Assessing Digital Maturity in Human Resources | BCG

HR leaders are increasingly employing digital human resource tools and strategies to enhance business performance and the employee experience. But according to a recent BCG survey, the vast majority (81%) of surveyed organizations have significant potential to improve HR’s digital maturity and performance. This article identifies six building blocks (see exhibit 2) that all companies can use to close HR’s digital maturity gap. While each of the six building blocks is important, I want to emphasize one, which is foundational: agile ways of working when implementing digital initiatives. Given the vast investments (time, money, resources, and change management) involved, it is critical to conduct due diligence on the many aspects of an HR digital transformation. However, my experience is that firms often get immobilized when making these decisions and treat every decision in the digital initiative as being of equal importance. Giving every decision equal importance results in a protracted implementation where firms spend excessive time “majoring in the minor things.” In some organizations, efforts may stop entirely because of this ineffective approach. The article includes suggestions for implementing more agile digital initiatives, including beginning with use cases that are most likely to deliver quick wins (which will provide momentum for the digitization journey) and a strong return on investment. I also recommend coupling this approach to a pilot (a miniature version of implementation and integration in a select business unit) to learn and adjust quickly before implementing more broadly. For a good read on making the most essential activities easier to achieve, check out Greg McKeown’s book, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most.