systematicHR

I’ll be honest – I’m a bit sick of talking about the long tail.  We’re all so enamored by talking about is as if it makes us all business theorists.  I find that half of us don’t really know what we’re talking about when we say “the long tail” but it makes us sound smart anyway.  I’ve resisted in joining the conversation, but ultimately, the theory has a couple of great points for HR, and as we project HR into the future, these theories have a lot to do with technology and ultimately how we deliver services.

The HR long tail theory (to me) consists of a couple of major factors.  The first is that the movement of services to an HR portal ultimately increases the overall demand for HR services.  Volume wise, services should expand almost exponentially.  The second part of the theory is that the HR services that HR customers want will change dramatically.

Let’s look at the first part of the theory.  As we develop our HR portals, we’re not only moving transactional capabilities out there such as employee address changes (although this was the first part of the evolution), but ultimately we’re looking to use service oriented architecture to move work lists from disparate applications to a customized and personalized portal.  We’re aiming to send personalized and dynamic reports with drill through capabilities to the manager desktop.  As we convert more of our services into the HR portal, this expands what we can deliver and increase the volume that our pipelines can handle.  This leads directly into the second part of the theory.

The simple fact that we will deliver more services changes the type of services our customer wants.  Lets take an example that we already see happening in the workplace today.  10 years ago, compensation inquiries from employees probably were focused on payroll issues.  Today, rather than employees calling about payroll, they are getting much more interested in looking at their on-line total compensation statements.

So I finally break down and write about the long tail because I don’t believe we are prepared for what it’s going to do to HR.  We are going to have a long tail whether we want to or not, simply because HR is already well on track to move many services to the web.  In doing so, we change and shape what our customers will want, and we do so unwittingly.  If the long tail theory is right that this leads to exponential growth in HR services, and that it changes what customers ultimately want from us, I think HR leadership is utterly unprepared and have not visioned for the future HR state.  Or perhaps HR is right on track, maybe it’s all about talent?  Or maybe I’m right and we’re clueless.