UK 
United States
It’s a well-known HR trope that HR professionals and HR technology are often like oil and water. Put the two together and they really just don’t get on well.
This is born out by organisations across the country being littered with the carcasses of badly implemented systems.
Tom Jenkins
Head of Finance & Operations, Worcestershire Wildlife Trust
Data shows that as many as 42% of HR technology-related projects are deemed to have failed completely within their first two years (research by the Josh Bersin Institute) – while a staggering 84% are deemed to be ‘unsuccessful’ (Unleash).
Often, failure stems from a lack of businesses defining what goals they want their new tech to achieve; or falling for salespeople’s over-zealous promises about capability and scalability. For others, it’s often a case of employers getting bogged down in long, drawn out contracts that are more costly than clients thought, and are difficult to get out of. Add to this, the promises of AI capabilities, and it’s no surprise that HR professionals find implementing new tech not just difficult, but also reputationally hazardous.
The fact of this matter is this: Get the choice of a technology partner wrong, and it’s HR’s credibility that is directly at stake. Already HR departments receive the smallest levels of tech investment compared to other departments (just 8.4% on average according to Gartner), and so getting it right is pressure they are all under.
The trust that needed a solution
For Worcester Wildlife Trust, all these concerns were especially real, given the fact that until a few months ago, the charity had never even had an automated HR system before.
But thanks to the charity growing in headcount (it’s now 45 people, up from just 15 a few years ago), and the complexity of running its HR processes increasing, it was becoming essential that a proper HR system was put in place, as Tom Jenkins, its Head of Finance & Operations explains.
“We’d probably been looking for a system for the past couple of years,” he says. “We didn’t have any single over-arching system at all, and when I joined the charity we were still using Excel for a lot of our processes.”
We didn’t have any single over-arching system at all, and when I joined the charity we were still using Excel for a lot of our processes
It was last year though, that the process to implement better technology really started to gather momentum. “Our CEO was our de-facto HR person too, but in 2025 we took on a part time operations director, and it was the implementation of an HR system that was added to that person’s role, with my oversight, given its operations that now overseas our people.”
