In talent acquisition we talk a lot about what technology can do, the problems it can solve and the benefits it can bring; however, we don’t talk as much about the challenges of implementing technology, particularly at the enterprise level.
My guest this week is the one and only Alan Whitford. Alan is an expert at managing the logistics of large scale HR and Recruiting technology implementations and some incredibly valuable insights and advice to share.
In the interview, we discuss:
- How to approach a major software implementation
- How long should the planning process take and who should do it?
- Why RFPs don’t work
- What are the most common planning mistakes
- Managing the relationship between talent acquisition, HR and IT
- The importance of involving users early
- Considerations for resource allocation
- Expecting the unexpected
- Will the current crisis change the way recruitment technology is implemented?
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:02]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 259 of the Recruiting Future podcast. In talent acquisition, we talk a lot about what technology can do, the problems it can solve and the benefits it can bring. However, we don’t talk as much about the challenges of implementing technology, particularly at the enterprise level. My guest this week is the one and only Alan Whitford. Alan is an expert at managing the logistics of large scale HR and recruiting technology implementations and has some incredibly valuable insights and advice to share. Hi Alan and welcome to the podcast.
Alan Whitford [00:01:47]:
Hi Matt, good to be with you.
Matt Alder [00:01:49]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Alan Whitford [00:01:54]:
Sure. I’m Alan Whitford. My company is AppTech. I work with organizations, identify, select and implement systems and HR and recruitment.
Matt Alder [00:02:04]:
Fantastic stuff. Now it’s, it’s a particular honor to have you on the show because we’ve known each other for, for a very long time. I won’t say, I won’t say how long, but you were kind of hanging around the online recruitment space when I was just getting into it. So I kind of remember learning a lot, a lot from you back then and it’s great to have you on the, on the, on the show. So some of you know the listeners can, can benefit from your, from your instant infinite wisdom in, in the space.
Alan Whitford [00:02:28]:
Thanks Matt, I appreciate it. Yeah, it seems does seem like that we were running around the UK doing seminars on what is online recruitment to today, but it’s a, that was, as you said, more years ago than we probably want to admit to.
Matt Alder [00:02:41]:
So I suppose the key speciality that you have is running and delivering implementation projects for large companies when it comes to implementing HR and recruiting software, particularly across multiple countries. And I know that this is a massive headache and a massive problem for lots of leaders in talent acquisition when they’re selecting, planning and Implementing new software. So I really wanted people to kind of benefit from your experience. So talk us, just give us a kind of a flavor of the kind of projects that you work on.
Alan Whitford [00:03:14]:
Sure, Matt. In the last four or five years I’ve rolled out two global type projects. One was rolling out a recruitment system for a manufacturing company in 27 countries. But we combined that with at the same time building a new employment brand and a parallel project. So I actually had seven or eight streams going with the employment brand, the onboarding and those other pieces involved. And we ended up In, I think 30 something countries, 15 different languages, and trying to standardize as much as possible on process, but recognizing at the same time that you can’t have total standardized processes in a lot of HR and recruitment because each country has its own laws, its own regulations, its own cultures, and different ways of working. And then most recently, I rolled out an HRIS system covering payroll, time and attendance and core HR across 27 countries, although we only rolled payroll out to about six countries. And one of the challenges there is that it’s very easy for a vendor to come to a company and say, we can give you the global solution. And the reality is with payroll particularly, there’s no such thing as a global solution. You know, you can tie in to lots of different local providers and try and have standards and a similar approach, but payroll is so unique in each country that to talk about that as a global rollout becomes very, very difficult. But that’s the kind of flavor of the larger type projects that I’ve been involved in the last few years.
Matt Alder [00:04:49]:
Talk us through how a talent acquisition leader should be approaching a project like this. So right from the very beginning, they want to put in a new piece of software at scale E, replacing something that’s already there, perhaps bringing something new into their, into their business. What, what’s the first step that people should take? What should they be be thinking about when they kind of embark on this kind of process?
Alan Whitford [00:05:14]:
The first step, and it’s usually the one that comes last. But the first step has got to be plan what you’re trying to accomplish first. What does that preparation look like? You know, what about documenting your existing processes? What are your existing systems? Do they integrate to anything else at the moment? Do you need them to integrate because you’re putting in a new HR system or another type of application? And I think that’s the area where a lot of organizations fall over first, is they look at this and go, hey, you know what? My recruitment system is seven years old. It’s time to replace it and let’s just go to market. But this is a great opportunity to review your processes, review the way you work now and say, well, what are we trying to achieve? Are we going into a social media based recruitment campaign model just because everybody else is, or is that really appropriate to the type of people you’re trying to hire? Secondly is go sit down with your workforce planning department and let’s really think about what are you trying to deliver to, what are the challenges and the pressure is going to be when you look out two, three or four years. Because with the best will in the world, it’s going to take you a year if you’re a large organization to put this thing in. And sure, everybody’s out there will say, I can put mine in in three months. Well, yeah, you probably can, but that’s vanilla. And is it going to deliver what you need? So what I would say is that first piece is that planning and review of what we’ve currently got and what are we trying to achieve before we even think about looking at a vendor?
Matt Alder [00:06:44]:
How long typically do you think a process like that should, should, should take someone?
Alan Whitford [00:06:49]:
So that’s a good challenge, a good question. And, and the main reason it’s a good question is because somebody’s got to do it. And if you look around your building and you say, well, actually I don’t have anybody here that I can free up to actually put some time into this. So you really need to go outside and find a consultant that really knows this stuff. And there’s a bunch of us out there. As you know, you’ve known a lot of them over the years. Bring someone in from outside because they’ll also bring a fresh eye on what it is you’re trying to achieve. They can ask those hard questions and they should be able to do that on a month and they should be able to look at that and come back out of that. And out of that, say, here’s your roadmap. This is what you could be achieving. These are how we can achieve those goals you want to achieve. And that gives the organization, your talent acquisition director, a chance to go back to ORD and say, look guys, we can transform our business, we can transform the way we do recruitment because we’ve got an expert to come in and tell us how to do this. So it isn’t just me with a wish list.
Matt Alder [00:07:46]:
And then obviously we’re moving into selecting the type of software and the type of the type of vendor. What would your advice be for this.
Alan Whitford [00:07:55]:
Stage, don’t do an rfp. That’s my number one advice. I know that sounds strange. The problem with doing an RFP is that every single vendor, two things. One, they hate filling them out because they take a lot of time for a vendor if they’re going to respond to it properly. And two is they’re almost all going to say, we can do everything that’s in your rfp. So instead, again, look to that outside assistance you might have and say, all right, you know what we’re trying to achieve. Now you go have a look at the marketplace and come back and give us a short list of four or five companies that we should talk to and then move to actually bringing those companies in and having them sit down, talk to you about what their organization is like, how do they deliver projects, how much resource do they have, do they have experience in your industry or in the countries you’re going to be in? And then have them show you a day in the life, you know, don’t have the community to show you the best bits because that’s every vendor wants to do that. What’s a day in the life? How does this work for my recruitment manager? My hiring manager, when he creates a vague, creates a requisition or a vacancy, what’s the approval process look like? How do we integrate with job posting if we’re going to be doing that, or to our own websites, you know, take them through that day in the life. What’s it like for the recruiter? What’s it like for the candidate? That to me is a much more effective way of getting the sense of is that vendor right for you? And the other part of that, of course, is it gives you a better chance to really meet the vendors people face to face early on in the process. Because ultimately if you don’t trust them or if you don’t think they get your business, then it doesn’t matter how good their tech is, it’s not going to be a good, good experience going forward.
Matt Alder [00:09:40]:
What about budgeting for a project like this? What are the mistakes that you made.
Alan Whitford [00:09:45]:
Most often under budgeting? For sure, think what your budget is and double it because you’re going to end up spending more money than you thought and it’d be better to come out under budget rather than over budget. Secondly is in your budget you’ve got to include resource. You’ve got to make sure that you have enough internal resource as well as potentially some additional external resource to do this. If you’re looking at this and going, my recruiters will all pitch in and they’ll do this. It’s just not going to happen or it’s going to take two or three times as long. So you need to think about that. If you don’t have a strong IT department, and this is a big question, is it an IT implementation? Is it an HR implementation? Who owns this? Because that will also define a bit on who owns the resource. So you need to think about those pieces. When you’re looking at the budget, think about also what other systems are likely to be impacted. Do you need to build an interface back to your core HR system? Do you need to rebuild your website? Is that something you’ve thought about in the past? Do you need to actually think through the different social media or sourcing channels, your job boards, your LinkedIns and so forth that you might use? And have you got enough budget for them? So think about all of those pieces in the budget. It’s not just about going to the vendor and saying, how much a month is this going to cost me? And how much is implementation, implementation? And the other big piece is double whatever you think you should spend on training, because nobody spends enough on training when they’re putting a new system in.
Matt Alder [00:11:18]:
Picking up on something that you, you just said there about the, the relationship between IT and HR and with a recruitment system with, with talent acquisition as well. I, I’ve seen horrendous communication problems occurring in that, in that triangle of relationships during software procurement and implementation. Obviously, every company is different in terms of how it’s structured and who holds the budget and who’s. Who’s in charge of the project. But generally speaking, what would your advice be to talent acquisition leaders in particular, in terms of helping them manage a potential potentially tempestuous relationship between hr, IT and themselves?
Alan Whitford [00:11:58]:
It is, and it’s a tough one to call because the expertise in actually delivering projects sits in the IT department. You know, for sure, they’ve got the project managers, they’ve got a pmo, they’ve got, you know, people that know how to actually run projects. The flip side is that this may not be their most important project they’ve worked on because they’re also responsible for implementing the new finance system, for example, or in manufacturing the new erp, or if they’re in, you know, a distribution system, the new distribution system. And those all go straight to the bottom line of the business. So the IT guys are thinking more about those than they are necessarily about your funky little HR or recruitment system. So it’s a kind of a catch 22. You need the IT expertise possibly for running the project. And in a lot of organizations I’ve done work with in the past, IT actually owns the budget. So you’ve got to go through budgeting process with them. But all you really need them for in your recruitment system is very minimal. You need them to make sure that the network works and that everybody’s got at least a reasonably modern laptop or PC with a reasonably modern browser and you don’t need them for anything else. They’re cloud based systems. So it’s a tough call where the expertise lies with it. But the need is purely in the talent or HR department who really understand what to do with this stuff because it’s a user application, it’s not a technical application.
Matt Alder [00:13:28]:
I suppose moving forward, once budget’s been allocated, vendor’s been chosen, internal relationships have been managed and understood. What should people do in terms of planning for an implementation? What’s the best way to kick all this off?
Alan Whitford [00:13:42]:
Get your users involved in the early stages of the planning because you’re going to want to use them when you get to UAT as well. And again, most organizations tend to do this stuff more what I used to call the seagull approach. You know, the bird flies over and makes a deposit and all of a sudden you’ve got hiring managers saying, oh, I have a new recruitment system to use. What does that mean? I like the way I used to do it. I liked my paper forms. So you’ve got to get them involved early in the planning, particularly around things. I’ve been with a client recently and their vacancy requisition and approval process is they sit together around a table every month, talk about their vacancies, fill out some forms, and that’s the vacancy approval process. So if you missed the window, your vacancy doesn’t get approved for another month and you’ve got all this paper that you’re filling out and flying around by email. So sit down with those user departments and say what’s going to work most effectively. Almost all recruitment systems today have a vacancy approval process you can run automatically, you can have multiple layers of approval, but you need to plan that with your users. And that again is where a lot of times this falls over. It’s not just a recruitment or HR system, it’s a user based system for all your hiring managers. Get them involved in the planning very early on. Be realistic about holidays. Think about, you know, it’s easy to sit down and create a spreadsheet and say, okay, we can roll this thing out in six months, but that doesn’t take into account, and we forget today’s craziness, but that doesn’t take into account, you know, school holidays, Easter break, summer holidays, we’re in France or Germany with a couple of our rollouts. Oh, well, of course they’re shut down for two months. You know, plan through what that means. Where are your resources going to be in your business? Can you actually do anything during certain times of the year? You know, if you’re in retail, you’re not going to try and roll this thing out from November onwards. Don’t even think about it. Right. Because everything is consumed about making sales then. So that kind of planning with the user community I think is really important. And if you do have to embark on some of the IT resources again, where does my project fit on the IT schedule of projects? You know, are we a critical project, an okay, nice to have project and what’s their resources? And thirdly, planning with the finance department, depending on the vendor and on the type of charging mechanism they have. You need finance to be have all of their pieces in place so that you can pay the bills on time. You can have an exceptions process. If you need to get more resource, you can, you know, those pieces also need to be in place as part of your planning.
Matt Alder [00:16:22]:
You sort of mentioned resources briefly earlier in the, in the, in the conversation. In your experience, what are the things that people kind of forget to take into account when they’re allocating resources to a project like this? What are the things that people miss and don’t think of that cause them problems later down the line?
Alan Whitford [00:16:40]:
Content and communications. So I’m putting up a new recruitment site and that’s great. We’re going to post our jobs on it, but let’s have a look around the building. Do we actually have any job templates or if we got to start writing a bunch of those, you know, any standard job descriptions? Do we actually have already in place a set of standards regarding, say, competency frameworks or skills frameworks, or do we need to build those alongside this project and the communications piece? Who’s going to be responsible for putting together the communications and take it out to our user community? It’s not much good just, you know, pinging them an email now and again going, oh, your new recruitment system’s coming in July, you know, trying to get them on board. And also that resource is about user acceptance, testing uat. You need some people to actually test this system first. The system technical configuration, is it actually working like it’s supposed to? And then an Actual user set of configurations. Not only is the system actually function as it’s designed, but is it delivering the process that we want it to? And you’ve got to have some people come in and do that who hopefully don’t know a whole lot about it because you want them to try and break it. You don’t want them to do everything exactly as you’ve just designed your training manual telling them to do it. You want them to do it a different way, you want them to break it. And the other resource is training materials. Who’s building that? Is your vendor going to deliver your training materials? If so, it’s probably vanilla and that may not work for you. So. And if you’re in multiple countries, what about translations? Are you doing a multilingual system? So there’s quite a bit of resource around all of those pieces that no one really thinks too much about. They think it’s just about, you know, let’s go plug and play the software. But there’s a lot of pieces that support it that need to be taken care of first.
Matt Alder [00:18:28]:
From the work that you’ve done in the last few years, what are the sort of most important lessons that you’ve learned from the way that companies go about implementing large scale software projects?
Alan Whitford [00:18:38]:
Expect the unexpected. I know that sounds very trite, but some of that resource you thought you just planned for, they’re going to leave the company, you’re going to have new people come in. So on a recent project, at the start of the year last year, I lost my HRD and my number two were replaced. And they were the people that were that I was reporting to to run the project. But that was part of an overall change of the company. Had a new CEO come in two years ago and over 18 months he wiped out all of the senior management and put in all his own management. And so that meant for us as a project team, we’re kind of looking, well, who do we report to now? And the new people come in, they might not have the same, shall we say interest, invested interest in you delivering what you thought you were delivering. So prepare for that as much as you can. Think about who might leave and how would you replace them in your project, both above and below you in the team. Secondly, you do need to, and I think a lot of organizations, we get into that little bubble. We’re in talent, we don’t think about it, we’re just building our thing. But what’s going on in the overall business climate? What is actually happening? Your organization, were they prepared for Brexit. And what was the impact on recruitment, for example? And how do you make sure that you know what your business is doing so that if there are any things coming down the pipe that might impact on the business, they’re surely going to impact on recruitment, either positive acquisitions and mergers. So, oh, I got to add three more countries and four more divisions, or negative like, oh, we’ve just sold off two of those divisions. So it’s staying in touch and staying connected with the business as well.
Matt Alder [00:20:24]:
Final question. You’re sort of talking about expecting the unexpected and we’re in the middle of the global pandemic at the moment. And that’s meant that lots of companies have had to move very quickly in terms of how their businesses work, moving forward with, you know, with employees working at home and various other changes that have happened very, very quickly. Do you think this will change the way and the speed that large, large companies kind of approach these, these projects moving, moving forward when we sort of emerge to whatever the new normal looks like after this?
Alan Whitford [00:20:57]:
So I think it’s going to change the speed of implementation, speed of selection, implementation? Probably not. I think what will change though is how we use the tools and the speed that we change into using tools more effectively. So I’m already seeing in my current client the rapid transition of the resourcing team to video based interviewing. They were already using a video interviewing tool anyway for their graduates. They now are moving use the same tool back into their more permanent hires. They’re looking at different ways of validating identities. For example, how can we do that when we can’t actually have someone come in and hand me their passport? How can I validate? So what tools can I use to do that differently? Can I use Digi Identity for example, as a different approach? So I think the we’re going to see a change in trust of using more remote type tools for both interviewing and selection. I think we’re going to see a rise in the onboarding tools. I think there’s a big ask. Most companies onboarding processes are really in the pits. That’s the only way to describe them. The lack of integration between the resourcing recruitment system and onboarding and a lot of companies is just awful. There’s no transition between recruitment being finished, onboarding going through and being finished and then getting that information into the corporate HR system. So I think what we will see is an increase in more effective integration of those kinds of tools. But I think overall the speed of a project, you would like to think that it will change and be faster because there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be. But I think we’re seeing some amazing, amazing work being done by organizations today on getting things done so rapidly. But it’s in rapid response mode and they just can’t keep that kind of rapid response mode up in bau. And I think that’s the people will slide back a little bit, but I think the way we use the tools will absolutely change.
Matt Alder [00:23:02]:
Alan, thank you very much for talking to me.
Alan Whitford [00:23:04]:
Thanks Matt. It’s a pleasure.
Matt Alder [00:23:06]:
My thanks to Alan Whitford. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. If you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also listen to the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
