If you’re in an industry that relies heavily on technology – and that’s more of them than it ever has been – the odds are good that your executive suite is focused on rapid innovation.  Consider these examples:

In finance, algorithms make more trades in a day than humans, and the ability of your software to predict what your competition designed yesterday may determine whether you generate returns or losses.

In healthcare, reimbursement is shifting to compensate hospitals based on outcomes instead of procedures.  To maximize profitability, hospitals will need to analyze patient data on the fly and build care teams around each patient to ensure they don’t end up back in the hospital.

In the energy market, disruptive innovation has led to massive swings in both financial and political capital.  Fracking technology has increased US shale gas production by a massive 50% since 2005 – while coal production has declined by more than 30% over the last five years on record.  China, meanwhile, hopes to render both of them obsolete by gaining control of the worldwide solar panel market.

If your company is operating in these markets, it has to move fast to profit, or even to survive.  This speed, unfortunately, leads to policy problems.  While speed is the lifeblood of a tech-reliant Operations division, it can be the death-knell of the HR department.

In Operations, making decisions without all of the information might get a product to market ahead of the competition.  In HR, making decisions without information might get you a very expensive lawsuit, and plenty of reputational damage as well.  Pretty soon, Operations might find it difficult to bring in all of those fast-thinking employees, who would prefer not to be associated with the company at all.

In order to work together, the two divisions will need to meet in the middle.  Human Resources needs to make sure that ethical lapses and employee abuse are never overlooked, no matter how beneficial it might seem to a short-term product launch.  Operations, meanwhile, needs to know that processes will be handled as quickly and efficiently as possible by HR to ensure that they don’t bog down the product development that every employee relies on for their paycheck.

Moving  Fast and Breaking Things might work for startups, as long as those things are software code.  It’s HR’s job to make sure those things aren’t people, laws, or the corporation’s reputation.

To learn how CMTS:HR can speed up your company’s investigations without compromising confidence, call us at at 855-636-5361 or email us at Team_CMTSHR@CMTSHR.com.