Dear (HR Tech) Santa...

I hope you are well. It's been quite a few years since I have written one of these, but recently I have found myself wishing and longing for things that I hope you might be able to help with. After all - miracles might happen at Christmas and according to my most recent feedback round, I should show up on your NICE list.

I don't really have any wishes for myself, but for all employees out there that use technology on a daily basis.

1) One consistent way to assess technology - while every technology is different, today, we miss a shared way to assess technology and to talk about it in a uniform way. Every person is different, too, but we can measure e.g. their height and weight consistently. Today, we have such a variety of KPIs, measures and ways in which we assess technology, that the value proposition of technology is so difficult to explain - to everyone from the CEO to the employee on the front line. Why is it important to standardise? Well, all our employees are trying to navigate to good use of technology. They might change organisations at some point over the course of their career - certain elements about their working life SHOULD be standard. If I give you an architectural equivalent - house doors are normed. Why? At some point, it made sense to do so to scale and enable everyone to understand what to expect. We measure the height of doors in cm or inches. Can you imagine the complexity you would have, if you had to adjust the height of a door to totally unique frames of reference? E.g. it would be quite a challenge to say Sally is 85 gummy bears tall and Bob is 1200 connected key rings in height - can we make sure they can pass under the frame of the door, please? This year for Christmas, I'd like to ask for more standardisation in how we assess technology, so that our leaders can become better at decision making (when there are just 5 KPIs instead of 5 different ones per type of technology it helps them to understand what matters faster) and our employees can relax more, because some of the same principles apply - irrespective of the piece of technology they work with or where they work. To get to such an outcome, we as individuals in industry will have to come together and agree on consistent measures and definitions - but I believe it will be worth it. For the greater good.

2) More focus on adoption - this is one for my tech suppliers. I understand that their capability to uniquely fix one particular problem is what often leads to the formation of these businesses in the first place. However, when the solution requires continuous training, continuous focus from someone on making sure puzzle pieces from one technology solution fit with puzzle pieces from another technology solution, the problem of demonstrating that your tool works becomes mine as the implementer. I often hear from friends in the industry that any technology that fails gets blamed on the organisation's "lack of change management". While it is part of the puzzle, please, HR Tech Santa, help us to get to raise the bar on technology so that it becomes so simple that it doesn't require training and that we continuously keep raising the bar for our users here.

3) Increase responsible implementations - today, ESG is at the forefront of everyone's mind. The impact of what we do on the planet is very visible and we have become more aware, as the consequences of our actions have become increasingly more devastating. So things like CO2 emissions have become something we report on. Today, we implement technologies and always talk about the way in which our technology enables our transformation. That's great... but we were also totally excited when we started building factories and cars at the start. The realisation of the impact came much later - when it was starting to have a devastating impact on our environment. We are now in a position where we already know that early exposure to screen based technology can be linked to a higher percentage of learning disabilities and the focus on screen based activity is starting to erode our interpersonal skills and coping strategies. My wish here, HR Tech Santa, can we please start thinking about how we become more responsible for people's mental health, headspace and capacity every time we implement something, rather than leave it as a problem for "Tomorrow-Me"? Let's learn from the past.

I know my wish list this year is a tall order - here is hoping for the best!

Thanks, HR Tech Santa,

Lots of Love, Freya

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