Most of us do a terrible job at leveraging our core HR system.

It's often overlooked by more ‘sexy' HR tech like chat bots, predictive analytics, or personalisation. But the truth is, without a strong core HR system, none of the cool stuff is going to work. Put simply, a strong core HR system is what's going to underpin the future of work in every organisation.

Watch this clip from HR Tech Fest 2016 to find out why Jason Averbook says your core is HR's best weapon in preparing for the future of work, and discover what you can do to make it your most powerful asset.

Transcript

Most of us do a terrible job at leveraging our Core. The function of our Core is what's going to create the future of work in every organisation. When people say the Core isn't sexy or the Core is foundational or we shouldn't care about our Core, that is a bunch of baloney, it is. This is where the data sits. When you recruit and you bring data over from your recruiting system, how many of you bring over all of the talent data into your core, raise your hand. Okay, I'm just going to see if no one is awake, or if this is really as bad as it might look, like our election in the US. How many of you bring over just a small amount of data from your recruiting system into your Core? Now, what's terrible about that is you are leaving all of your most valuable data back in your recruiting system. What does that mean? It means later on the rest of the HR function that tries to personalise something based on where you went to school, what you used to do, what you want to be when you grow up, what your skills are, can't do it. Why? Because it's sitting over there.

Imagine hooking up a bot to that and say, “I'm going to send you learning based on where you went to school.â€' What's the bot going to come back with? Nothing, right? Because you didn't put data in or you didn't interface it or integrate it. Does that make sense, what I just said? If you have your data all over the place, any of this cool stuff that we're talking about going forward is not going to work, it's going to fail. How many of you have ever tried to use analytics on top of something that doesn't have data? How many of you have ever tried to build a pie chart in Excel and you get just a blue circle? That's what you're going to get!

So, when people say this isn't important… Core HR systems are the future of work! It drives me crazy when people just look at the sexy stuff and say, “Oh, we have to do engagement,â€' true “We have to think about performance,â€' true. You have to think about all of that, but you have to think about this. What does that mean? We have to standardise processes, we have to make sure that we have someone who's our data czar, our master data czar, and lastly we have to think of our Core as a hub and spoke model. What does a hub and spoke model mean? It basically means we have one place that stores all of our people data and all of the spokes, what do they do? They consume it.

This is an excerpt from Jason Averbook's Keynote at HR Tech Fest 2016 “Are You Ready for the Future of Work?â€'

About the Speaker 

Jason Averbook is acknowledged as one of the top three thought leaders globally on the future of work. He is a leading analyst and consultant in the area of HR, the future of work and the impact technology has on that future.

With more than 20 years of experience in HR and technology, he has a deep understanding of how technology can be applied to common business problems, and how to help organisations realise the benefits of such solutions.