What is blueprint technology and how can it help HRM?
How blueprint technology can benefit your business.
The role of technology in human resource management is constantly growing and evolving. In general, human resources technology should help to make the lives of HR managers and other HR employees easier. Whether it’s recruiting talent, managing benefits, onboarding new employees, handling compliance, managing payroll, or overseeing employee engagement and reviews, technology has helped HR professionals get more done and do it more accurately.
So, what is blueprint technology, and is it another tool that can help HR professionals and HRM groups? Blueprint technology has been defined as “an IT technology that outlines the organization’s future goals and documents the specific steps that are needed to accomplish these goals. A CIO or other IT strategist creates the IT blueprint, determining which aspects are important enough to include and which are not. In most cases, the IT blueprint will define which specific technologies are to be used, as well as the employees or third-party contractors charged with managing them. A blueprint, like an IT strategic plan, is often tied to a specific time frame.”
So, much like a physical blueprint that helps engineers and builders understand the goal they’re working towards, blueprint technology is a digital roadmap that helps businesses create their priorities and goals, as well as assess and decide what tools and software solutions will help them meet their benchmarks for success and their timelines.
The role of blueprint technology programs in HR, then, is helping human resource teams have a firm understanding of their goals, as well as know what they’ll need to accomplish their objectives and what time frame they’re working towards that achievement in. Blueprint technology software can help HR departments:
- Decide what recruiting software they’ll use
- Analyze time clock and work hours to calculate staffing needs and to track labor
- Manage leave of absences
- Help with large organization transitions
- Help to calculate hiring needs
- Establish employee engagement goals
Some of the businesses that have benefitted the most from blueprint technology are those who are undergoing a merger, consolidation, or centralization of enterprise units. HR departments are often overworked during these transitions, as they manage the day to day work of human resources as well as the change management associated with new mergers or acquisitions. Having a specific outline for what the objectives of a huge transition like this are is important in helping everyone adjust and continue to move the business forward. Having a centralized, cross-departmental system to help manage timelines, track deadlines, help to deploy new technology or processes, and analyze success against objectives is a truly useful technology.
Technology and human resource management have a continually changing relationship – as new technology becomes available, human resource management teams will often work with IT teams to see if there are applications of new tech for HR processes. Has technology made your HRM work easier? Has information technology in human resource management helped to create better relationships between departments? Has your business used any kind of blueprint technology in your HR departments or groups? Do you see benefits from this technology?
