A few months back on The Road to HR Tech, I asked practitioners, vendors, analysts, employees and HR users alike: What’s ONE THING you’d fix about HR technology?
You answered loud & clear: Stop making the software the “work” or the problem or so hard. Design solutions that allow HR to focus on people.
Allow me to tell a little story before I come back to THAT…
Seven years ago, I oversaw one of the largest recruiting software implementations ever attempted for one of the largest retailers in the world. When asked to perform load testing to ensure we could actually support the millions of applications the ATS would need to support on an annual basis, the senior-most engineer at SuccessFactors/SAP told me, “I don’t even know if we can load test for that. We’ve never done it before.” Co-delivering a background check and prescreening solution at the time was Christine Marino. We were in the trenches together for months, stitching our solutions together, bound and determined to bring this customer live and to fulfill the promises made by our respective teams. I’ll never forget Launch Day: sitting around a long war room table sweating bullets, dashing into the hall to make frantic phone calls as the minutes ticked down, shoulder to shoulder with fellow implementation and vendor partners and with the customer implementation team. Annnnd…..LIVE. The boardroom erupted in shouts and laughter and hugs….I believe my client even professed her love for me (OK, and everyone else in the room) that day. Bet you didn’t realize HR software could be THISSSSSS exciting, didja?
Several years later, I found myself walking the floor of HR Tech with Patrick Rooney. QUEsocial had just been acquired by Hodes who then announced Symphony Talent, a merger of portfolio companies resulting in an end-to-end suite of talent solutions and services. Almost end-to-end. “What do we need while we’re here?”, I asked Patrick. “Onboarding”, his response. I texted Christine Marino: “Where are you? We need an onboarding partner.” We found each other on the floor twenty minutes later, introductions were made, months passed, and Click Boarding became the first partner I signed to the new Symphony Talent. It wasn’t long before Christine was my guest on The Road to HR Tech and we co-hosted a webinar around the business case for employee engagement, beginning with the first no-brainer: a proper onboarding experience.
I departed Symphony Talent as 2017 drew to a close, and I found myself in the lucky position of getting to talk to everyone I know and admire across this industry about the work to be done, the opportunity at hand, the value I might help drive.
With each conversation, I replayed the same soundtrack over and over again: Stop making the software the work. Design solutions that allow HR to focus on people.
I love full-circle moments, you guys. I could not be more thrilled to work for Christine Marino and continue the talk track on a topic near and dear to my heart: EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT. We work so very hard to find, attract, court and hire top talent. Don’t drop the ball at the moment of truth, when highly-sought, hard-won TALENT becomes YOURS. TELL them you’re excited, DELIVER on the employee experience you promised with your employer brand and recruitment marketing and candidate experience, and GET THEM in the door quickly, more easily. Every minute you waste getting your new hire up to 100% productivity hits your bottom line, decreases employee engagement, and dulls your competitive edge.
I called Click Boarding’s onboarding solution “the biggest no-brainer I’d ever seen” when I signed them as a partner. I take that back: Signing their offer letter is the biggest no-brainer I’ve ever seen.
Here we go.
