Summary:

In this episode of the HR Impact Show, Dr. Jim interviews Lilith Kirsch, an HR professional with extensive experience in leadership, strategy, and mergers and acquisitions. They discuss the role of technology in HR initiatives and how it can be a game-changer for building high-performing teams. Lilith emphasizes the importance of staying up-to-date with new technology and leveraging it to support core HR disciplines. She also highlights the need for engagement and training when implementing new technology. The conversation explores the considerations and challenges HR leaders face when making technology decisions, such as the need for documentation, compliance, and the impact on growth and acquisitions. Lilith advises organizations to be proactive, conduct market research, and choose the right tools for their specific needs.

Key Takeaways:

• Technology is a crucial enabler for HR initiatives and building high-performing teams.
• Engagement and training are essential for successful technology adoption and implementation.
• Organizations should conduct a SWOT analysis and market research before making technology decisions.
• Small companies often face compliance issues due to manual processes and lack of technology.
• Mergers, acquisitions, and audits can expose gaps in documentation and processes, prompting the need for technology solutions.

Timestamp

0:00:00 Introduction to the topic and guest, Lilith Kirsch

0:01:05 Importance of staying updated with technology in HR

0:02:45 Challenge of getting experienced executives to embrace new technology

0:03:55 The need for engagement alongside technology adoption

0:05:33 Considerations before making a technology decision

0:08:30 Uncovering blind spots and gaps in current processes

0:10:58 Being proactive in addressing technology gaps

0:12:41 Asking about potential negative impacts of current processes

0:13:26 Key takeaways: be proactive, do market research

0:14:23 Steps to take before implementing technology

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The person who is going to take us through that conversation is joining us today. She's got 20 years of HR experience with massive experience and leadership in strategy, mergers and acquisition, ESG initiatives. She's done this in both domestic and international context, and she's got a balance of both.

Theory and execution primarily in the energy and consulting domains. Lilith Kirsch, welcome to the show.

Lilith Kirsh: Hi, thank you for introduction. It's very nice of you.

Lilith Kirsh: I've been in human resources world for over 20 years, and I worked in HR different segments. I worked in benefits. I worked in employee records. I worked with employee relations compliance.

In human resources, it is important to always stay with the changing time and learn the new technology, because that is how we support. All the core disciplines in human resources. Will it be benefits? Will it be compliance?

Will it be employee succession? Will it be performance reviews? It all needs technology. And without technology, and especially new technology, it's going to be really hard to stay on top of your game.

Lilith Kirsh: In past few years technology is in a new level of the game because with the COVID experience that a lot of companies had all over the world, not just in United States. We learned that in order to build a strong capable team, we need to have people who understand technology and they can use.

So in my position, I mostly work with an executive team where we're talking about people who have 40 years of experience and not necessarily. Believing in the technology can take us to new places where they used to sit down and have to face or have these meetings where everybody's on the same room.

organizations.

Dr. Jim: I agree with your observation that especially in the post COVID world HR organizations need to leverage technology effectively to conduct business. How would you respond to someone who says. I understand the value of technology.

I understand how that can be a big impact to what an organization is trying to achieve, but technology can't be the be all end all of your solutioning. There's gotta be other things that you look at. So when you're applying a full context to the conversation, what are some of the other things that.

HR leaders and leaders in general need to be thinking about in addition to technology to make sure that they're positioned for success. When that deployment happens,

Lilith Kirsh: I

That engagement coming from your employees from your executive team from all the stakeholders. It's extremely important. Let's bring a simple example. What if in your organization, they deciding to bring a new tool? And you have a group of people who are excited about it and they want to learn and they want to use it to all extents.

And there is few people who like, not, we had a way that it always worked for so many years, why would we change? So this is where you're having a gap. And to me the companies who are bringing new technology or introducing new technology, they have to have this period of introduction. Without introduction, without training.

And without understanding the why people will not be engaged.

Dr. Jim: I really like what you said there. If I'm hearing you correctly, the things that you're mentioning in terms of explaining the why, that seems to be speaking from a technology adoption perspective, but I want to think a little bit earlier in the cycle.

So before a technology is even implemented. What are the major considerations those leaders need to factor in before they make a technology decision?

Lilith Kirsh: Believe it or not, even nowadays there are a lot of companies, especially small size companies who do everything in papers all their processes, starting with payroll, finishing with the benefits.

And when the owners of the companies or the leaders of the companies are faced to pay lots of penalties to the government, this is where they are reaching out to HR professionals and hey, help us what we can do. And this is where the technology is going to come and play a role. And this is where I say, it's not just, okay, now you have, I don't know, a payroll structure, go and use it.

And then do a really good market research, go and shop for different platforms and products before you can see what is more adaptable for your company. If you're domestic, you're international, if you are in healthcare, or if you're in oil and gas, it all has different demands and different needs, how you have to support your, human resources group, or, build your best practices and the same thing, for example, 1 of the companies that I started, they had a major issue with their compliance with and again, the whole issue was with. Not being able to track the documents and not being able to match the documents the way that it's supposed to be the way they're supposed to be reported and, these kind of things lead to court cases or really big fees that the companies need to pay.

So the process from identifying where you are and getting to a future state can be pretty complicated.

And you mentioned. An example of a lot of organizations that are doing a lot of manual processes that might be documented on paper with no clear framework in place.

What's your advice to those organizations that might not even be aware that they have a problem that they need to consider?

Lilith Kirsh: What I've learned through my experience is there is a couple of the scenarios that's going to happen. Scenario number one is like I said, they're going to get an audit and this is where they will learn that.

This is where the challenge comes in, because there is a lot of federal laws and regulations that now going to start applying to your company because you going from small size to mid size company. And, you're hiring more professionals. Now you have you have to think about retention. You have to think about your benefits.

You have to think about compliance issues, and you're not ready because you haven't thought about that. This is being retroactive and trying to catch up to see how to handle an issue when it's already at hand. And the 3rd is some companies are trying to merge, or there is an acquisition and there is an interest from, a potential buyer.

But with merger and acquisitions they want to know more than that. You want to know what are your current, employee status. If you have court cases, if you know how you keep your record. This is the points where a lot of companies like this, the 3 major scenarios where the companies are going to start looking into.

Oh, my God, what we have to do. Do we have processes or how we have to approach. And this is where they would go to, sick professional help to figure out what they actually need. Because most of the time, they don't even know what systems they need to, have everything tuned to.

Dr. Jim: What I gather from what you just explained is that in those scenarios where an organization or a group of leaders doesn't know that they have an issue, they should probably start asking themselves, what are the blind spots that we might not be thinking about, or we might not be aware of? And just start with that question.

Lilith Kirsh: Yes. That will be an ideal. If company leadership thinks about that, but in most cases, they are more concerned about the profits, which is current, which is today.

And like I said, until it hits to a point where they understand that now, if we want to grow or there's an audit or there is a, acquisition. Or, other scenarios where they have to look into their processes and being able to easily identify what are their weaknesses, they're not going to.

Look into doing something about it. You don't put a band aid until there is a, scratch and I don't think that's the right philosophy. And I think programs like these are really needed for leaders to watch because. This is something that going to prompt them to think about, you know what, let me see what we have there.

Dr. Jim: There's an aspect of what you just said that I think I can apply some of the stuff that I used to do when I was building out teams and that's this.

What about the current way that we're doing this could be extremely damaging if it ended up as front page news? What is it about what we're doing right now or how we're doing something right now? If it ended up making the papers, what is the gap that could end up really being? Super negative. What are your thoughts about that question being asked as the way to uncover some of the gaps that exist within the organization that need to be solved from a transparency perspective?

Dr. Jim: Lilith great conversation.

We flew through a lot of stuff. So one of the things that I'd like you to do is for those who have listened to this point and they want to build out a framework for their decisioning process when it comes to making a technology decision, what's your key takeaways that you would offer them that they need to consider before they decide to implement any technology.

Lilith Kirsh: Number one, be proactive. Number two, do a market research. Look at your competitors, see what they're using, how successful it is for them, and then make a very educated decision. There is a lot of products for everything out there, starting with HR, finishing with accounting in between logistics, just make sure that you have the right tools for your organization size your organization's field.

And I think that will be really helpful.

Dr. Jim: Great stuff. Lilith, where can people find you?

Lilith Kirsh: I'm on LinkedIn so that's easy.

Here's what I gathered from the conversation. So the 1st step is to identify the current process and map out. What that looks like. If you haven't done that, you're not ready for technology. Once you've identified that process, you need to have a deep understanding of what are you trying to get to or solve?

If you haven't done that, you're not ready for a technology implementation. Then once you've done both of those things, you need to communicate. From a vision perspective and a messaging perspective, why are we making the change? How does this benefit the people that are going to be impacted? How does this give them more hours in the day?

So that's what I gathered from our conversation, I'm glad that you hung out with us to share that with everybody who's listening for those who have checked out the show. And like what you've heard, leave us a review and we will be back with another featured guest a week from now, and we'll have another great piece of insight on how you can build a high performing team.