In our recent webinar – HR Resolutions, How to make technology support HR in 2025, sponsored by Factorial – our panelists started the year by examining the challenges and potential around HR technology.
Claire Webber-Powell, People Director at Outdoor and Cycle Concepts Ltd, Annabel Roberts, Head of HR, Centric HR and Kameshwari Rao, Chief People Officer, Publicis Sapient gave plenty of insights into how technology should be valued by HR and practical steps to make it work for the function in numerous ways. The webinar is well worth a look, but meanwhile here they tackle two more questions raised during the session which we did not have time to address.
1: When do you know it is time to invest in a completely new central IT solution? Is there a danger that just updating and adding to a system doesn’t give best value?
Claire Webber-Powell: There are two clear signals for me. Firstly, when the end users – employees – start to indicate that their user experience is hindering their ability to be effective in their roles/find accurate information in a timely fashion and secondly when HR users are ‘finding’ work-arounds more than working with the supplier to develop the current system.
Alternatively it could be once you have identified that there is more activity being undertaken off system than on system – at which point the end-to-end processes need to be reviewed and a scope pulled together to better understand the gap between what is needed versus what you have and the current suppliers ability to achieve this.
Kameshwair Rao: You know it’s time to invest in a completely new central IT solution when your current system is limiting efficiency, scalability, or integration with modern tools. If workarounds, patches, and updates are becoming more frequent and costly — without solving core issues — it’s a sign that your system is holding your business back. While incremental upgrades can extend a system’s life, they often lead to a patchwork of solutions that increase complexity and technical debt. A fresh investment may have higher upfront costs but can deliver better long-term value through improved performance, security, and future-proofing.
2: What is the first part of HR work you’d look to automate – either through ease of doing this or because of the ROI you’d get.
Kameshwari Rao: Another area of immediate focus is to automate recruitment screening. With AI-powered applicant tracking systems, businesses can quickly filter candidates based on qualifications, experience, and key skills — saving countless hours while reducing bias. This delivers immediate ROI by speeding up hiring, improving candidate matching, and freeing up HR teams to focus on strategic initiatives like employee engagement and retention.Having said that, there is a lot of focus that needs to paid to privacy and bias with any solution that leverages AI.
Claire Webber-Powell: I would always look to find solutions that support the employee to self-serve – so that it fits their needs at a time/in a manner that works for them. So this could be holiday booking, return to work completion, contract/change requests etc. These are all highly transactional and with very limited ‘value add’ from HR professionals – but are essential for the good upkeep pf data/accurate records/payrolls.
Annabel Roberts: I would agree with Claire again but also add to look at any areas where there is significant volume of activity which is transactional – so recruitment and selection processes where you might have a lot of activity. Shortlisting, arranging interviews and so on can be labour intensive so any support around automating those processes can save time and effort and ensure that things don’t get missed. Similarly with onboarding – and Claire gave a very good example of her processes around onboarding on the webinar.
