Not “who uses it most regularly?” or “who is it marketed towards?” or “who thinks about it?" But who is HR tech designed to support?
The reality is that most HR tech is for employees. Which is GREAT! We love that HRIS and LMS and engagement platforms are built with consideration to how employees are tied to the business (finally). It’s critical to the function of businesses both that employee metrics are gathered and understood and that employees have access to self-service and transparency especially in areas like benefits, pay, performance management, etc. We celebrate that HR professionals have tools that help them execute and automate employee-facing functions.
It’s also critical that HR is understood as an important business function, not only managing tasks but creating thoughtful people strategy. The connection between a business’s goals and how their employees feel requires a clear, strategic vision in order to optimize. Right now, no technology is thinking about the return on investment of that strategy.
It’s time we stop ignoring HR’s significant impact on revenue: “[CEOs] think that everything is really fluffy, when the reality is that a lot of the things we do really do impact the bottom line in a positive way when it’s done right,” - SMB, HR leader.
When HR professionals are strategic in practice, they see an 11% aggregate boost* across the following business outcomes, as well as improved outcomes for talent and HR efficiency:
There is a Zendesk for Customer Support and a Hubspot for Sales… Where is the technology that supports HR as a strategic function, where the HR professional is the end user? Why are we still expecting HR professionals to strategize and prioritize only in their heads or in running Google documents? There’s only so much strategic, storytelling value in a spreadsheet.
HR leaders need a tool that will help them prove ROI on strategy and resources spent - a place of truth that shows inefficiencies and success at a macro level for better decision making and better communication with the rest of their organization.
It’s HR’s job to translate people metrics into business outcomes specific to each stakeholder. The sales manager needs to know that how much each employee retained increases number of leads converted or Customer Lifetime Value. The CFO needs to know how much more money it’s costing to hire externally rather than building a strategic mentoring and employee mobility program.
We see HR professionals succeeding in pieces of this analytics and storytelling process, but they don’t currently have a tool that communicates their work in a way that stakeholders understand.
*Sapient Insights 2022–2023 HR Systems Survey Research, 25th Annual Edition, Sapient Insights Group
