The Leap Onto Tomorrow

Human Capital spoke to Niel Nickolaisen, Chief Technology Officer at O.C. Tanner, the leading global employee rewards and recognition company to understand the growing impact of technology in HR and its underlying implications.

- S. Ajay Kumar

In spite of technology making a quantum leap from dotcom around two decades ago to blockchain and cryptocurrencies today why has there been limited visibility in digital transformations in the HR domain?

A First off, when it comes to investments in technology, it has always been difficult for HR to make a business case. All the benefits achieved by HR can be termed as soft benefits rather than hard benefits, and, it is hard to put a dollar value to it. Employee training for instance, is probably the right thing to do but it is a soft benefit, and the value is hard to define. Secondly, I think a lot of technology that has traditionally supported HR has been primarily built for compliance and transaction processing. And so, the very experience has not been very compelling, and the software has not been something that people liked to use. Further, as an IT leader, if I were to rank my internal clients on the basis of their importance, the HR team is always last, since I am going to support the money-making side of the business, and, then the cost saving side. Since the benefits of the HR system are so nebulous, it is probably not going to support them as it is going to support the others. I think those are some reasons for the lag in HR technology since a long time.