HR Tech 2014: Pardon the Disruption

Good analysts have honest private conversations with practitioners and service providers alike about the very real but often unspoken challenges of managing as well as serving businesses today. Yet they should also be facilitators of the discussion and consensus building around new ideas and innovations to address the opportunities and challenges in the workplace to drive better business results and economic growth.

At the most recent HR Technology Conference & Exhibition, HfS was struck with how many industry participants are not addressing real workforce productivity and engagement issues, but perpetuating dysfunction by confusing the medium with the message. Clearly new technology identification and social networking have always been key outcomes of attending, but this year’s event did not have enough focus on what is needed to truly fuel workplace and workforce transformation efforts today. 

With wage and labor growth stagnating in much of the world and economic anxiety still around us, there has to be better outcomes to be had for organizations and workers, not just cloud investors, conference organizers, and pundits. However, there were some positive trends amongst some old and new software and service providers at the show, namely in the areas of usability, service delivery, and innovation consumption. Each of these points outlined in this paper overly addresses the idea that HR’s real mission is to improve the employee experience.