Are We Really Getting Value From All The HR Software We Buy?

The HR technology market is clearly on fire. As I described in the report HR Technology Disruptions 2019, more than $2 billion of Venture Capital and other equity was invested in the market last year, and almost every company I talk with is replacing, upgrading, and enhancing its HR technology stack.

Given all this effort and the number of companies buying large HCM platforms like Workday, Oracle, SuccessFactors, and many others, we have to ask: Is all this effort paying off?

When I travel around and talk with HR leaders, I hear a mixed message. While many companies have been replacing aging legacy systems over the last few years, most tell me that the new platforms have not delivered as expected.

Employee experience has not improved as hoped, new business processes are not as simple or elegant as they expected, and the cost and effort to deploy is high. And in most cases, the introduction of these new platforms changed the roles of HR and managers, so there is an organizational transformation required as well.

Well, I decided we should dive under the covers of this issue, so we are now launching the first annual HR Technology Adoption Study. 

This study is not designed to evaluate vendors (although we will see vendor patterns). Rather it’s designed to help you understand how to decide, select, plan, implement, and deploy HR technology in the most effective way.

Many consulting firms spend a lot of time on these issues, but of course, their real mission is to sell you their services, so I was unable to find an independent study of “what works.” This is our goal.

If you’d like to be part of this study, please join us. We will be surveying companies on an ongoing basis, so I encourage you to take the survey and share it with others in your company.

We will release preliminary findings this Fall.

PS: Get ready for the launch of the HR Technology Workshop from the Josh Bersin Academy.  We launch this program on September 9 and you will learn how to develop requirements, evaluate vendors, write an RFP, and select the right solutions.

The JBA is an annual membership, so you can sign up now and take our other programs, use the micro-learning library, and join the community now. Good summer education and reading to get you ready for the Fall!