#HRTechChat Recap: The Five Stages of HR Tech Sickness

Your HR technology could be sick, and you might not know it. That was a key takeaway last week, at #HRTechChat Episode Fourteen, when we took our walking pneumonia–afflicted technology on a jaunt to the waiting room at the human capital management technology doctor’s office. While we waited, we chatted and, as surprisingly good and appropriately themed background music softly played via speakers built into the waiting room’s walls, we stumbled upon the five stages of HR technology sickness, its diagnosis and cure or exacerbation. Well, these probably aren’t the five stages, but it’s fun to make them mirror the better-known five stages of something else….

Phase One: “I Don’t Need No Doctor”

As Deb Maher tweeted:

A5. Our own complicated and unstandardized processes r biggest #HRIS prob via @DebAMaher

Most organizations are fooling themselves. Byzantine processes and middleware plague that technology. Unless their HR technology is the very latest, most integrated and aligned, chances are that a catastrophic failure of it lurks, waiting to catch the entire HR department by surprise, and at the least opportune moment. Compounding matters is the inclination, natural to many, to dismiss the need to go see a doctor, the spirit of which Rob McGahen captured with the following tweet:

A5: They reside in management who has their head buried in the sand and ignore what is really going on via @rmcgahen

…which may mean few organizations would think to follow Joey V. Price’s advice:

A3 again, the more prepared and trained your staff, the better equipped you are to handle challenges. Knowledge is power via @JVPsaid

Phase Two: “Somebody Get Me a Doctor”

Who has heard these words uttered calmly? Exactly—the request comes from someone under duress, even (or especially) when the doctor needed is the technology doctor, who may come in the form of a reputable, forward-thinking technology provider whose product will replace the one already in place. Or, she may come in the form of a consultant. Our tweeters had additional, equally plausible ideas of the form in which that doctor might arrive:

Phase Three: “Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News”

Here we reach the diagnosis, the news that explains what ails the HR technology. Here, too, the afflicted organization wants an answer fast. The agony and anxiety wrought by waiting for the diagnosis may have been interminable, and no matter how long the wait, the problems caused by the HR technology’s sickness have grown in their impact….

Bad Medicine or The Cure?

Here comes the prescription. Is it bad medicine or the right thing? We’ll leave it to #HRTechChat’s tweeting masters to deliver the cure:

#HRTechChat Episode Fifteen Is on Wednesday, April 25 @ 4pm ET / 1pm PT

Read the preview here. We’re going to take a look at the dynamics of high-tech start-ups in the human capital marketplace. We hope to see you there.

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#HRTechChat Recap: The Five Stages of HR Tech Sickness

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