Your Technology Infrastructure Is Critical to Your Digital Transformation
No organization can successfully digitize without the right people. Beyond identifying existing employees’ skills, a human resources (HR) department should build a pipeline of talent through digital learning, onboarding, and career progression using technology infrastructure.
As the Great Resignation continues and remote work appears to be here to stay, future-looking companies are building their HR technology infrastructure to support a positive employee experience. This focus on technology infrastructure serves as one of the most important indicators of an organization’s maturity.
WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL MATURITY?
With a basis in years of research, our Organizational Maturity Index has nine key indicators that identify where your business is in its maturity transformation.
- People-centric culture
- HR's role and people strategy
- Organizational alignment and curation strategy
- Employee experience
- Technology infrastructure
- Elective participation
- Governance
- Funding
- Reporting and measurement
In this article, we focus on just one indicator: technology infrastructure.
The SumTotal Organizational Maturity Index shows that the most mature organizations are focused on upskilling their workforce in a way that strategically manages employees’ long-term career development and improves their daily work experience. In 2022, the right technology infrastructure is critical for accomplishing those goals.
If you’re looking to mature your operations, it’s time to consider digital transformation as you build a future-ready workforce. Instead of siloed learning, talent, and workforce functions, having a centralized technology infrastructure enables HR to create a great employee experience.
Want to know where your organization stands? Assess your maturity by downloading our eBook, The 5 Stages of Organizational Maturity, and completing the SumTotal organizational maturity index diagnostic tool.
Technology and Human Capital Working Together
Digital transformation requires organizations to realign their technology, business model, and processes. This is a main priority for today’s companies — in fact, 89% of enterprises are planning to adopt or have already adopted a digital business strategy.
To be successful, you must have the right talent with the right skills. Even though infrastructure development is the end goal, employees are the heart of any organizational change.
Although technology can be a valuable tool for creative and critical thinkers to reach business goals, it can’t solve problems without input from human beings. After all, software doesn’t have soft skills like creativity, the ability to innovate, or emotional intelligence — but your workforce should. If you have a soft skill shortage, you’ll struggle to transform fast.
Ultimately, enacting digital transformation is about leaning on feedback from your employees around what will make their jobs easier, their performance better, and their collaboration more forward-thinking.
Be Honest About Where You Are With Your Organizational Maturity
It's important to understand where your company sits on the maturity scale.
Digital transformation is more than just switching to cloud-based and more adaptable software platforms — in a McKinsey Global Survey, over half of respondents reported that their technology transformations have increased revenue, reduced cost, and improved employee experience.
Still, making these infrastructure and people changes is complicated, and it can be heavily influenced by where you are in your maturity journey.
Are You A Less Mature Organization?
In a less mature organization, the data needed to build effective employee profiles is lacking. Since existing employee data is dispersed across time tracking and payroll platforms, the human resource information system (HRIS), and other siloed tools, the organization doesn’t have insight into what skills its talent needs to meet new business initiatives.
...Or Are You A More Mature Organization?
On the other hand, a mature organization has comprehensive job descriptions, robust employee profiles, and a tech stack that works seamlessly. It’s ready for the hybrid workforce because it can make critical data-backed decisions to get the most return on human capital.
By using data to plan ahead, mature organizations create a strong workplace culture and employer brand. This attracts high-quality talent, thereby adding to the human capital needed to continue the transformation.
What To Look For in HR Technology
A technology platform should equip managers to lead their teams with data while increasing collaboration and development. When choosing vendors, look at their features and functionality through a people-centric lens by considering:
- Unification, personalization, and insight: Your platform should unify all employee data from recruiting to succession planning, including data pulled from third-party systems. Managers and employees should be able to view team strengths and recommend personalized learning that fits each employee's career plans.
- Learning paths: Personalized learning plans help employees see what skills they need for their future roles at your organization. All information should be easily accessible on mobile devices and optimized with dashboards, alerts, and curated content.
- Talent management: For a technology platform to be successful, it must offer a quality user experience. Recommended learning should align with each employee’s career plans, and goal-setting should connect to key business objectives.
Looking for a new LMS? View our 6 Steps to Select Your Next LMSworksheet to learn how to evaluate LMS contenders.
HR Technology is Key to a Good Employee Experience
An ever-changing work culture requires an overhaul of the traditional HR technology infrastructure. By implementing a centralized workforce management platform, your organization can attract elite talent and train employees with the skills you’ll need in the future.
Looking to dive deeper? Read our eBook on the 5 Stages of Organizational Maturity to learn how technology infrastructure connects to other indicators and what you can do to become a future-ready company.
