The pressure for HR teams to be first adopters as new software and AI tools are launched is intense. However, for Dibyendu Sharma Mondal, the head of people analytics, HR technology, strategy, and operations at Unisys, the key to successfully integrating new technology into existing systems isn’t quick adaptation, but being a “thoughtful adopter.”

Mondal outlined his people-centric philosophy to minimize fatigue and maximize impact when new technologies are rolled out at From Day One’s November virtual conference, in a fireside chat moderated by Nicole Smith, the editorial audience director at Harvard Business Review. 

“We want to take the technology which makes sense for our business, not just each and everything that comes in,” Mondal said. “We are a very, very people-centric organization. We listen to the end users. We talk to them. We invest in enabling and supporting those users.”

Managing Transformation Overload and Building Trust

Mondal calls one of the significant hurdles leaders face regarding integrating new technologies “transformation overload.” It’s the fatigue teams feel from constant change. He says the antidote for transformation overload is to demonstrate the value new systems bring from the start. 

“If you show that what you’re building is going to be beneficial for them, then you see the engagement happening,” Mondal said. The goal of embracing new tools should be to empower employees to work more efficiently. This turns the adoption of new technologies into a collaborative endeavor rather than a top-down push for change. 

“Building trust is the biggest element,” he said. New systems must be reliable if their insights will be considered when executives make decisions. Trust is built through data quality and effective governance, and it’s reinforced when the technology’s scope expands to answering critical business questions beyond the HR silo, connecting people data to other functions. 

Measuring What Matters: Beyond Login Rates

Mondal says that HR departments must move beyond superficial metrics, such as login rates, when measuring adoption success. “The most obvious [metric] people look [at] is how many people logged into the system, and what’s my login ratio,” he said. He says the benchmark technology adoption should be measured by its business impact, and proposes three additional metrics to monitor. 

First, has the adoption of this new technology moved a critical business metric, like reducing time-to-fill for open roles? How much time are people spending on the system, and what kind of questions are they asking? And is the system becoming the unified source of truth for organizational discussions? Leaders should “go back, redesign, rethink” if over 60% of the targeted users aren’t actively using the tool after 60 to 90 days. 

“Every technology comes with a cognitive cost,” Mondal said. “The question is whether the user sees the payoff that justifies this cost to them.”

For example, an employee tasked with learning how to use a complex analytics platform will only endure the high cognitive cost if the payoff, like better insights, time savings, increased conversions, outweighs it. Therefore, the role of technology implementers is to minimize this unnecessary cognitive burden by improving user interfaces, reducing onboarding time, and enabling intuitive navigation.

AI and the People-Centric Future

The conversation turned to artificial intelligence, and Mondal sees synergy between people analytics and AI, opening up possibilities ranging from predicting attrition risks to personalizing career development paths. Unisys has been an early adopter of generative AI tools within its people analytics systems, significantly boosting adoption rates by satisfying employee curiosity with a conventional interface. 

However, Mondal remains cautious about AI. “What keeps me awake at times is how do you really eliminate the issue about bias and how do you build trust?” he said. Mondal redirected the focus from flashy solutions to core problems when asked about the next big technology to cause significant disruption. 

“You have to be able to build a real-time analytics system that allows you to answer real HR problems,” he advised. The goal is a consolidated, self-service system that helps HR leaders solve business problems, whether that involves AI, augmented reality, or more foundational data architecture.

The Leadership Behaviors That Drive Adoption

Leadership must set the tone when pushing their teams to embrace new technology. He highlights three behaviors leaders should embrace. First, lead by example: “Use the tool yourself and talk about what they are enabling today,” Mondal said. Adoption increases when teams see their leaders using a new technology. 

He also encourages creating a safe space to experiment. Innovation requires trying new things, and leaders must create psychological safety for this experimentation.

His last tip is to show the connection. Help people see how learning a new tool benefits them personally and contributes to the team and company’s goals.

Ade Akin covers workplace wellness, AI, HR trends, and digital health solutions.

(Photo by pixdeluxe/iStock)