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As technology becomes a more important part of the work of human resources teams, some companies are going to great lengths to better align the two. For one software company, that meant merging their HR and IT teams.
In August of last year, HR technology company Workleap decided to put all their seven IT employees under chief people officer Kahina Ouerdane. The move was prompted by the move to go fully remote—all 450 employees are no longer required to show up in an office. While that decision was great for morale, it created problems when it came to the IT department onboarding new employees.
“We kind of realized that whatever is happening on the IT side has a tremendous impact on employee experience,” says Ouerdane.
The challenge made her realize that combining the IT and HR departments would allow the two teams to better collaborate. “It’s solved a bunch of problems for us, onboarding is much smoother,” she says. “The result is a much more cohesive process.”
Workleap isn’t alone in this transition, which is becoming especially relevant considering the dawn of AI in the workplace. Late last year, biotech giant Moderna announced they were merging their technology and human resources departments into a single function, in part due to the company’s partnership with OpenAI and the influence of the new tech on the workforce.
And as more HR departments take on the role of implementing AI strategy, we’re likely to see other companies follow suit. That’s not to say, however, the transition is easy.
“For both sides it was like learning a new language,” says Ouerdane. “Some of those in the IT team were empathetic about the actual experience of people, whereas others were more technical.”
What made the transition easier for Ouerdane personally was surrounding herself with people who had time working with each team. As someone who admits to not being the most tech savvy individual, Ouerdane says doing it alone would have been nearly impossible. Looking back though, her only regret is not merging the two sooner.
“It was a lot of work at the beginning,” says Ouerdane. But she adds that “building more synergies pays off.”
Brit Morse
brit.morse@fortune.com
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