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10 TIPS TOPersonalize your Cloud Hr solution

Differentiate yourself: innovate & make a Cloud HRSolution yours

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Cloud HR solutions are here to stay. Considering another scenario right now is very compli-cated, media bombardment is relentless and everything is already offered in the cloud.

Innovators who started to work with the cloud some years ago have been left behind (and probably have already changed services at least once). We now find ourselves transiting be-tween the Early Adopters and the Early Majority, in line with the Theory of Diffusion of Inno-vations by Everett Rogers.

So are we facing a future where we will all be guided by best practices in business that come pre-configured on a platform we share with many other companies? What happens when we need an innovative HR policy to attract and retain talent?

If we don’t get a convincing answer to these questions and a one-size-fits-all HR solution in our hands, then perhaps it’s time to put to aside our concerns for improving

processes and to be content with what we have, or seek out ways and shortcuts that let us incorporate our processes within the HR provider’s range of solutions offered.

Everyone has a little non-conformist inside; so if we’re reading this, it’s because we are in this second group and we want to know how we can develop our HR policies within a cloud solution.Here I give ten tips to go about this:

The diffusion of innovations according to Rogers

* Source: Wikipedia

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To be innovative in our HR processes, the first step is to choose a platform offering us a high level of adaptability within their own processes, configuration settings, different mandatory and optional steps for defining functionality, field configurations, easy to in-tegrate with other platforms, etc.

The definition of a new innovative HR process cannot only be created as a great idea put to our platform provider for deployment. It must be well established in order to upload it to the cloud, to analyze the impact on organizational culture, the benefits it can bring, the internal cost of transmitting and incorporating it, etc.

This implies the fully involving the solution deploy-ment team to get the best out of the work sessions with the platform provider‘s consultants, the training sessions supporting deployment, manuals, additional support tools available from the provider. To do this, we have to think creatively, change the way we work based on the suggestions from the platform func-tionality, and use elements that were designed to do something for our greater benefit.

1. Find a Flexible and conFigurable platForm

2. Have clearly identiFied tHe Hrprocesses you want to improve and

tHe impact witHin tHe organization

3. Familiarity witH tHe Functional capabilities oF your platForm and make tHe most oF tHem

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We know that there is no perfect cloud HR platform; in fact, all are constantly evolving, such that our provider will be much more open to our suggestions and comments if the approach is positive rather than destructive or offensive. After all, at the end of the day, we chose them and not the other way around.

Awareness of the latest news about the cloud and HR practices being implemented in other companies can help us keep an open mind and an innovative spirit within our team. You never know what piece of random information may provide us with the key to completing a process that we have half defined.

4. study tHe provider's evolving cycles and metHodology

Finding out our platform provider’s focus for development, at what times and how often does it accept requirements from the customer base for platform improvements and the best language for communicating with them, will give us more advantage. This enables the platform to evolve by incorporating our innovative HR processes.

5. provide constructive alternatives and solutions witHin tHe Functional Framework oF tHe platForm

6. keep up to date about best practices tHrougH diFFerent knowledge centers: Forums, social networks, virtual media, etc...

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Participate in events promoted by the provider, offer talks on the deployment we have done for other platform users. Stimulating dialogue with them may facilitate the identi-fication of common problems and solutions. This way we can together put forward to our provider the best solution for everyone, while complying with the internal policy for platform evolution.

If we work directly with our provider to develop new functionality or adapt an existing one, we can contribute our best working practices for that particular functionality—even if it isn’t complete, we can still get some of it reflected in the platform.

This is the most difficult point to cultivate, since we cannot all be in the top 500 of the most influential companies, nor have big budgets and policies for promoting human resources. Fortunately we live in times when it is much easier to reach people interested in specific content and self-publishing is the order of the day in social networks. Once people get talking about our HR policy, it’s far easier to convert it into a best practice in the market, and this is the way the HR platforms evolve.

7. be an active member oF tHe user community oF your platForm

8. volunteer to participate in tHedevelopment oF new Functionality

9. become a recognized creator orpromoter oF new best Hr practices

HR

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10. create custom Functionality linkedto your platForm

It’s an impossible task to find a platform that meets all our needs or in some way immediately fix what’s missing. This is not the ideal scenario; however we can choose creative solutions over specific needs. This also implies we must have the ability to develop functionality com-plementing the platform offering to cover our needs—and never replacing, because if it did, it wouldn’t make sense to contract the platform. Our IT department can use the surplus budget resulting from freeing up work teams and we can always give our provider a demo on how we supplement what is missing.

Alfonso Mazariegos is specialized in Talent and Knowledge Management. Currently he is an HR consultant at Meta4, where he has worked in customer projects covering recruitment, training, performance management, career development, benefits and time management, for both on premise and cloud solutions. He is interested pri-marily in helping people make the most of them-selves, be it in consulting and programming, or even cooking. Alfonso is also devoted to finding clever solutions to complex problems in a variety of different fields.

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