By Andy Friedman, Co-CEO, Co-Founder of WannaBI

Working in a global business hub like London allows me to learn and closely observe the most advanced HR solutions in the world and adapt them to the local market, whether for organizations I work with in Western Europe or in Israel.

Two key events that enable this learning are the world’s largest HR technology conference, HR Technologies London, which attracted around 20,000 attendees, and People Analytics World, a professional conference attended by key figures from leading companies in the technology, food, and banking sectors, as well as People Analytics solution providers.

At these events, I observed an interesting phenomenon: on one hand, technological advancements are creating innovative solutions that allow organizations to unlock business potential by managing human capital data. On the other hand, it seems that organizations are hesitant to implement these solutions. Discussions around this issue raised several insights into the organizational challenges of adopting innovative solutions and the ways in which we can help.

The Future of Work is Advancing—What About HR?

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and People Analytics are bringing many innovative solutions to the HR world. They democratize information, enable comprehensive analysis of massive employment data from endless sources, and offer capability-based job analysis. Additionally, AI provides advanced predictive analytics capabilities: building forecasts and predicting future trends based on existing data—capabilities that were previously impossible.

Another area where innovation is evident is recruitment and screening. In these fields, automated systems now conduct interviews independently, alongside administrative and digital management of the associated processes. These cutting-edge technologies offer flexibility and choice to candidates, allowing them to manage the recruitment process according to their own schedules. Essentially, these innovations automate recruitment processes traditionally handled by people. This technological innovation in recruitment stands out compared to other HR fields.

However, despite the significant benefits technological innovation offers, its actual implementation remains minimal compared to the transformative potential it promises. At the conferences, the dominant players were the large, traditional suites (such as Oracle and SuccessFactors), which emphasized organizational structuring solutions like time tracking and payroll management.

In the field of People Analytics, the dominance also rested with classic solutions, such as creating dashboards that generate business insights or implementing systems that manage real-time data. The focus on these innovative solutions, which enable the optimal use of data, was limited compared to the change they promise.

Why Are HR Departments Hesitant to Embrace Innovation?

From the conversations I participated in, it became clear that these technologies are ahead of organizations’ ability to adopt them. This gap manifests in several challenges across different domains:

• Poor Data Quality: Organizational databases are often outdated. For example, an employee may have left, but the system hasn’t been updated, or there are errors like incorrect birth dates or gender. These gaps accumulate and limit the solutions’ ability to generate accurate insights.
• Plug & Play Challenge: Because organizations manage their data repositories differently, solution providers struggle to offer Plug & Play solutions that fit all organizational needs.
• Steep Learning Curve: The steep learning curve for implementing these solutions surpasses the organizations’ ability to quickly and efficiently adopt them.
• Ethical Challenges: Where do we draw the line? Today, we can know almost everything about an employee—whether they plan to leave, where their friends work, or what they posted on social media about their feelings at work. This discipline is still forming, and the boundaries are still being defined.
• HR Doesn’t Speak Business: HR often communicates in HR language rather than business results language. This makes it challenging to realize the business potential of these solutions. For example, “We raised salaries, but how does that affect employee productivity? How does the organization benefit?”
• Make or Buy: Large organizations have the ability to develop and supply solutions in-house. However, the cost of in-house development is higher than buying.
• HR Isn’t First in Line: The departments and divisions that benefit from innovation first are those that directly generate revenue, like marketing or business development.
• Technological, Not Business-Oriented: Many solutions focus on the technological aspects rather than the business content, making it harder for organizations to understand how to harness the knowledge and generate business insights from it.

How to Overcome the Challenges and Maximize the Potential of Data?

To realize the potential of these technologies, significant efforts are needed in organizational infrastructure, data refinement, regulation, and cultural integration within organizations. Only by addressing these areas can organizations fully harness innovative capabilities to improve human capital management and gain a substantial competitive advantage.

To overcome the mentioned challenges and adopt innovative human capital management solutions, it’s crucial to become familiar with the most advanced tools and platforms in the field. For example, Microsoft’s Viva, which I believe is the most advanced suite for managing organizational development technologies. I recommend anyone in the field become familiar with it, as it provides solutions for organizational insight, employee management, goal management, and LMS and LXP management.

While tools like Teams are well-known, they are only one component of the broader Viva platform. Familiarity with such innovative platforms can help HR professionals overcome some of the challenges mentioned, like the inability to derive business insights from data and adopt cutting-edge technologies for more effective human capital management.

WannaBI stands by your side to help implement the most advanced People Analytics solutions, enabling you to achieve significant business results through human capital data management, including:

1. Cutting-edge People Analytics solutions, providing automatic responses and benchmarking for about 150 HR challenges. These solutions are tailored for large organizations and have been implemented for 25,000 clients in over 75 countries.
2. Custom-tailored solutions that address specific organizational challenges, generating focused business insights.
3. Plug & Play solutions that provide a full dashboard for managing the entire employee lifecycle within the organization.