Is life bet­ter in the cloud? How can you make sure your cloud expe­ri­ence isn’t inef­fec­tive, stu­pid, or cru­el to your man­agers and employ­ees? What is the full busi­ness impact of bad self-ser­vice sys­tems — and how can you avoid this at all costs? 

Dur­ing this free web­cast on Nov. 28, we will dive into the answers to these ques­tions and more about life in the cloud with Dr. Steve Hunt, SPHR, Human Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Research at SAP SuccessFactors.

Abstract:

To be tru­ly effec­tive, self-ser­vice solu­tions must be designed so man­agers and employ­ees find them sim­ple to use. How­ev­er, many of these solu­tions are nei­ther easy to access nor easy to use. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, this is par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mon when com­pa­nies are using out­dat­ed, non-mobile on-premise tech­nol­o­gy solutions. 

In this web­cast, we will explore how forc­ing employ­ees to use bad self-ser­vice solu­tions is:

1. Inef­fec­tive. The val­ue of self-ser­vice depends on employ­ees vol­un­tar­i­ly enter­ing infor­ma­tion or tak­ing actions to per­form relat­ed tasks. When these sys­tems are poor­ly designed, man­agers and employ­ees will do every­thing pos­si­ble to min­i­mize time spent in the solu­tion. This includes pur­pose­ful­ly leav­ing out or chang­ing infor­ma­tion to make the process faster. For exam­ple, a man­ag­er might reclas­si­fy an employ­ee turnover rea­son from invol­un­tary to vol­un­tary to avoid going through addi­tion­al steps that would be forced upon him if he pro­vid­ed the real rea­son why an employ­ee left the company.
2. Stu­pid. The hourly rate of man­agers and line employ­ees is often much high­er than the hourly rate of HR admin­is­tra­tive staff. How­ev­er, com­pa­nies often use self-ser­vice sys­tems that require high­ly paid man­agers — and employ­ees spend hours learn­ing how to com­plete unfa­mil­iar admin­is­tra­tive tasks instead of hav­ing these tasks com­plet­ed by an expe­ri­enced admin­is­tra­tive employ­ee who could accom­plish them in min­utes. Man­agers and employ­ees are not paid to be HR admin­is­tra­tors, but many com­pa­nies force them to spend time doing admin­is­tra­tive tasks.
3. Cru­el. Hor­rif­ic user inter­faces are often attached to self-ser­vice process­es that man­agers or employ­ees must com­plete to get approval for some­thing they need to do their work (e.g. access a new com­put­er, hire a new staff mem­ber, adjust an employee’s pay). Forc­ing man­agers and employ­ees to fig­ure out these process­es can cre­ate con­sid­er­able stress and anxiety.

These three prob­lems are a result of man­agers and employ­ees being forced to use poor­ly designed self-ser­vice solu­tions. This web­cast will help illus­trate how much bad self-ser­vice sys­tems dam­age employ­ee work­force per­for­mance, morale and well-being.

Speak­er:

Steven T. Hunt, Ph.D., SPHR, Human Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Research, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors

Speak­er Bio:

Dr. Steven Hunt role is focused on guid­ing the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of tech­nol­o­gy-enabled solu­tions to cre­ate thriv­ing, agile and engaged work­forces.  Dr. Hunt has over 25 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing with a vari­ety of human cap­i­tal man­age­ment appli­ca­tions includ­ing per­for­mance man­age­ment, staffing, employ­ee and lead­er­ship devel­op­ment, cul­ture change, work­force ana­lyt­ics, and suc­ces­sion plan­ning.  A rec­og­nized expert on strate­gic human resources, he has played a piv­otal role in cre­at­ing sys­tems that have improved pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and engage­ment of mil­lions of employ­ees work­ing for thou­sands of com­pa­nies rang­ing from small start-up orga­ni­za­tions to the largest employ­ers in the world. 

An active author and pre­sen­ter, Dr. Hunt has writ­ten scores of arti­cles along with two wide­ly respect­ed books on HR process design and imple­men­ta­tion:   ​“Com­mon­sense tal­ent man­age­ment: using strate­gic human resources to increase com­pa­ny per­for­mance” (Wiley Press, 2014) and ​“Hir­ing suc­cess:  the art and sci­ence of staffing assess­ment and employ­ee selec­tion” (Wiley Press, 2007).

About SAP SuccessFactors

Suc­cess­Fac­tors is the lead­ing soft­ware as a ser­vice (SAAS) provider of busi­ness exe­cu­tion tech­nol­o­gy.  Cen­tered on the key ele­ments of Busi­ness Align­ment and Peo­ple Per­for­mance, our scal­able on-demand solu­tions are exact­ing­ly tai­lored to sup­port any orga­ni­za­tion in real­iz­ing max­i­mum busi­ness results.