As an aspiring HR professional starting my career in 2010, I was eager to embark on a people-focused career where I can implement everything that I have learnt and change the lives of employees for the better.

I was in for a rude awakening. I hardly saw, much less interacted, with an employee for my first month of service. Instead, I was “locked up” in the filing room desperately trying to catch up on the filing backlog from what felt like the last decade.

I soon realised that I had grossly miscalculated the administrative burden that HR departments face. No matter how hard I tried I was not able to stay up to date with the endless flow of leave forms, travel claims, expense claims, contracts, and benefits forms etc., I’ll rather stop there, I think you get the picture.

Since that experience, I have been relentless in my pursuit of finding a: Better way, Smarter way, Faster way, More efficient way.

Inevitably my focus on improvement has led me to technology. Blindly implementing technology is however not the answer.

Elon Musk famously said  “One of the biggest mistakes smart engineers make is optimizing a thing that should not exist.”

This is exactly the kind of situation that we avoid. Digital transformation is more than just implementing technology. We always strive to find simple solutions to complex problems in order to encourage adoption.