HR and IT, better together

“HR relies ever more heavily on technology to get its work done,” said Andrew Horne, IT practice leader at CEB/now Gartner. “As technology becomes more important to HR, many CHROs [chief human resources officers] are spending more of their own budgets to obtain the technology directly.”

With HR taking the reins of its own technology, CIOs, in turn, have to change the way they interact with human resources, Horne said. CIOs should not only continue to provide IT services, but should also act as technology “evangelists, consultants, coaches and brokers.” Such a relationship includes advising HR on how to negotiate with cloud vendors, he said, or coaching HR on how to use analytics.

Ridvan Hajrullahu, CTO at OceanTech, a company that specializes in IT asset disposal and data center decommissioning, believes he has the evangelist-coach-broker role down pat. He said he’s a strong ally of HR out of necessity.

Ridvan Hajrullahu

“Technology always changes and advances, but, at end of the day, it always comes down to the people behind the technology,” Hajrullahu said. “You will always have the option to call in a third party to implement the technology you like, but it takes quality employees to see the big picture” of what technology can do for the company.

OceanTech is a small company, with fewer than 50 employees. Hajrullahu started in 2008, when there were only eight employees, and he’s taken on several leadership roles as the company has grown. He has taken a hand in helping HR because he believes all company executives should have a stake in talent management. In job interviews, for example, Hajrullahu not only tries to ascertain the technological skills of prospective employees, but he also attempts to get a feel for how candidates will handle working at a small business.

“One thing that I really look for is personal drive,” Hajrullahu said. “Does the person have the drive and the right work ethic to thrive in this environment? How passionate are they when they talk about previous projects that they’ve worked on? How passionate are they when they talk about something that they consider themselves experts on?”

In addition to assessing a prospective employee’s technology skills and passion, Hajrullahu is also changing how OceanTech manages employees and scopes their responsibilities. His team recently implemented an ERP system that tracks employee productivity and monitors company-wide changes that might affect production, such as a new warehouse procedure. The system helps HR and department managers set realistic productivity expectations so they can incentivize and reward workers accordingly, he said.

Cristian Rennella is another advocate of strengthening bonds between HR and IT. A co-founder and CIO of ElMejorTrato.com — an online service that compares car insurance, mortgage and travel prices — Rennella recalled how, nine years ago, his IT and HR departments were in different company buildings.

Cristian Rennella

Now under the same roof in the company’s Argentina headquarters, HR and IT brainstorm weekly to evaluate new projects and improve processes so they can find top-notch programmers before the competition, Rennella said. One such initiative has HR staff overseeing programming exercises for job candidates. Because of IT’s help, HR is capable of running this technical test, improving the efficiency of the hiring process.