Can systems replace HR?

It's an interesting article Jackie and it seems most of the HR activities that are being automated are process driven. I wonder what Klick would do if they needed strategic HR input. Perhaps they'd buy in a consultant?
Like you I'm not entirely convinced, but I do think it's a wake up call for HR to get clear on the strategic value it offers and to communicate that clearly to their customers.

The article describes the automation of workflow, identifying bottlenecks and tracking people's activity. They haven't automated HR, they have automated the line manager's job. Then they go on to say that they still have people for "a learning team and a culture team" - that's HR. What I conclude from this article is that Canadians have a very different definition of HR.

I am looking at this area as the focus of my Masters research, so thank you for sharing a very relevant article. This raises some really interesting questions for me, some around the role of the manager versus the HR team in people management and difficult conversations. Personally, in a perfect world, a model like Klick's where a 'people' or 'culture' team focus on value-added work and conversations, and a system supports routine tasks and an overview of data trends, allowing the team to deliver interventions that support the work of the business, sounds good to me. The role of the effective manager is very important in this set up though, and I'm not sure when we're moving to my so-called 'perfect' world anytime soon :-)

I would be open to trialling something like this though, as I've always been a believer in using data better and technology to automate the routine and leave the people to focus on the grey areas and value-added work that no one wants to be left with a computer to do - i.e. difficult conversations and investigating ER issues.