and training; examples of these tasks are integrations updates, future projects, data governance, loads, tests.

HR representatives and analysts often don’t have the training to manage an application and its governance, or simply have no interest in doing it – it is frequently not considered an attractive career development for the HR team, and is not part of the job description nor objectives.

A critical share of change management is required, as well as system and process governance on both HR and IT sides, to ensure system stability and performance. At the time of go-live, the HR administration team is often overloaded, the learning process is on the starting block and HR users must pick up on the new system responsibilities.

The new tasks should be planned and built in the daily work. What tasks should be expected? Here is a simplified list (more activities may be required):

Overall system admin, including user administration and routine regular tasks required for the regular HR processes run; depending on the size of your company and on the system footprint (one or more modules), you may need one (even part-time), or several appointed power-users
Periodic releases reviews, management and tests if required Governance and IT responsibility (or input)
Specific after go-live (usually one or more months) support
Role-based permissions management, controls and audits
End-to-end system change management (or governance), to ensure that all consequences of a proposed change in the system can be spotted in time
Integrations to other systems, automation, controls
Training, knowledge transfer and documentation updates as required