I\u2019ve been trying to sell people on the Google Android operating system for smart phones lately.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure that it\u2019s really about the Android versus the iPhone for me \u2013 more likely it\u2019s the fact that I\u2019m a long time Verizon user and won\u2019t leave \u2013 since Apple is not currently available to me, I get the Android.\u00a0 However, the user and market perceptions of the iPhone versus Android seem to be a significant difference in philosophy.\u00a0 This is odd since both companies are basically known for ease of use (each in its own way).\u00a0 Google is well known for the \u201csingle field search engine page finds all\u201d, and Apple is well known for the \u201csingle dial does all\u201d iPod.\u00a0 But in the world of phones, Apple still caters to usability, and Google seems to cater to people who want more advanced ability to customize their environment.\u00a0 Either way, until this latest departure, both organizations seemed content to treat all of their end users as idiots \u2013 and it worked.\u00a0 They were able to bundle incredible functionality in a single element.<\/p>\n
I recently had the pleasure of sitting in on demos of core HR platforms, a variety of talent management and learning systems.\u00a0 It occurred to me that each category of software seemed to have varying differences of usability between their different types.\u00a0 While my thinking is in no way complete since I have not actually seen that many vendors of late, I\u2019m wondering if indeed there might be something to the following usability argument.<\/p>\n
Core HR platforms have in general\u00a0 catered to just the HR user community.\u00a0 In effect, these are generally specialists and power users of HR systems.\u00a0 Next in line, talent management systems rolled out HR technology to employee and manager populations, but most of the major interactions in the first couple of waves of TM were manager based.\u00a0 These technologies really stewarded managers through employee, compensation and succession review processes.\u00a0 Lastly, learning systems seem to be the most employee focused.\u00a0 Managers have proportionally less interaction (compared to TM) while employees actively look up courses, participate in learning, and manage their transcripts.<\/p>\n
My theory is that learning systems will tend to evolve the fastest when it comes to highly usable systems (again, assuming that legacy systems can adapt quickly, or newer platforms will already be there).\u00a0 Basically, the more end users you have, the less room for error you have when it comes to creating simple transactions.\u00a0 Lets say for learning, you have at least 5 times as many end users as with most core talent processes.\u00a0 (I realize that many of you will want to tell me that employees participate in reviews and talent profiles, but come on, I think we can all admit that most TM processes are really focused on the manager in today\u2019s world).\u00a0 Similarly, core HR has about 20 times fewer users than TM and 100 times fewer users than learning.<\/p>\n
Basically, what I\u2019m saying is that we all complain about the usability of some systems.\u00a0 Some vendors are burdened by legacy technology that they simply can\u2019t get out of.\u00a0 but other vendors who seem to be more capable of advancing usability have not.\u00a0 My theory is that when we talk about core HR, vendors simply have not had to make systems significantly more usable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been trying to sell people on the Google Android operating system for smart phones lately.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure that it\u2019s really about the Android versus the iPhone for me \u2013 more likely it\u2019s the fact that I\u2019m a long…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,2,41,7,11,46],"tags":[83,438,272,273],"class_list":["post-1760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise-solutions","category-hr-technology","category-point-solutions","category-portal","category-service-delivery","category-web-20","tag-adoption","tag-service-delivery","tag-software","tag-usability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1770,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions\/1770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}