Dive Brief:
- Broken business processes are impeding development and pushing employees to look elsewhere for work, said Nintex, an intelligent process automation firm. The company's new study, Definitive Guide to Corporate America's Most Broken Processes, found that more than half of employees in the 1,000 companies surveyed say their employers don't define or follow a process for career development, and 67% say their employers' broken processes are barring them from reaching their full potential.
- Nintex said this lack of clarity stresses the employer/employee relationship. According to Nintex CEO Eric Johnson, undefined career development paths result in poor performance reviews, keeping employees from doing their best work and forcing them to look for a new job, the study shows.
- Among the broken processes cited by respondents are: 1) technology troubleshooting; 2) access to documents and tools that foster good performance; 3) annual performance reviews; 4) promotions; and 5) employee onboarding.
Dive Insight:
HR oversees most of the processes described in the study as broken; IT, on the other hand, is responsible for keeping technology functional. The two departments can work together in the interest of engaging and retaining employees to make sure processes are operating as they should be on a technical level.
But HR must also ensure employees feel empowered to use the tech in ways that make their work more accessible, not less. Bad tech backing up employee review or feedback processes can make those experiences worse for everyone, as the study implies, which can have a spiraling effect on engagement.
Bad processes, generally, are a challenge for HR right now, which has to match the agility of the rest of the organization as businesses undergo changes to meet disruption, be it from automation or the skills gap. To truly create strong processes, HR has to know who works for them and endeavor to become more people-oriented through a more personalized approach. The HR function, as it stands, is at a crossroads — and the way forward will likely require blending good tech with a human-centered approach.
