I\u2019ll be honest \u2013 I\u2019m a bit sick of talking about the long tail.\u00a0 We\u2019re all so enamored by talking about is as if it makes us all business theorists.\u00a0 I find that half of us don\u2019t really know what we\u2019re talking about when we say \u201cthe long tail\u201d but it makes us sound smart anyway.\u00a0 I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
The HR long tail theory (to me) consists of a couple of major factors.\u00a0 The first is that the movement of services to an HR portal ultimately increases the overall demand for HR services.\u00a0 Volume wise, services should expand almost exponentially.\u00a0 The second part of the theory is that the HR services that HR customers want will change dramatically.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at the first part of the theory.\u00a0 As we develop our HR portals, we\u2019re not only moving transactional capabilities out there such as employee address changes (although this was the first part of the evolution), but ultimately we\u2019re looking to use service oriented architecture to move work lists from disparate applications to a customized and personalized portal.\u00a0 We\u2019re aiming to send personalized and dynamic reports with drill through capabilities to the manager desktop.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This leads directly into the second part of the theory.<\/p>\n
The simple fact that we will deliver more services changes the type of services our customer wants.\u00a0 Lets take an example that we already see happening in the workplace today.\u00a0 10 years ago, compensation inquiries from employees probably were focused on payroll issues.\u00a0 Today, rather than employees calling about payroll, they are getting much more interested in looking at their on-line total compensation statements.<\/p>\n
So I finally break down and write about the long tail because I don\u2019t believe we are prepared for what it\u2019s going to do to HR.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In doing so, we change and shape what our customers will want, and we do so unwittingly.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Or perhaps HR is right on track, maybe it\u2019s all about talent?\u00a0 Or maybe I\u2019m right and we\u2019re clueless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ll be honest \u2013 I\u2019m a bit sick of talking about the long tail.\u00a0 We\u2019re all so enamored by talking about is as if it makes us all business theorists.\u00a0 I find that half of us don\u2019t really know what…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":[8,2,7,42,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategies","category-hr-technology","category-portal","category-portal-technology","category-web-20"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","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=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}