Human Capitalist at HR Tech Conference 2013: Consumerization is Disruptive for HR Technology

Over on the Human Capitalist blog, they have just posted a Storify highlighting one of the biggest themes coming out of last week’s big HR Technology Conference.

Cornerstone’s posted its take on the event last week.

The Human Capitalist’s Storify draws out a trend that we’ve been tracking, debating and supporting for some time now: namely that employee-centric software is shaping up to be one of the most disruptive trends in HR. Some people call it "consumerization" of the enterprise or of the IT function. Whatever label you apply, the point is that, for the first time, consumers (employees) have better technology than businesses.

We can thank the explosion of Cloud-based technologies, mobile devices, smartphones and social connectivity for this sea change. And it’s one that businesses and HR leaders ignore at their peril, it seems.

Cornerstone is not disregarding the importance of this trend. We’ve just released significant functionality to address the concerns we hear from clients and in the marketplace that enterprise software is in danger of falling behind the way that people really want and expect to work. Our Universal Profile feature is one direct response to this.

As they put in on the Human Capitalist: "consumer-centric software that engages employees in processes shifts HR's role from traffic cop to trusted advisor." And this is a shift we welcome with open arms as we all consider employee engagement as a significant factor in retention, productivity and other measures that impact the bottom line.

Of course, technology itself cannot be a panacea. But used in concert with sound business practice, technology can amplify and extend what we do and how we work in critical ways.

As we found out in our recent State of Workplace Productivity Report, too much technology and information can be a bad thing. In this survey we asked just that: is hyper-connectedness helping employees be more productive or simply leaving them overwhelmed?

We encourage you to check out all the results to the survey for yourself, but let it suffice to say that the modern worker does, indeed, experience technology and information overload – and more so in the younger (Millennial) generation.

Read more about how consumerization stole the show over on Human Capitalist.

Let us know what you think about consumer technologies taking over in business. And how do we make sure that information and new technology is put to good use for employee productivity and satisfaction (before it reaches overload)?