Charles Drayson

Feb 9 · 5 min read

Through a series of coincidences, I’ve been a close spectator of the workings of HR teams, small and large. I had a fun time as General Counsel for one of the large global outsourcing service providers serving the HR sector. Subsequently, I never seemed far away from projects that directly or indirectly interacted with HR processes.

Of all the back-office functions, HR functions at the confluence of regulation change, procedure and business need – but remains vitally (and ironically dependant on humant input).

Too  much procedure with too little human involvement will fail business needs. Failure to reflect regulatory requirements, or inability to roll with change, leads to the same dysfunction. It’s difficult enough to blend all the requirements in just the right mix, but then you have to add volume.

Some HR tasks require specific solutions. Nobody operates the payroll without a payroll solution, for example. Many HR teams also use more generic HR applications for wider matters like absence management, maintaining HR records, and staff appraisals. Where does an application like Legito fit?

Benefits of Legito Deployment

Legito is an enterprise application – Legito’s strength is the ability to span the needs of the whole organization without loss of utility. Enterprise adoption requires a rich feature set (simple, not simplistic), intuitive use without big change management projects, and the ability to customize the solution for the needs of each team. The HR team’s organizational view is oriented around employees and their place within the enterprise – very different to, say, a finance team or a procurement team. In stark contrast to more specific solutions, we designed Legito to be flexible, to serve the wider audience. Flexibility gives HR teams access to a solution tailored for HR. More than that, the same flexibility has two more benefits: flexibility to reflect your desired way of working within HR, and flexibility to integrate the HR workflows with procedures and teams external to the HR department.

Recruitment

Consider a new joiner process, for example. A good new joiner process begins and ends outside the HR team. At one end of the process, hiring managers need to initiate recruitment. At the other end of the process, you need to pass a new joiner’s records to the IT team to provision user accounts and systems access. The handover between the HR team and other back-office teams ought to be integrated. True integration across department boundaries is harder to achieve with disparate systems. It’s harder when those disparate systems evolve, as they must.

Let’s talk about the human dimension for a moment. It’s a rare HR workflow that can be fully automated without adverse consequence. Legito exists to augment the work of back-office professionals, not replace them. Leave space for humans to do what they do best. Legito empowers people in two contexts. Before your first colleague interacts with a Legito solution, someone needs to build it to meet your needs, leveraging the flexibility we mentioned. Cue the citizen developer (we recommend the Gartner definition if you are unfamiliar with the concept).

Legito is built on the premise that the best people to configure solutions are those who know your organization and your needs – your HR professionals, not developers. They are also best placed to ensure your solution keeps up with the pace of change.

Implementation Process

Adoption should be facilitated, not imposed. The demand for human-friendly applications is increasing because we have colleagues who consume technology, and they have high expectations. If a solution is awkward, cumbersome or mimics legacy analogue processes, it will disappoint. Use the opportunity to create something you would want to use. Optimize your chances of success by starting with small projects and seek feedback. Legito customers report that adoption is best achieved when colleagues like what they see and ask for more.

Legito case studies tell us that the success of their implementation derives from deploying a solution that is a pleasure to use.

Use of Workflow

HR matters are document-orientated, which makes them ideally suited to the Legito platform. Use rich automation templates to create documents of any complexity, and render them accessible to colleagues who might not have the inclination or knowledge to create them manually. It’s frequently necessary to make sets of documents from one data set with consistency and efficiency. Many Legito implementations will begin with a project based on document automation, often with a positive ROI for simple use cases. Document automation is a solid foundation on which to build.

When you are ready to expand from the first project, the Legito platform supports the end-to-end process. Use workflow to get approvals. Use digital signatures to execute documents. Use document management to store completed documents. Use automatic data extraction to power reminders. Build custom reports for management oversight. All these features are available within the platform without the need to integrate with other applications.

We promote Legito for enterprise-wide adoption, but organizations have to begin somewhere, and the HR team is invariably a good place to start.

Through a series of coincidences, I’ve been a close spectator of the workings of HR teams, small and large. I had a fun time as General Counsel for one of the large global outsourcing service providers serving the HR sector. Subsequently, I never seemed far away from projects that directly or indirectly interacted with HR processes. 

Too  much procedure with too little human involvement will fail business needs. Failure to reflect regulatory requirements, or inability to roll with change, leads to the same dysfunction. It’s difficult enough to blend all the requirements in just the right mix, but then you have to add volume.

Some HR tasks require specific solutions. Nobody operates the payroll without a payroll solution, for example. Many HR teams also use more generic HR applications for wider matters like absence management, maintaining HR records, and staff appraisals. Where does an application like Legito fit?

Benefits of Legito Deployment

Legito is an enterprise application – Legito’s strength is the ability to span the needs of the whole organization without loss of utility. Enterprise adoption requires a rich feature set (simple, not simplistic), intuitive use without big change management projects, and the ability to customize the solution for the needs of each team. The HR team’s organizational view is oriented around employees and their place within the enterprise – very different to, say, a finance team or a procurement team. In stark contrast to more specific solutions, we designed Legito to be flexible, to serve the wider audience. Flexibility gives HR teams access to a solution tailored for HR. More than that, the same flexibility has two more benefits: flexibility to reflect your desired way of working within HR, and flexibility to integrate the HR workflows with procedures and teams external to the HR department.

Recruitment

Consider a new joiner process, for example. A good new joiner process begins and ends outside the HR team. At one end of the process, hiring managers need to initiate recruitment. At the other end of the process, you need to pass a new joiner’s records to the IT team to provision user accounts and systems access. The handover between the HR team and other back-office teams ought to be integrated. True integration across department boundaries is harder to achieve with disparate systems. It’s harder when those disparate systems evolve, as they must.

Let’s talk about the human dimension for a moment. It’s a rare HR workflow that can be fully automated without adverse consequence. Legito exists to augment the work of back-office professionals, not replace them. Leave space for humans to do what they do best. Legito empowers people in two contexts. Before your first colleague interacts with a Legito solution, someone needs to build it to meet your needs, leveraging the flexibility we mentioned. Cue the citizen developer (we recommend the Gartner definition if you are unfamiliar with the concept).

Legito is built on the premise that the best people to configure solutions are those who know your organization and your needs – your HR professionals, not developers. They are also best placed to ensure your solution keeps up with the pace of change.

Implementation Process

Adoption should be facilitated, not imposed. Invariably, Legito case studies tell us that the success of their implementation derives from deploying a solution that is a pleasure to use. The demand for human-friendly applications is increasing because we have colleagues who consume technology, and they have high expectations. If a solution is awkward, cumbersome or mimics legacy analogue processes, it will disappoint. Use the opportunity to create something you would want to use. Optimize your chances of success by starting with small projects and seek feedback. Legito customers report that adoption is best achieved when colleagues like what they see and ask for more.

Use of Workflow

HR matters are document-orientated, which makes them ideally suited to the Legito platform. Use rich automation templates to create documents of any complexity, and render them accessible to colleagues who might not have the inclination or knowledge to create them manually. It’s frequently necessary to make sets of documents from one data set with consistency and efficiency. Many Legito implementations will begin with a project based on document automation, often with a positive ROI for simple use cases. Document automation is a solid foundation on which to build.

When you are ready to expand from the first project, the Legito platform supports the end-to-end process. Use workflow to get approvals. Use digital signatures to execute documents. Use document management to store completed documents. Use automatic data extraction to power reminders. Build custom reports for management oversight. All these features are available within the platform without the need to integrate with other applications.

We promote Legito for enterprise-wide adoption, but organizations have to begin somewhere, and the HR team is invariably a good place to start.

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