[http://knowledgeinfusion.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/ki1_3.jpg]Liz Ryan contributes a great article with a link below in this weeks BusinessWeek. Here are a few clips from the article and some areas where I see HR technology playing a key role:
"Any analogy that you can think of to describe a typical business leader's assignment falls short under scrutiny. People say leading a department is like quarterbacking a football team. That might be true if the players constantly moved on and off the field, the rules regularly changed in midplay, and the entire coaching staff might decide to change strategic direction and abandon football for lacrosse.
Or people say that a business leader is like an orchestral conductor. That's nice and dignified, but I've never seen a real-life orchestra where the oboes were unexpectedly given the cellists' music to play, or where the audience might suddenly decide, en masse, that they prefer bluegrass music to the Beethoven concerto you're conducting, and depart the auditorium. When you think about what a business manager has got on his or her plate, you realize that a management career isn't for the weak-willed or wimpy. There's way too much at stake, from quarterly numbers and career paths to product launches and system crashes, to take the leadership role lightly."
THE ABOVE POINT TO THE NEED FOR DATA ACCESS, DECISION SUPPORT TOOLS, AND CONTENT AND COLLABORATION AT A SINGLE KEYSTROKE.
"Think, for instance, about the typical corporate performance-review process. As an HR person myself, I would think that a critical priority would be to implement the simplest and most time-effective performance-appraisal system ever. But that's not always what I see. Companies heap process on process and form on top of form, tying up managers' (and their teams') time. And that's a mistake. If we don't trust our managers to manage well, maybe what we need is new managers (or more trusting executives) rather than another time-sucking process. "
THIS CLEARLY SUPPORTS THE NEED TO AUTOMATE PROCESSES AND HAVE AVAILABLE FOR MANAGERS TO INTERACT WITH AS PART OF THEIR DAILY JOBS INSTEAD OF A PAINSTAKING TASK NOT PART OF THEIR WORK DAY.
The remainder of this article reminds us that what we do on a daily basis is not only to keep the lights on in the HR department, but to deliver tools and services to employees and managers to enable true human capital management and the strategy of optimizing the people asset. As HR departments realize more that talent management technologies do make a difference, the better our managers will be equipped to deal with their difficult roles in an enterprise.
