My neighbour recently bought a flash new weed sprayer to assist with controlling his garden, and save all that time using a watering can. Unfortunately during his first use of the tool, the technically-challenged fellow pumped the pressure up too high and blew the top off the sprayer, covering himself and his garden with a good dose of poison.

Technology is great for achieving efficiencies, but badly applied it can be disaster. As Microsoft founder Bill Gates once said, “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

The same is true when applying technology to managing HR. These systems offer huge potential to improve staff engagement, but organisations need to be careful not to assume technology is the best solution to an HR problem.

HR is an essentially ‘human’ management function. It is about maximising a company’s investment in people, but also about relationships, communication, respect and lots of other human values. Too often people forget this when applying information technology to HR. It is not the same purely analytical process as an accounting or production management system...(read more)

Sometimes you've got to think small to think big.

When Christchurch-based human resource management software firm Pivot Software first entered the Australian market three years ago it didn’t herald its arrival by splashing out on flash offices. Instead the company got friendly with an Aussie outfit.

HR consultancy Hewitt had a great list of clients in sectors Pivot wanted to target, such as the professional engineering space. “So we used that as a kind of test ground to gauge the interest,” says Pivot managing director Pip Youngman. “We tried to create a beachhead.”

Through working the relationships, Pivot gained a key customer — engineering services company Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM). The company is an important player in that market, says Youngman, “and as a result anything that was happening with them was very interesting for their competitors”. The win also generated talk amongst the close-knit HR community, she says — and the buzz was infectious....(read more)

With a number of enterprise resource planning ERP solutions appearing in the marketplace, Philippa Youngman, the MD of Pivot Software, warns HR Managers to keep a look out for products that have the end users in mind.

"You have to remember that you're dealing with people", says Youngman. "While ERP systems look at funding, finance and other physical aspects of your company, your human assets are much less predictable."

Remember it's vital to accommodate different learning styles and to consider how easy it would be for a person to use the software without any training at all.