DayoneHR Tea Time Podcast Episode 2: Our HR Transformation Journey [Transcript]

Below is a transcript from Episode 2 of our Podcast. It has been generated using automated transcription technology, so please forgive any mistakes, including grammatical errors. Of course, if you’d rather listen to our Podcast, you can find this episode on Apple, Google, Spotify and Amazon.

Lauren: Hey everyone. Welcome back to our next episode. I'm  Lauren Cowan and I'm the founder of DayoneHR. We are an HR tech consultancy firm. We actually started our first podcast last month. And, I just wanna say a really big shout out and thank you to everyone who gave us feedback, reached out, gave us really, a positive response and those who enjoyed our first episode. 

And that's why we are now bringing you our second episode. So I hope you enjoy this one. 

Yogina: Hey everyone. This is Yogina. Welcome back again to our second podcast. I work along with Lauren at DayoneHR and both of us work in HR transformation projects to give you a short overview HR transformation project as digitizing the HR processes in any companies that might be going from excel or spreadsheet to a new platform, or that might be just looking at new platforms in the market and where a company fades out the old one and implement a new.

So both of us have been in this area of HR transformation for quite a bit now. I'm recently new compared to what Lauren has done or for the years that she has been involved in. And, in this podcast today, we just wanna talk about HR transformation and our journey for HR transformation and how we got into it.

Lauren, like you and I have been working a long time. And I know, like we always talk about HR tech and HR transformation and why both of us were involved in this, for our listeners, if you haven't heard our first podcast go in there where we have talked about why both of us got engaged in the HR transformation or HR tech sector.

I was just getting curious while we thought about the idea of doing the podcast, like, how has your experience leaving everything behind in HR, just looking at HR tech or HR transformation, how has your experience been, or, or how do you see that evolution of HR transformation? . 

Lauren: Yeah, I think, I think it was probably around 2015 that, you know, working in Europe, I could see the value of HR tech transformation projects for smaller organizations.

You know, at that time I had just come out of Amazon, we'd launched Amazon logistics. You know, we had PeopleSoft that was customized to the max. But, I could see like all these smaller organizations, all these startups that were growing so fast that just didn't have. The right tools like the HR teams didn't have HR systems.

And if they did have HR systems, they weren't implemented properly. So, the data wasn't being managed, processes were all over the place. And, I could just see where the future was going. I could see, you know, in the next 10 years, there just wouldn't be organizations without HR systems and without HR tech transformations.

And, I could also see that the impact of a successful HR tech transformation project had on the business. It wasn't just about the HR team, even though granted, I knew the pain of being in an organization that didn't have a great HR system. But still the wider business was benefiting from these projects.

So it was just kind of just, just a no brainer. And for me, my experience was really sometimes going into an organization and just selling that and just saying, look, if you had a HR tech transformation project, And, you know, it was completely successful, met the needs of the business, look at what you could get out of it.

And ,once you've had that conversation and you've got leadership on board, I mean, you already had the HR team onboard usually because they could see from maybe previous organizations that they'd been with that, you know, having a HR tech platform was, you know, was the right way to go. But, ultimately, you know, when you go through the selection process and you go through the implementation process of a HR tech transformation project, it goes way beyond just implementing a system.

And I think that's the biggest bit of experience that I probably share. There's probably people who have done, you know, HR tech implementations that are listening to this podcast. But to do a HR tech transformation project is another level because you're not just implementing an HR tech platform, you are elevating, up scaling that platform. So it completely changes the way, not just the HR team works, but also how managers work, how employees work, you know, HR metrics, what's your forecasting, you know, what is the system telling you? How is that linking into business strategy? How are you planning for the next quarter?

And my experience has really been about, you know, you have the first phase of supporting businesses to kind of go through the adoption process of implementing an HR tech stack. But it's the next phase as well, you know, automated processes, having a great employee experience, and, my experience in that comes.

So many organizations large and small, but predominantly of recent years, smaller organizations of under 500 people in many different sectors. And I think, you know, I'm just coming out of one that, that we are actually working on,you know, within quite a niche sector and they really, you know, are on this huge tech transformation as part of IT and finance, you know, they're getting an ERP system they're upgrading all their IT platforms. So, you know, you can have kind of an isolated HR tech transformation project, but I've had many experiences as well, where you are on the transformation project as an organization.

So, HR having one, IT having one, finance having one, maybe even supply chain having one, depending on your organization. But I mean, that's kind of been my experience and there's just so many examples and stories, but that's probably a high level overview of  that kind of evolution and where it comes from. 

Yogina: Yeah, for me the HR tech thing started with an ATS- Application Tracking System, that I was doing at a former organization that I was working with. And then I came to know about HRIS and started doing that implementation. And then I slowly got introduced to this whole word of HR tech, which is not just about, you know, payroll or attendance, because normally people would think it's when you say in HR tech, it's either payroll or attendance and, and you get done with it.

There's a different world within  HR tech itself where it's payroll, where there's shift management, where the new thing that's coming up as wellness or employee experience where it's all about providing avenue or platform to their employees, where they can go and find the right wellness treatment that they want, or the wellness gift that they want being able to pick that.

So, the world is pretty huge in itself and something that came to my mind during my last London trip or the trip that the UK was like. I always thought that, you know, because HR is something that's pretty new in Nepalese  market from where I am from, or even the Asian market where people are slowly seeing why HR is important and HR is not just about contracts and stuff. There's a lot more things to do with it. And then that's why I like people, because it's a baby step for HR in the Asian market. That's why a lot of people don't know about HR tech, but, during my UK trip, I got to meet a couple of friends, people that have worked before and they were asking me what you do.

And I was like explaining the same thing that I do. Like I work in  HR tech and this and that. And they were like, Oh, is there really a software like that or is that really necessary or we are  a hundred or fifty people doing something that adds value to us? And I was a bit surprised. Okay. I thought like, you know, people in the west would know much better, especially people in the city areas and having these people in business asked me about that was like, okay.

It's like, even in the west, not a lot of people know about it. So what, from your point of view, like that, that's what I see. From my side, there's still a lot of awareness that people in the market need the businesses, regardless of their like CEOs or their salespeople or their people in HR itself, or people managers don't seem to know a lot about the side of HR or technology side of HR. How, what, what would you say? Like, what has your interaction told you about till date?

Lauren: Yeah. So, it's been a couple of perspectives. So, I mean, for a long time, and this was, this was before 2020, it was kind of seen that, you know, the HR tech market was huge in the States, you know, it was the leader, it was always at the forefront of producing new platforms, new initiatives and things like that.

And, Europe was kind of trailing behind for a while, especially in terms of awareness, you go into teams, you know, and they kind of, you know, heard about platforms in big organizations, but not in smaller ones. You would have, you know, I worked with a client once who sent their senior leadership over from the States and they were saying, we need a payroll that does this, this and this and that.

And this was a few years ago. I said, well, actually, we haven't filled that gap at the market yet in terms of UK payroll, I think it'll be filled in the next 18 months, two years. And it was eventually, and they were just so shocked at the fact that what they're used to and, and the US awareness of the HR tech market wasn't available to them in the UK.

I think the other piece of awareness which is always quite interesting when you're working with clients, when they go through the selection piece is you'll work with individuals and they'll say, oh, I will, you know, with this, you know, transformation project at my last organization and we implemented Workday. Why don't we get Workday?

You have to kind of explain that the HR tech market is more than Workday and that also Workday doesn't work for everyone. Especially when you're a smaller organization and that awareness is not quite there yet in a lot of places. Even with CTOs and people like that, it's just kind of a gap where, you know, it's not seen as important right now. Whereas getting the IT systems and things like that in place is seen as more important from their perspective. But I do think that the awareness in the HR tech market has skyrocketed since 2020, and people have seen new platforms opening up in Europe and Australia and Singapore.

But there's still work to be done, there's still a need to kind of make sure that people know that there are lots of options available to them. And, just the benefit of picking the right system and that, that comes from awareness. And I have, you know, I have a lot of calls with people, you have calls and conversations with people where, you know, you're just kind of having that kind of prelim conversation about, look, this is what's out there. You know, talk to people on LinkedIn all the time. This is what's out there and they're kind of mind blown because they didn't know that there was something like that. You know, they're possibly thinking about the Oracles and you know, SuccessFactors and things like that, that they think that that's all there is. And there's so, so much more. 

Yogina: Yeah. I just wanted to point out one thing that you shared that, you know, like Workday does not work for everyone like that. That's right for every tool. And there's this concept among people that if there's an HR platform, it should work for everyone. And people do not understand the work that goes behind how the tools are built and, you know, the thought process of which organization it meets for them.

It's just like, oh, you go scour through some of the platforms that's valuable and pick one and you are all set. You know, that's, that's like one of the biggest I'll call it kind of a myth that goes in the market. That it's as easy as it turns out while working with so many transformation projects. We know that that's not true.

Even we have to look into different tools and platforms and pitch the right one to the client when we are talking to them. And one interesting piece you brought in was like, for example, the matter with the CTO- Chief Technology Officer, even not knowing about HR platforms and stuff, and you know, a lot of times we do have to face that difficulty of making this decision makers or the executive teams, people who are gonna spend the money and the sponsor and showing them, or, you know, getting them buy in that the platform is necessary or why it is necessary because they wouldn't have seen the day in and day out grinding that the HR team has to do. And not being able to see like what the platform is gonna bring forth from your experience like, oh, working with so many companies and we definitely have worked together, like, what would be your advice to the teams or how do you see role of this executive team as a decision maker in the whole HR transformation process?

Lauren: Yeah. So, I think there's a couple of things. So I think, you know, HR ultimately, and this is a big topic that we can go into another time. It's HR needs someone with a seat at the table and that has really come from, you know, the evolution of the Chief People Officer role, which, you know, was much farther, you know, much farther ahead in the US and in some of the bigger organizations, but is now a part of some of the medium size organizations that you get in Europe and really kind of building that up when you've got that person at the table, they can, you know, push to say, look, my team needs this. My team needs to keep up with everyone else's team. We need the same investment. We need to invest in our people and we need to do that through technology. 

And I think that's one of the main things that has changed a lot in the last few years, but it is really important in kind of decision making, but ultimately the kind of buck stops with the executive regardless of the size of the organization. I've worked with different organizations and that's what always happens. It always goes to the leadership team. They have to have several conversations about it. You know, either they're really onboard, the business is going through, you know, a real kind of change program of work and HR are a part of that in terms of that transformation, or you've got kind of, you know, a blocker situation at C level where they can't really make a decision yet. 

They can't really know if they are willing to, you know, get that budget set aside. You'll see with organizations, whether the leadership team are at a point where they are wearing their change agent hat, and they're ready to do these transformation projects and they're in the middle of hyper growth or change the organization, or you'll have situations where, you know, I've had it before years ago, working with high net worth individual in his company is that, you know, you could sit in six months worth of senior leadership meetings and still that decision hasn't been made and you see the impact that’s having on the team, people, running payroll, people onboarding offboarding, these kind of ops level tasks get seriously impacted.

By the exec team and, and really kind of that's where the main decision makers are in the project sponsors, you know, from an HR level now previously it would maybe flow into finance or IT, and then they would make the decision. But really now HR, I've got way more of a seat at the table and that’s really how everything can come about and really change can start. 

Yogina: Yeah. Yeah. I do agree that a seat on the table in the executive team is necessary for people to understand why HR tech is necessary and what is gonna bring to your team. And I think a lot of times the executive team needs to trust the team when they're having a say or, or making an ask.

 Right now in the world, we are in a very crazy situation as I like to call it. COVID 19 happened. The pandemic came and went, you know, did a lot of things and slowly the business was starting to get up to speed. And now there's the global recession. If I see COVID 19, it's a time when, like, you know, remote work flourished, like work from home things, flourished and it added up a bit of importance on HR tools and automated automation and things as such, but now the other giant that we are hitting is the global recession where all the business are being hit. And we are getting news like a lot of tech companies laying off their people in assumption of the future transactions that are gonna happen and things as such.

Right now I see that with COVID there was a lot of emphasis on tech tools like HR tech platforms and such, but with global recession, what has happened is we know the truth working in the HR tech sector that HR tech is not always the top priority. It does not like most of the time it does not even fall the top priority for the executive team or the company.

It's always the HR people who are trying to put the weight on it and bring it up to the team. So, it's like a middle situation where we have, COVID says like, we wanna do like with COVID like, if you wanna do remote work and stuff, you need HR tech with global recession, people would, or businesses would not want to spend money on things that they don't think important with, with all of those things going on around that world at the moment, which is super crazy. How do you see the future of HR Tech? Is it gonna grow? Is it gonna shrink or do you say it's gonna get balanced out itself? 

Lauren: Yeah, I think just to touch on before that, I mean, during COVID 19, yeah, so many people were implementing HR tech. I mean, a famous case is John Lewis in the UK implementing a HR tech platform remotely.

I mean, they've got loads of stores, have also got their online side and they managed to do that successfully which is amazing. And I think the COVID 19 made people realize that they do need HR tech and they can't live without it. I think in terms of the future, it's very interesting because it really is a case by case basis.

It's very geographical,  it's very divided within sectors. You know, there are some sectors that have really struggled in COVID 19, but have bounced back. There are some that are still struggling to bounce back. And we don't know what the future looks like for them in the next 12 months. But to give you the kind of real case studies that we have right now, you know, we are working with one client who's in the energy sector.

Well, you know, the energy sector from a private business perspective is booming. And I should think that there'll be more investment in HR tech. They'll want more on HR future forecasting, HR analytics and we've looked at some platforms that are doing that for, you know, people that are not 10,000 people,  who are not even a thousand people. 

So that, that is really where the future is gonna go, giving smaller organizations the level of platform that they can get with, you know, a huge HCM system. I think also to flip that is you know, we have another client at the moment who's going through contract negotiations to sign up with, with a platform they're in a sector, which I would say it is growing, but you know, we just, we don't really know what, what will happen in the next sort of two years, but they've got employees in Ukraine and you know, we've got a war in Europe.

Sometimes you just can't, you know, stop some projects you have to support, those employees that need self-service access when they need access. Because they have an even more unstable situation than maybe where the HQ is for an organization. So I see HR tech still being just as important as it is now.

But I also see a bit of disruption. Disruption is good. We know that because you know, it elevates and improves technology. It improves what is available to the customer and organizations. So I only see good things. To be honest, some companies may struggle to invest as much as they'd like in HR tech projects.

But that won't be, oh, we're just not doing it. It'll just be delayed, which is what some organizations chose to do in 2020. They paused their projects and then delayed them. But they'll never not do them. HR tech is here to stay. 

Yogina: Yeah. It's just like a life situation for companies as well like you never know what's gonna happen and you have to mold it a lot of times with how things are. Well, it's raining at my place and I think our listeners would have some nice background music with us.  

Lauren: Some calming soothing tones.

Yogina: Yeah.  I hope so. We are coming towards the end of our podcast for this time. The very last thing that I wanted to ask you or know more from you about is, you know, HR transformation or HR technology investment, as we have been discussing it throughout the whole podcast is not something that, you know, a lot of executive team think is important, even at times, like even the HR team.

Like, does it gonna do the work that I do because they're so dependent on doing things manually and things are fine. And even when there's a lot of studies about HR tech and how important it is companies such as ours, or even the platform companies are sharing that awareness. There's still a lot of companies, a lot of HR professionals, themselves or leaders in the company who are not so sure about HR transformation or HR tech. What would your advice be for them in order whether they need to do HR tech transformations or not? Which sure would be like, they need to do it, but how would you suggest them to, you know, find a way or direction out of the whole chaos that they're at the moment or not being able to think through, as you mentioned, like, you know, six months in the leadership team meetings and still no decision made, like what would be the, your advice on like finding a way out of.

Lauren: I think it's really tricky and it is kind of case by case basis. But what I will say is, you know, if you look at the last two years and you know, we talk about the great recession it has never been more important to hold on to the skilled employees that you have and in order to do that, you have to have, you know, great managers, great company offering, a great HR team, excellent processes. And if you are gonna be able to not just attract, but retain employees, you are gonna have to really sell the employee proposition. And in order to do that, you need to keep current and up to date with what's happening in your market.

What benefits are people being offered? What, what flexible working, what contractual terms are people being offered? And to do that, you need to be constantly auditing and assessing the business, but also the HR team and the tech that they use in order to create that engagement and employee experience.

And I think that that's what organizations should be doing, not just within HR, but, but other other departments too. And I think that the last sort of two years or,  just over two years have gone incredibly fast and people have seen what can happen when you stall on decisions and how that can impact a business.

And this is not just impacting how many people you hire this month. This is impacting share prices. This is impacting the bottomline. So I think that for organizations who are not sure about HR tech transformation  would really step back and look at the organization as a whole, look at where you need to get to, you know, how many people do you need to hire?

How many people are leaving every month, look at your attrition rate, what's going on? You know, because that's money paying to bring someone in, that is money to let people go, or whenever anyone exits. So look at that like money and then really decide, you know, how much do we need to set aside to make sure we get this transformation project right. How much do we need to invest and how much return will we get? When you look at it from a business strategy perspective, you know, it's much more viable. And, you'll be able to reap the rewards from it too, you know, HR tech transformations are not things that you just do once and it's over.

It's something you do continuously, you're continuously auditing what you have, what you're paying for. And every three to four years, you might do a bigger transformation based on how quickly your organization is growing. But obviously, as we've seen, we have spoken to clients who are much larger organizations, you know, with tens of thousands of people that are also listed on the stock exchange.

You know, they're on their fourth HR tech transformation, you know, they haven't had the one transformation and then said, Oh God, that's awful. We'll never do that again. They're consistently doing it which shows the benefits are there. SoI know, and I call out to, you know, senior leadership and HR teams who are always buried in work with queries, with projects the benefits of setting the time aside or outsourcing HR tech transformation to people like us. We can do that work and save you the time and you can then focus on the day to day and that's where we really excel as a business. 

Yogina: As I mentioned, like before on the podcast as well, a lot of time people feel its HR transformation is quite an easy piece. You just go pick out a thing from the shelf and get it done, which it does not. We, as a company, DayoneHR, do provide that service with our level of expertise. We have been helping many organizations and companies and businesses to do the HR transformation project. So in a nutshell, in a minute, could you share about the services that they want HR provides and how our listeners can reach out to us if they are looking for an HR transformation project?

Lauren: Yeah. So there's a number of services that we actually offer. The first one is that if you don't know what you need, you don't know anything about HR tech transformations, that's fine. We offer HR tech audits where we come in, have a look at your systems or lack thereof and processes and see where you've got gaps and make recommendations.

Our next service that follows on from that is supporting the HR tech selection. So working with vendors and yourself to make sure you've got a great short list, you've done your due diligence and you're ready to pick that one or two providers. Our third one is implementation. So you can outsource your HR tech implementation to us.

We have our own DayoneHR methodology where we actually go through the design, the build, testing, training, right through to deployment. And then finally, the final piece for us is around the HR strategy and really the HR process piece. And this is what a lot of clients have actually asked us to stay on, to really upscale the systems, improve all the processes, get rid of the spreadsheets. And God forbid, if you're still on paper, get rid of that as well. And really make sure that transformation has happened end to end and this can last different times. Sometimes we've been in six months and we've been able to turn, you know, everything around and with some clients we've been working with them for two years and we continue to work with them to really make sure that the team is upskilled and, and ready for, for the next period of growth. So those are the kind of things we offer. And also we have DayoneHR courses which I'll probably have to do a podcast on by the way, because there's just so much to say on that. We've got some courses available now and we've got two more courses launching this year.

So if you wanna learn more about HR tech. Then please go on our website and go to our DayoneHR courses page, and it'll link through there to our teachable platform where you can go through the courses.

Yogina: Cool. Thanks for sharing that. And, if anyone in the audience wants to reach out to us, they can go to our website, www.dayonehr.com, and to contact us page. They can reach out to us or just follow us on LinkedIn and just send us a message and we'll be able to help you out there. 

It was really nice chatting with you, Lauren. It's always like these conversations that we always have, you know, on this part and just sharing whatever we know and whatever ambitions are. It was a really nice chat. Anything else you wanna say before we end our podcast? 

Lauren: If you're thinking of a HR tech transformation, don't wait, do it now. There's not always a great time to start a change project because it's a lot of upheaval, but the sooner you start, the sooner you finish and the sooner you reap the rewards. So don't wait, start soon.  

Yogina: Cool. That's really great news. Thanks for sharing that. To our listeners, thank you so much for listening to us. And if you have any feedback, drop that in the comment section, and if you want us to cover any other topic that is related with HR transformation or HR technology or HR in general, give us a shout and we'll see what we can do. We really appreciate all the feedback that you guys have given us and all the love that you have showered, hoping to get the same amount of support and love for this podcast and our future podcast. We'll be back with our another podcast very soon. Till then take care, stay safe. 

Lauren: Thanks a lot, guys.

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