Insights Report: Why Do HR Projects Fail?

WalkMe Team
By WalkMe Team
Updated May 2, 2023

A question no one hopes to face, and yet it hangs like a dark cloud over the heads of HR professionals everywhere. Implementing new software, attempting to make sweeping organizational changes, and building the perfect remote employee experience are all familiar challenges for today’s HR professional.

As with most business endeavors, hopes are high at the onset. There are expectations of immense transformation, backed by the promises of software vendors who can make your HR operations a breeze. However, this anticipation is too often met with frustration and confusion when the time comes to evaluate the results.

Well, after surveying 700 HR executives and project managers with an estimated total of 3 billion dollars in budget managed and invested, UNLEASH not only revealed answers to this question but created a list of 8 Golden Rules for Successful HR Projects. In association with WalkMe, ServiceNow, and SurveyMonkey, UNLEASH’s team has delivered their findings in the report: Why Do HR Projects Fail?

Discover the reasons why only 16% of respondents consider their HR technology projects highly successful, and no more than 15% were fully satisfied that their programs achieved the intended goals. Many of these include common operational and technical challenges that can be prevented, such as a selected system not integrating with others or data being unclean or unprepared for the transition.

It was found that, “Organizations with established norms and tools governing digital employee experience are more than twice as likely to have highly successful HR tech outcomes.”

More and more transformational leaders are turning to digital adoption platforms (DAP) as their primary method of building the ultimate digital employee experience. DAPs, such as WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform, afford management the ability to take all of their business applications and create a seamless user experience via a single interface.

Catch a glimpse into the HR worlds of digital technology and infrastructure frontrunners, Deutsche Telekom and Equinix. The report includes case studies from each, along with quotes from the managers who helped guide their companies through exciting organizational evolutions.

As a sneak peek into the insights of UNLEASH, here are the first 3 golden rules for successful HR projects:

  1. Focus on outcomes: Ask the simple question; what do we need to achieve? Leadership teams must understand their objectives before signing expensive contracts. Emphasize what the technology is meant to achieve and not the technology itself. To have a successful transformational impact, organizations must work through what they want to change and how their implementations can support that.
  2. Change management matters: As organizations move into a phase of nearly constant change, it is more important than ever to prepare employees for and support them through technological upheaval and organizational transformation.
  3. Invest in integration: HR and IT infrastructures continue to become more complex, requiring organizations to clearly define and execute on system integration needs. New and upgraded HR systems cannot be siloed alongside existing systems, but must integrate to provide a seamless set of tools for work performance.

To learn the rest of UNLEASH’s 8 golden rules, you can read the full report here.

WalkMe Team
By WalkMe Team
WalkMe pioneered the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) for organizations to utilize the full potential of their digital assets. Using artificial intelligence, machine learning and contextual guidance, WalkMe adds a dynamic user interface layer to raise the digital literacy of all users.