A few clear trends, some really good news, and some of the same old problems leave me boarding the plane back to London in a positive mood and looking forward to interesting new challenges. Here are the trends:
1) HR Analytics is high on the agenda and technology like in memory analytics are now gaining track to provide actual user outcomes. Latest software offers a lot, but many companies still struggle to get the data ready and ask the right questions.
2) SaaS in HR is a fact now. It is changing the market and Workday's entry into continental Europe seems another strong driver of change to me. However, whilst it may cut implementation time by more than 50%, the challenges in integration, process and change don't go away with SaaS. There is a risk of a good trend suffering, because expectations are set too high with senior execs believing a Could based HRIS as almost plug-and-play just as the Dropbox app on their iPhones – a belief they might be forgiven listening to the sales pitches of some vendors. We also see various approaches to SaaS. Oracle, as always boasts to be the top player, but doesn’t seem to be ready for pure multi-tenancy SaaS, whilst SAP looks almost too modest when announcing changes coming with Career on demand. Most established SaaS vendors coming from one specific process (like recruitment) try to broaden their base, whilst other niche players often rebrand traditional hosting solutions as SaaS without changing much.
3) User experience is a big topic. Some of the new SaaS vendors set new standards for better user interfaces and traditional vendors follow. But the most intuitive user interfaces and "gamification" approaches will not drive adoption, unless users understand what their contribution to the organisation as a whole is, and what's in it for them. Technology, strategy and communication need to come together.
4) The most eye-catching trend probably was the integration of social media into Human Capital Management. This is really only just starting and we'll see quite a few surprises, positive as well as negative ones, along the way. Talent attraction and selection are obvious applications, as are internal communications and knowledge sharing, but there is more in it. As off today, social media applications in HR are mostly stand alone with slim, if any, interfaces to established HR systems. HRIS vendors start making efforts to integrate social media, but we may just as well see platforms like Linkedin pushing vendors of recruitment software out of business. At the moment, it feels all a bit chaotic. Some organisations see it as just another way for pushing information from the top down their hierarchies and they'll probably fail. But the potential is huge. Watch this space!