For the first time the Eventful Group brought HR Innovation & Tech Fest to NZ, where over 250 of the local HR tech community got to hear about some of the best case studies available including small start-ups, the best of NZ and Australia, and high growth businesses globally.

It would be easy to write about the global insights and the future of work discussed with keynote speaker Jason Averbook, or global HR at speed with Michael Kim from Spotify, or the inspirational Daniel Flynn from Thankyou as highlights. Instead I want to focus on the 5 local case studies that impressed me most.  In the order of their presentations (not ranking 1-5) these were –

Anyone who leads an HR team dealing with 54 collectives already has my admiration, but the impact of the team has been so impressive – implementing tech to better support and care for the team that care for the patients. They have simplified the user experience for their staff with one UX and workflow management tool (Service Now) sitting across their 12 HR systems and have a pipeline of improvements still to come. Just thinking about their 12 week implementation timeline to minimum viable product made me wince, but the immediate uptake and user feedback about making it all so much simpler has been amazing.

As an innovative NZ tech success story with multiple brands and global offices a new Tier 1 HRIS would probably be an easy choice. That is unless you, like Evan, want to deliver a solution that provides exactly to your (very) specific business needs and because you're part of a tech company that takes user experience very seriously. Evans story was humorous, authentic and totally open about the challenges faced. Everyone who's ever gone through a tech selection process was nodding at the challenges and wtf vendor moments. I expect Evan will be on a return journey to HR Tech Fest 2019 to update on this intriguing story and let us know who their chosen tech partner is.

I know, it's easy to think the big companies have the budget for all the shiny toys, but this is different. A team from HR went into an internal ‘dragons den' type innovation competition and won business case funding for a new talent solution.  They won this against other ideas from across Fonterra – and so earnt themselves the sort of opportunity that we all wish for – to build something completely new that will deliver real business value and a capability uplift. It's a new in-house Fonterra app (working with Success Factors talent) that allows staff to see any new project opportunities across the business and link to those for up to 30% of their FTE. Its a direct hit on workforce flexibility, capability development, career pathways and retention – such a great innovation, and only one of the current digital projects underway.

How to do something your way – Fraedom is another NZ tech success story and Janine has developed a very personalised HR solution for the development teams who run in 10 week cycles and matrix structures. It's not all about the HR tech, it's a complete HR service design, but the tech plays an important part – including a performance cycle (on ELMO) that matched the 10 week dev cycle – and supports the People team with good data to deliver high level tailored support to the business.  This has resulted in some of the highest engagement scores I've seen – along with that award for tech team culture from the 2018 CIO Awards – makes this very cool stuff.

Wow, what a beast of a project – the complexity of the organisation and diversity of staff types and contracts across the council makes it a real challenge to deliver something to fit the multiple requirements. Chris (and his authentic tech ponytail) took us into the story of the project and how the team with a combination of Service Now and Success Factors has transformed HR service delivery and user experience at the Council. It's early days since the go live but with 800+ workflows already online the project is already proving itself a success.  There is way more to come within the roadmap, but the hardest part has been done – and done really well.

As a final note if you didn't get to hear Daniel Flynn's Thankyou story it's amazing and we can all make a difference supporting their start-up in NZ – look up their story here- Thankyou story and the products now available in NZ – thankyou.co.nz

I'm really looking forward to HR Innovation & Tech Fest returning in 2019 and want to thank Simon Yeowart, Hugh Owen and the rest of the Eventful Group team, and their sponsors, for such an inspiring event.

Cheers to all who were part of the experience.

About the Author

Alan Ward is is HR Project Manager at ANZ Bank and Change & Improvement Partner at Auckland University of Technology. Alan was an attendee of HR Innovation & Tech Fest NZ 2018.