Critical to achieving this is a shift from deploying “HR tools” to “Employee tools”, that is, from technology designed to support HR users to technology designed to also support, empower and enable the workforce.

In the past HR technology has focused primarily on improving back-office activities for HR users. Designed to support transactions, rather than interactions, this approach results in fragmented, siloed technology that conflicts with how people actually work. Now the focus is on empowering business leaders, managers and workers with mobile, intuitive, consumer-grade tools enabling them to connect and network, anytime, anywhere, from any device, and own their careers and development. This people-centric approach is based on workforce experiences not transactional efficiency.

To achieve this shift to people-centric “Employee tools” involves understanding the needs, preferences and behaviours of the workforce (the consumers of HR services) and building these into HR technology requirements specifications.

Why then do so few organisations involve employees and managers when they are defining requirements for new HR technology? Why are employees and managers almost never involved in system selection activities and, once a solution has been selected, rarely seen in solution design workshops? Too often HR define technology requirements based on HR needs and what HR believes managers and the wider workforce need. This approach delivers solutions that meet HR requirements, not employee and manager requirements, and consequently fail to be fully adopted by the workforce, managers and business leaders, and fail to deliver the desired business outcomes and benefits. This is a huge missed opportunity to deploy tools that deliver value to the business, empower and engage the workforce and improve workforce and business performance.

HR can gain this understanding of employee and manager priorities, drivers and behaviours through interviews, workshops and design thinking sessions, but to yield optimum benefits the focus should include key “moments that matter” for employees, such as the first day at work, the onboarding experience, life-changing events like having a child, development events and all other interactions. Through this approach an understanding of the desired employee experience, rather than purely a transactional perspective, can be built up and this will provide a deeper and richer picture of the solutions that will best engage and support the workforce, support performance improvement and deliver value to the business.

Successful approaches typically involve the building of personas that represent the consumers of HR services. These could include a new hire, full-time employee, manager, HR Business Partner, etc. Once satisfied that the personas are representative of the organisation’s population they can be used to create solutions requirements which can be tested across the business to determine validity and to allow further refinement to both the personas and the solution requirements.

Ideally an element of the system selection process would then involve employee and manager evaluation of potential solutions. This approach will lead to the selection of solutions that support the business and deliver business outcomes rather than solutions that primarily support the HR user.

Workforce expectations are changing and it’s imperative that organisations progress from leveraging “HR tools” and invest in “Employee tools” that empower, engage and enable the workforce to work digitally and improve business performance. To do this requires a mindset change in HR and a laser focus on Human Experience Management (HXM).