As the technology curve keeps rising exponentially, days for MS word and old school spreadsheets are long gone. The HR might successfully drive unnecessary intimidation into the organization but they can’t deny that they need IT’s support to enhance process automation within all departments.
Why Is There A Need For A Collaborative Relationship?
Imagine yourself as an individual on HR’s hiring committee where you have to hire a new IT guy. How would you select the best candidate if you lack the necessary technical knowledge of what the job demands? This is why you would need an IT executive by your side and of course, you would want to be on friendly terms with someone on the same committee as you (unless you want to scare away all candidates).
Not only this, but if the HR desires for IT to work together with them, then they could collaboratively build secure custom tools for processes like resume tracking, applicant screening, performance tracking etc. to more advanced tools that include effective dashboards. The IT skills combined with the subject expertise of the HR person will result in a more robust system developed.
Whether an HR guy is struggling with a LaTeX code to create a graph or can’t find the appropriate secure web-page to publish a job posting, an IT guy can always help and save lots of time but of course, only if the two departments hold a positive relationship.
At the end of the day, it’s all about optimizing the use of a company’s crucial resources – time, money and human resource. In today’s competitive world, organizational intelligence and flexibility is what will make you stand out, not just wealth.
How to Bring the HR and IT on the Same Page?
First and foremost: The work structure of the HR department must be designed in a way that its members are not only involved in transactional, administrative, and tactical procedures such as paying, providing HR policies, dealing with employee performance issues, initial recruiting and firing. Instead, the HR should also work towards developing knowledge management procedures, mentoring, and measuring performance through specialized tools. When the HR is acting as a true mentor for the IT, a positive relationship is guarantee to foster.
However, for this is to work successfully, the initial recruiters must ensure that the people they take on board are positive and willing to help by guiding and sharing knowledge.
Similarly, the IT guys can also hold tutorials or training sessions for the HR department in case a new tool or software program is launched. Same goes for when people from the IT department are being recruited. No HR member would like to have to go to a condescending individual to ask for help in some bug, only to be laughed at and told that it’s too basic.
It is also possible that some old-school HR practitioners would feel that digitizing all paper work is just additional workload and this might make them dislike the tools as well as those IT guys who developed them. The best way to overcome this problem is to extend deadlines of such tasks and plan paid training sessions when employers are least busy.
To conclude, it could be said that in today’s advancing world, an organization can only excel by effective, strong and long-term collaborative approach between its IT and HR teams to ensure that there is buy in from all parties and a comprehensive solution is sought. This is necessary true for any of the functions.
There is no success in Silos !
