The HR “Backwater”

Remember Dirty Harry’s reaction when he was told he was being grounded and assigned to the Personnel department?

Well, Personnel has a more sophisticated moniker these days but its image in the eyes of many executives, is not much better.

That’s a shame because HR has been, surprise, surprise a pioneer in adopting many emerging technologies.It has been a hot bed for cloud applications – Workday, Oracle Fusion, SuccessFactors, Cornerstone etc. We have known for a while social HR has been hot with LinkedIn and other social recruiting.

Fortune says recruiting is a hot mobile app

The sudden, widespread use of mobile devices for job hunting has blindsided most HR executives. About 82% of the 1,000 job seekers surveyed last fall by career site Glassdoor.com said they expected to use their phones to look for jobs in the next 12 months. 

And of course HR analytics is increasingly hot as I have written here and here. Finally, as I pointed out during the Workday Predict and Prepare videocast as robotics and machine learning influence more segments of business, the HR role there will be significant.  

Few other corporate back office functions – finance, procurement etc – have been such a hot bed of recent technology activity. It’s hot enough to merit a Larry Ellison keynote at their CloudWorld event today. Even Dirty Harry would be impressed!

Oracle’s HCM suite does not often get enough press but at OpenWorld I got a glimpse at their  use of  gamification, talent analytics and video share apps for team building, recruiting and training. I am looking forward to a bit of a deep dive at their HCM World next week.