connects

PART TWO: 7 Reasons to Consolidate your Employee Engagement Technology

April 26, 2022

By Kelley Briggs
In the second part of this two-part series, we will explore the benefits of consolidating your HR tech stack into one central platform and how streamlining your tech can better support all employees, regardless of where they work. In Part 1 , we looked at how organizations can streamline and consolidate employee rewards and recognition programs to improve engagement and utilization.

Gartner research shows that 90% of HR leaders want to either maintain or increase their technology spend, to support and engage their dispersed workforce. To get the maximum benefit from these dollars, business leaders need to understand the new challenges of managing a hybrid workforce. That starts with learning how streamlining HR tech can improve the employee experience, especially when part of your workforce is working from home some or all of the time. 

Why tech consolidation matters 

Many organizations have, over the years, fallen into the trap of using several disparate HR technologies to fulfill various individual needs. This may be the case, in part, due to the lack of availability of robust HR platforms. Regardless, the problems with this scenario are many and they are not tiny. Expecting your HR team to use dozens of different systems to perform their jobs leads to frustration and mistakes, and the experience isn’t usually much better for the rest of your employees. Consolidating your HR tech stack into a single platform solves a wide variety of problems—some of you may not even realize you have.

The need for streamlined tech predates the COVID-19 pandemic, but the global health crisis accelerated the trend, largely due to the swift and steep increase in remote work. Nearly half (45%) of U.S. workers are working remotely at least part of the time, according to Gallup. With such high adoption rates of the hybrid work model across industries, employers who do not take remote and hybrid work into consideration when planning their IT strategy will struggle to compete against organizations that do.

“In a hybrid work environment — where some employees are on-site, and some are working virtually — it’s important to find ways to create and build connections so everyone feels connected and engaged. Without the proverbial water cooler, providing a centralized place to gather will build community by allowing employees to interact with, engage, collaborate and recognize each other.” Inspirus Employee Engagement Trends and Forecasts for 2022

Benefits of streamlining your tech stack

Reduces Noise

One of the key benefits of streamlining your HR technology is that it tackles one of the biggest problem areas of having disparate systems. Rather than using different platforms that are all competing for attention, consolidating your tech reduces noise in the system and simplifies the user experience.

Creates Convenience

Consolidated HR tech reduces task-switching, eliminates guesswork, and avoids frustration. Rather than wasting precious time asking the age-old question, “Where do I go for this?” your team knows they can find everything they need in one place.

Enables Consistent Communication

Using disparate HR tech tools creates additional opportunities for data errors, overlooked updates, and redundant work processes. Pulling everything together in one system ensures you have a consistent stream of communication-based on quality data. This way, you can easily get the word out about company news, vision messaging, and other corporate initiatives. In Inspirus® Connects, the Spotlights feature allows you to do exactly that.

Easier Admin

Every HR system requires a certain level of administrative support and having a collection of separate systems multiplies this work exponentially. Consolidating your tech with a single platform is more efficient on a day-to-day basis, less cumbersome to support, and requires less maintenance than using disparate tech.

Aggregates Data

Collecting data is one thing; accessing and analyzing that data effectively is another. Using one platform makes it easier to pull data and measure ROI. If you’re tasked with piecing data together from disparate platforms, you’ll face a lot of tedious work and increase the opportunities for errors. Streamlining your HR tech into a single platform means less work, more efficient processes, and better results.

Lower Costs

Moving to a streamlined HR platform can also save your organization money, freeing up the budget to spend on other areas, like talent acquisition or learning programs. When your HR tech stack is composed of many unconnected solutions, you’re likely to spend more than you would for a single platform that houses everything. Training time and costs will likely decrease with tech consolidation, too, since employees only need to learn one user interface.

Improves Scalability

Streamlining your HR technology is a more scalable approach, compared with using multiple smaller systems. If growth is one of your business goals, it’s crucial to prioritize investments that will grow with you. Consolidating your tech stack is also easier when you’re still small, so it’s important to make the move now if you plan to expand your business to the enterprise level in the coming years. If there may be any mergers and acquisitions in your future, consolidating your HR tech can help you prepare.

Streamlined tech serves both your employees and your business goals

Implementing technology that facilitates a more fun and engaging work culture for employees is a major motivator for consolidating your tech stack. Streamlining reward and recognition technology creates one larger community, rather than many smaller ones, which fosters inclusion (no one is excluded) and equity (everyone has the same opportunities). When you can save money and produce better results with the same move, it’s challenging to make a case for keeping your old, disparate systems. With business needs evolving faster than the speed of light, streamlining disparate systems will help organizations scale sustainably and respond quickly to whatever the future holds.

(Missed Part One? Read it here: 7 Reasons to Streamline your Employee Rewards & Recognition Program)