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3 steps to drive behavior change and adoption of new technology

Danielle McClowOctober 14, 2021Employee Communication

HR technology should be game-changing that's why our Symphony Talent mantra is ‘Automate and Empower.' Yet, the reality is only 27% of organizations feel that HR tech effectively changes work behaviors.

That means we need to work together to build a workforce and culture that increases adoption and, in return, drives organizational success and joy.

To help me break down the many layers of adoption, I chatted with Theresia Hermes, Director, Client Success, and Craig Barnett, Head of New Client Strategy, in episode 13 of the Joy Podcast (don't worry, 13 can be lucky even in October!).

How strategy and activation make the perfect pair

In previous episodes, we've talked to practitioners that shared that technology alone does not drive success. Strategy and activation are equally, if not more important.

After all, you can have robust, data-driven recruitment marketing technology, but without a thorough strategy or activation plan, you can bet your user adoption will be low, the adoption curve will be high, and the overall adoption uptake will be endless. (Sound familiar? Unfortunately, I, too, feel the pain.)

To overcome these adoption challenges and set you up for success, Theresia describes the three main pieces to drive behavior change and make your users want to use your new tech, strategy, or service.

3 steps to drive behavior change

According to Theresia, you first need to work with the business owner to determine what they want to do and solve. Then you can dig in and find out what the real problem is and what behavior would alleviate that pain.

We see patterns in every industry, region, and size of business; however, I take the approach that each client has unique pain points that impact them differently depending on their goals and current state. Therefore, you need to personalize the experience and focus on behavior change and change management to make a real impact."

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- Theresia Hermes, Director Client Success, Symphony Talent

Once you identify the unique pain points, then we can talk about adoption.

And that's what differentiates a lot of recruitment marketing technology vendors. When your provider takes the "one-size-fits-all" approach, we continue to see technology adoption fail.

Top three steps and tips from Theresia to drive the adoption of new technology via behavior change:

  • Step 1 Awareness: To activate your adoption of new technology, your teams must know the business case. An excellent place to start is by answering: What are you hoping to fix? Why is that important to your company? These framework questions help you ground the entire organization in the "why care" piece of adoption.

These findings become crucial for the awareness campaign to engage and get people excited to use the new tool.

PRO TIP: Create goals and break them down quarter by quarter to track how the new technology supports you in meeting these goals. This will help you continue to track adoption success and gain further buy-in for tools.

  • Step 2 Motivation: The motivation stage is about formulating what's essential for the end-user and communicating it through the end-user's eyes.

Once you've developed the organization's "why care" message, then you can break it down further and explain how it trickles down to your end-users like your recruiters and talent marketers.

By identifying specifically why these users should care about this new tool and what's in for them, you gain allies in adoption. You can also use this as an opportunity to identify power users of the technology and ask them to support others in learning the ins and outs of the tech.

PRO TIP: Theresia says, "No one ever was bored into change. You need to excite them and make the adoption of new technology interesting." Find ways to incorporate collaborative workshops and ways to share best practices and pain points (we know there are always a few of those).

  • Step 3 Education: The final step is to educate, empower, and enable end-users to use the tool. Don't even think about four hours of tool training (no one will remember anything afterward.) As mentioned above, you can't bore people to change; training is the same.

Instead, take a phased approach and make it very simple for the end-user to learn.

PRO TIP: A seamless look and feel help to enable a smooth user experience. Look to recruitment marketing tools with a clean UX and stray away from clunky technologies or those that don't play well with others.

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