As the shape of the Australasian workforce shifts, so too do the demands on your HR team. The desire to invest time and money into technology that promises efficiency will be strong – but actually getting the go-ahead to make these investments might be harder than you think.
Not everyone in your company has your clear view over how big an impact streamlined Human Resource and staffing processes can have on business performance. So, you might need to think about how you can get everyone on board.
Do You Really Understand The Kind of HR Tech You Need?
Your first stop on this journey should be to really think about the tech you’re after and why. Once you understand exactly how new tech will help you, what your preferred solution might be, and how you will overcome any change management it will require, it will be easier to identify the most compelling arguments for your business case.
Do you need:
A rostering system
– To get a better view of where you could be saving hours?
– To allow staff to nominate their availabilities?
– To manage a growing pool of hourly workers?
An onboarding software
– To create uniformed onboarding procedures?
– To engage remote employees?
– To help decrease time to productivity?
A better payroll system
– To allow simpler leave management?
– To better automate commissions?
– To track and measure absenteeism?
A staffing platform
– To recruit and pay temporary staff?
– To manage a blended workforce?
– To help you top up your pool of high-churn casuals?
Once you understand all of the features, benefits and even downsides to the technology you’re after, you’ll be better able to mount a convincing argument (and rebuttals to counter arguments) at all levels of your business.
Staffing Tech Is So Useful, Why Would Anyone Need Convincing?
According to Julie Carroll, Director of People and Planning at Deloitte “Your business case (for your HR Tech) will not be compelling if it is based on benefiting the HR team – it needs to be seen as essential to the business and designed around improvements for employees and leaders.
No one understands the specific staffing challenges in your business as well as you do. So, while you can point out the ways the tech will improve your day, you’ll be doing this until you’re blue in the face unless you’re talking to the right people in the right way about what this investment means for them.
Steps To Making Your Case:
1) Know where spending money could save you money
Investing in the temporary staffing platform will allow you to cut out the expensive middleman of the temp agency, while the rostering system will allow you to get a better view of where you could be saving by using contingent over part-time staff.
If you can explain how the tech can:
– Give you access to better data to increase business decision-making ability
– Save you considerable paid time (whether that be for salaried staff or by allowing you to cover hours more efficiently)
– Allow you to cut an expense that currently exists,
it will be simple to demonstrate how it will allow productivity, efficiency or expense savings and impact the bottom line. By understanding how short-term cost could lead to long-term savings, you’ll begin to build a stronger argument for your tech investment.
2) Know Your Stakeholders Inside Out
Who will be impacted by the change and who will be able to help you implement it? From the key decision makers to the people that will be impacted by the tech every day, you need to make sure you know exactly who they are, and exactly how implementing this staffing tech will improve things for them..
3) Demonstrate What Buy-In Gets Them:
Now that you understand your stakeholders and what makes them tick, you need to frame your argument in their motivations. For the CFO, it may be the return on investment or efficiency savings. For the front-line manager, it might be that learning the tool will save them time in their day-to-day. For the IT manager, it might be that the tool easily integrates with other platforms you are already using, and they won’t have to keep fixing things for you. If you can walk each stakeholder through how the investment will help them achieve their goals, even in the smallest way, you’ll have more support in getting it signed off.
By taking these steps, you’ll be able to understand and mount the best arguments in a way that resonates with each of the team members that will impact the investment and implementation of your tech – and be well on your way to improving the way you and your business operate.
To learn more about how staffing tech has saved money and improved operations for businesses like yours, check out these case studies.