Hating office software is one of modern life’s favorite pastimes. Expenses, time off, hiring: Every week, another part of office life seems to have a new app and a new set of haters.
Last week it was Workday’s turn. The HR and productivity platform that many large (and not-so-large) companies use to help facilitate everything from onboarding new employees to benefits management to performance reviews “has been making money by creating misery where they could have been.” painless processes,” according to Business. Insider information titled: “Everyone hates Workday.”
But as the article points out, it’s not all Workday’s fault. And as the owner of a company that sells customer relationship management (CRM) software to small and medium-sized businesses, I can tell you something that most software vendors are thinking, but I don’t want to say publicly: if not Like the software, don’t blame it. Blame yourself.
When a flight is delayed due to a drunk and unruly passenger, is it the airline’s fault? When your car breaks down because you haven’t serviced it in years, is it because it’s bad? Was it the stadium’s responsibility that you suffered indigestion after eating a hot dog to celebrate each inning during “dollar dog night”?
Who doesn’t like pointing the finger elsewhere (especially at a faceless “app”) when we don’t want to take responsibility for our own mistakes?
The work day is not perfect. It’s a big, complicated system, and like any big, complicated system, it requires big, complicated adults to run it. The problem is that most organizations don’t have big, complicated adults running them. The managers assigned to implement products like Workday (and the CRM systems we sell) tend to be lower-level drones who shy away from challenges and avoid the extra effort required to make products like this work the way they’re supposed to. They are afraid of taking risks, of confronting others, of being assertive, and of having thoughts. They don’t want to lose their jobs over a “dumb” HR or CRM application. They will do anything to cover their asses.
So what do these systems require? The same thing that is required from any business investment: time and money. Time needs to be spent properly planning the implementation of these systems in the short term and then more time needs to be spent in the long term to improve how the system is used. Software applications like Workday are not a one-time investment, but rather a long-term relationship.
You need to spend money on the right licenses and modules, but also on hiring the right external consultants to implement, integrate, migrate data and – and this cannot be emphasized enough – train properly. This is a long-term investment that must be considered from the beginning and with commitment.
Some managers and owners understand this. They understand that they have invested a lot of money in systems like Workday not only to improve productivity but (just as importantly) to create a data warehouse that increases the value of their company both to their existing management teams and to potential future investors. They continue to invest in their managers and their software, and while they sympathize with their workers’ complaints, they have a bigger picture in mind. They say: we will support you to use the system, so use the system because it is not always about you, it is also about the organization.
People who don’t get it turn their employees into Business Insider column interviewees who say things like “I just hate Workday” or “Everything is unintuitive, so even the simplest tasks leave me scratching my head.” But the next time your company’s software is attacked, look in the mirror, folks. Like many of our so-called problems, it’s not the software. We are.