Scott Adams' Dilbert comic strip, which first published April 1989, provides an excellent and hilarious insight into the corporate world (focusing particularly on Information Technology folk).
One memorable character is Catbert (the Evil Human Resource Director)[1].
Adams portrays Catbert's HR mission as helping management exploit their workers while satisfying his own sadistic needs by inflicting as many absurd policies as possible.
While the comic strip illustrates a humorous conflict between HR and Business, Adams does hammer out the point that HR (and other departments) is different from Information Technology (IT).
When the Business asks Information Technology to engage with Human Resources to improve their technology and processes (i.e. Human Resource Service Management (HRSM)); IT personnel must address communication gaps and incorrect assumptions that exist between IT and HR. To illustrate, let's look at communication between HR and IT.
Spoiler Alert: Nothing will shut down a planning/design conversation faster than IT jargon in a HR Meeting.
During these meetings, one can actually witness a HR person's eyes glaze over when an IT person starts throwing out terms "ITIL" and "CMDB." Or my favorite seeing people actually leave a meeting when an IT person start explaining "epoch time" during a report design session.
The point is IT personnel must recognize key differences and incorrect assumptions between themselves and Human Resources
Here are some examples of differences and assumptions
People — To start, HR personnel do not normally bend their heads around code and networking issues while IT personnel do not normally handle employee HR complaints and review employment benefit policies. As a result, there is a common disconnect on what department would identify as success within a project. For IT to be successful within a HR project, IT should take some time to review HR mission and determine what are the important personnel motivators.
Terminology — Before walking into any requirement, design or planning sessions with HR, IT personnel should brush up on HR terminology and concepts. Some examples include: HIPPA, LOA, Harassment, HR Policy, Employee Benefits, Social Engineering, etc. In doing so, IT will have a stronger understanding of HR motivations. Additionally, if IT can project this knowledge during meetings, then IT will receive a greater vote of confidence from HR.
Technology and Services — When engaging with HR, an IT person shouldn't assume that an ITIL-based model is the best suitable fit for a Human Resource Service Management solution. Additionally, IT should also avoid the misconception that Human Resource Service Management (HRSM) is an extension of an IT Service Desk. Experience has shown that HR will have significant requirements that are different from IT Service Desk. Some examples include:
- Service Catalog
- HR organization structure
- Service Level Agreements
- Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)
- Request Management Processes
- Approval strategy
- Knowledge Management structure
- Case Management
As a result it is highly recommended to consider HRSM as a separate solution from IT Service Management (but with ties to each other)
To conclude, while Scott Adam's Catbert would love for the planning, preparation, and deployment of a Human Resource Service Management (HRSM) to be confusing, frustrating, and painful for Dilbert and the gang; real world business (and more importantly people from IT and HR) does not want those aggravations.
IT can prevent many common pitfalls of failed HRSM deployment attempts by taking the necessary steps to understand HR and their motivations. Additionally, IT should look the HRSM as its own solution and be very wary of the trap the HRSM is an extension of ITSM.
[1] Scott Adam's Dilbert "Catbert" http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Catbert
4 Comments
