When deploying an HRIS or integrating new users once in the RUN phase, we know that its adoption from the very first use is decisive.
Good practices must be developed from the start in order to guarantee: the quality of your data, the proper use of your tools and processes, the performance of your employees.
Poor HRIS adoption would have a snowball effect:
- Downgraded data quality
- Unprofitable investment
- Drop in user satisfaction
- Deterioration of the HR function’s image
- Damage to brand image
- Decreased user support performance
To find out more about the impacts of poor adoption, you can read this article first and then come back on this one 😉
Now, let’s look in detail at 10 best practices to help you ensure ownership of your HRIS:
1 – Use modern training methods 👩🏫
Although traditional training methods have proven themselves, they can quickly become obsolete and ill-suited to the implementation of your digital tools.
Users forget 80% of what they saw in training after 1 week. And that’s normal! The human brain cannot remember everything, especially when the training does not include a practical part on the tool, and this practice is not “trained” over time.
This is the famous “Forgetting Curve” by Hermann Ebbinghaus:
There are sometimes user manuals, but they are not consulted because they are voluminous, not up to date, not adapted to the context or to the needs for immediacy, …
🔎 Zoom on: 5 misconceptions about User Manual
Planning a training plan is essential to ensure that you get to grips with the tools, because the applications are not always as intuitive as you might think. Your internal processes have specificities that are unique to you. They must be taken into account.
It is important to guarantee ease of execution of processes by all employees, regardless of their level of maturity with digital tools.
However, “traditional” training methods (face-to-face, distance learning, user manuals, etc.) are no longer suitable.
Needs have evolved in recent years, and the modern learner only has few minutes a day to train.
It is difficult for him to attend long training courses from which he does not retain much…
He prefers to follow micro-training modules integrated at the moment he is using its tool: this is Josh Bersin’s famous “flow of work”.
HR tool’s handling method therefore needs to be reconsidered.
💡 Solution: The Shortways solution
If 80% of information is lost over time when the brain does not try to maintain it, or the information is meaningless for the learner, the solution is easy to find: Shortways Assistant displays contextualized help directly from the right user screens according to their profiles.
As administrators, you can also push full-page messages to: remind a deadline, announce the launch of an interview campaign, give a reminder shot on a process, welcome a new employee during its first connection, …
2 – Do not rely on the ergonomics of your tools ⚙️
Beyond the tool, it is your internal practices that users must adopt, which is not always easy, especially since digital maturity varies from one user to another.
You must therefore not only rely on the apparent simplicity of your tool, but above all on its understanding by all the users who will use it.
💡 Solution: Shortways guides your users step-by-step through screens and processes to show them where to click in the tool and make it their own.
3 – Communicate well in advance 📢
If you want to ensure the proper use of your tool, it is essential to communicate about it at all stages of your project:
- before its deployment to inform of upcoming changes and their benefits,
- during deployment to encourage people to go there and instill good practices,
- afterwards to keep users informed of new developments, and maintain the level of skills of both old and new users.
We often wait until the final training sessions to communicate about the changes. However, all stakeholders must be informed well in advance.
It is certainly disconcerting to receive an email a week before a radical change about habits that we already had difficulty assimilating.
It is to avoid this resentment that it is important to warn users about the impacts that the various changes will have. Thus, an early understanding will have the effect of removing reluctance to digital adoption.
💡 Solution: Organize workshops with representative stakeholders ahead of change. Develop an appropriate communication plan, and share a forecast schedule of upcoming changes with all your employees.
Reassure them and arouse their interest by communicating via teaser videos of the tool for example.
Once the tool is in place, as for point number 1 on training, use innovative solutions like Shortways to communicate directly on the right screens directly in the tool: new field, new home page, launch of a campaign, unavailable screen, …
4 – Have sponsors and project coordinators 🔑
More profoundly than communication and training tools, support for change mobilizes key players. These key players are required to adopt the position of agents of change. From management to end users, including key users: to ensure the success of a project, everyone is called upon to participate.
An HR project without sponsorship from the General Management will have difficulty going beyond the boundaries of the HR function. Likewise, a project without coordinators on the field will undoubtedly experience adoption difficulties.
Faced with power struggles, the hierarchy or management must act. Cédric Lefrançois, Director of Comp&Ben, Payroll and HRIS at Vinci Construction, notes: “Sponsorship is a key element. If the hierarchy does not already support the project, at the slightest problem the tools can very quickly be abandoned. “
Caroline Rousié-Villemin, HR Applications Director at Sodexo: “There are big power games behind HRIS. If we want it to work, General Management must be the prescriber and sponsor of the HRIS, which is a very strong strategic governance lever.”
Extract from our White Paper “The adoption of HRIS in organizations” (2022)
“Key” users live up to their name, they are “key” in transmitting knowledge and best practices, influencing the adoption of their peers.
Ambassadors are an excellent link between employees and the people who implement the solutions. In this process, they have a role of reference, spread the good word, and are a reassuring ear nearby to answer questions and remove reluctance to adopt the new tool.
💡 Solution: Identify and assign ambassadors who will have this role for your project. As for General Management, good preparation before the presentation of the project (objectives, indicators monitored, ROI, change management plan, etc.) is necessary to convince of the added value of such a project.
5 – Give reminder shots 💉
Your HRIS is already deployed, your users have probably forgotten everything since the initial training. There are a lot of tools within your organization and the human brain cannot remember everything.
It is therefore normal and expected that users will have post-deployment questions or problems, even with very simple features or processes.
In addition, your business is alive, and new users who have not followed this initial training will arrive.
Providing regular reminders is therefore vital for the life of your tool in the daily lives of your users.
💡 Solution: With our DAP, you can push full-page reminder messages that your users can’t miss. Has the annual interview campaign just started? Launch an automatic step-by-step guide when the user arrives on the page to support them in this process.
6 – Don’t forget that processes evolve regularly 📅
To continue with this example, your annual interview process evolves every year. And every year your employees are lost in your interview form.
Because the changes are not known, and no one has taken the time to modify the user manual.
The result: the completion rate is not the one expected.
The tools put in place to simplify the management of this process are ultimately not (well) used, and the objectives are not achieved. Managers must follow up to complete them on time and have no impact on other processes.
💡 Solution: Updated help content in just a few clicks with our Shortways back-office! No need take a screenshot, edit it, replace it in the correct place in the user manual, resave it, reupload it to the intranet and reshare it. Just edit the step in the walkthrough that changed, click save, and you’re done! Help is always available in the right place, ready to use. Don’t forget points number 3 and 5 by completing with a small notification bubble to inform the user of something new 😉
7 – Think about occasional users 📍
Those who do not often use the HRIS are necessarily lost in the tool when they connect to it.
It is normal that the level of knowledge of the tool and processes varies from one user to another in the company. Depending on their function, frequency of use, appetite for digital, …
These users should not be left behind in your change management, because they will also enter data. It is therefore essential to ensure their handling for good data quality.
Make sure your help content is as understandable and explicit as possible. Do not hesitate to call on newbies to test the tool before its deployment, and detect the gray areas requiring the most support.
You will reduce your support workload and its cost at the same time.
💡 Solution: Shortways adapts to these two profiles: you can choose to automatically launch a step-by-step during the first 3 visits to a screen, such as the one to make a job creation request for example. Or a notification bubble which has a “do not show again” box to tick, so that experienced users are aware of the information, then no longer have this reminder.
8 – Analyze the use of your tools 📊
Communicating and training users is the basis. Analyzing their actual behavior on said tool is even better!
The analysis of problematic screens allows a clear and quantified vision of the improvement actions to be carried out.
Even after deployment, unforeseen deviations or use cases may occur.
The analysis of statistics allows you to be reactive: are recurring questions detected by the support? Is a field incorrectly filled in a screen? Users don’t complete a process?
Then there may be a problem with the use of your application or its understanding by users. You need to understand where users are having trouble, what steps they don’t understand or what are the most used features of your application to adapt the different help content.
💡 Solution: The Shortways Analytics platform allows you to know the most played step-by-steps or the most consulted FAQs. Thus, to detect the processes requiring the most support. The search bar returns the keywords that did not display any results, which help you determine the missing content to create.
9 – Collect feedback 💬
The best way to fail is to rush headlong without listening to concrete user opinions.
What could be more relevant than the opinion of those who use the tool on a daily basis?
As we have seen, if all stakeholders in the HR application project are required to participate, feedback is, to do so, an excellent lever.
Establishing a culture of feedback means having employees who feel listened to and involved, and who are then more inclined to adopt changes!
And at least, you are sure to align the objectives with real needs and the changes to be made.
Dedicated working groups, directly integrated features within the tool, … there are numerous means to collect needs and ensure adoption.
💡 Solution: Feedback is embedded in the Shortways features. The user can thus report that content is missing when querying via the search bar. Give a green or red thumb to indicate the usefulness of the content viewed. Or submit a suggestion for content to create following a support request.
10 – Think about continuous improvement 🔄
Proper use of your tool does not stop at deployment, it is daily work. Your tool is constantly evolving, so is your workforce.
Implement a methodology for continuous improvement of your user support. Analysis and detection of blocking points in the application, creation of new targeted help content, enrichment of already existing content, … A multitude of solutions make it possible to streamline adoption in the RUN phase.
Support must also be available in the event of a business question or on the use of the HRIS for all users.
Questions will be asked to key users, an HR representative, the HRIS support team or the IT department. To keep the tool running continuously, it is important to analyze these questions to detect the most common problems, then implement actions to tackle them.
💡 Solution: As indicated in point number 8, the Shortways Analytics platform allows you to analyze the use of your tool and detect improvements to be made in your support content. Our other solution, Smart Ticketing, allows your users to send a support request, always from its application. These requests are hyper-contextualized, so that the support can respond in 1 exchange by chatting in real time with the user!
Is the adoption of your (future) HR tool one of your issues?
Let’s talk about it together!
To learn more about this topic, discover our White Paper
“The Adoption of HRIS in organizations”
