HR! Discover Your New Role of the IT Era

Abstract

Information Technology (IT), unlike common belief, is not all technology. What is not recognized is that IT has a very high behavioural component, as significant part of IT projects involves addressing people's natural resistance to change, which can be quite challenging.

Changes in IT are extremely rapid, more than any other technological change. People need support to cope with this rapid change caused by IT. However, IT departments may not possess the necessary skills to provide psychological support.

In businesses, the department which is supposed to have the behavioral skills is the Human Resource or HR Department. So, it is natural that business leaders should encourage HR departments to help and support IT in managing this change. HR departments should ideally volunteer to contribute in this area. Having worked as an IT Head in several companies, I have tried to involve HR departments to orchestrate the people aspects of IT project implementations. Strangely and ironically, I found very little enthusiasm from the HR folks.

Possibly, HR is ill equipped to manage the blistering rapid change driven by IT. Naturally so, as managing IT-Driven change is a special skill which is not covered in most Change management courses. IT is the biggest driver of change today. It is an irony that most change management courses cover managing traditional changes, like globalization, cultural change, policy changes and mergers/acquisitions, but not change due to introduction of IT [Ref 9. Change Management needs a Change].

HR folks need to upgrade themselves with this new skill that I call Behavioral IT® skill. Behavioral IT® is a special skill to manage IT-Driven change. HR folks can easily pick up this soft skill. Armed with this new skill, HR departments all over the world should embrace this new-found role of the IT era as a catalysts of IT-Driven change and contribute to organizational transformation.

Keywords: Human Resources, IT, Information Technology, CEO, HR Manager, Computer, Software, Information Revolution, Behavioral IT, HR New Role, IT-Driven Change, Change Management, People Issues in IT, ERP, IT Project Implementations, ERP Implementations, Human Aspects of IT

JEL Classification: L29, M00, M10, M12, M14, M15, M19, M20, M29, M30, M39, M40, Z10, Z12, Z19