By Komal Somani Whole-time Director, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Human Resource Officer, ESDS
As a HR professional with decades of experience, let me tell you about two rollouts I have watched up close.The first one was textbook perfect. A big company brought in a cutting-edge performance tool—beautiful dashboards, live feedback loops, even little predictive flags that were supposed to spot flight risk early.
Everyone in the C-suite was thrilled. Six months in, the data looked amazing… until the resignations started. Not the usual suspects, either. Some of the sharpest, kindest people on the payroll were leaving.
When HR finally asked why, the answers were heartbreaking in their simplicity: “I don’t feel like a person here anymore. I feel like a data point.”A couple hundred miles away, something quieter was happening. Another organization pushed out a new employee platform that, honestly, looked pretty basic on day one. No fancy AI, no leaderboards.
The organization just focused on basic human attributes. For example, the organization reminded employees who had not taken vacations for more than a year. The organization also proactively reached out to teams involved in late-night emails, and checked if they needed any help with respect to their workloads. The HR also reached out to people who were quiet on collaboration tools and tried to make them feel better by engaging with them proactively. All these were simple steps – nothing revolutionary.
Yet a year later people were staying longer, smiling more, and when you asked what changed, they’d shrug and say, “It just feels like the place actually cares now.” Same industry. Same budget range. Completely different outcomes.The difference wasn’t the technology stack. It was whether someone, somewhere in the design process, stopped and asked, “How is this going to feel on the other end of the screen when someone’s having a rough week?” One team forgot to ask. The other team never stopped asking.
The Cost of Forgetting That People Have Bad Days
Most failed HR tech projects have one thing in common. They were designed on someone’s good day. The people who built them were satisfied and thinking about efficiency metrics. But when automated notifications go out to employees, they can be sitting in uncomfortable settings – in a crowded train, in a bus, or post 10 pm, when kids are asleep.
When systems are built that way, they look like intrusions, and not support. People start gaming them, working around them, or walking away from them.The ones that succeed start with a harder but more truthful question: “How would this land on the worst day someone has had all year?” If one answers that honestly, and everything else follows.
What Human-First Design Actually Looks Like
The best platforms today are not trying to be clever or smart. They are trying to be kind.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
1. They remember why you asked for something
When someone adjusts their hours because of childcare or eldercare or just needing to see daylight, the system doesn’t make them explain it again next quarter. It remembers the reason and quietly protects the boundary.
2. They nudge instead of judge
Instead of sending a red-flag email that says “Productivity dip detected,” one system sends the manager a note that reads, “It looks like the last few weeks have been heavy. Anything your teammate might need right now?” Same data, completely different feeling.
3. They connect people to possibilities they didn’t know existed
One engineer who cared deeply about sustainability started getting gentle suggestions for internal projects she never would have found on her own. Six months later she moved teams and said it felt like the company had read her thoughts.
4. They make it safe to fail
Some platforms now have a button you can press when something didn’t work out. You’re not filing a report; you’re sharing a lesson. The system thanks you, surfaces similar stories so you do not feel alone, and moves on. People actually use it.
The Numbers That Really Matter
The finance team still wants to see cost-per-hire and time-to-fill, and that’s fine. But the companies pulling ahead are quietly tracking softer signals: how many people say “I feel acknowledged here,” how long it takes someone to ask for help when they’re struggling, whether employees recommend the internal tools to their friends.Those numbers are harder to capture, but they predict everything else.
Hence, next time, a vendor shows you a beautiful demo, do not ask about integration layers or uptime percentages first. Ask this instead:“If I were having the hardest month of my life, would I feel better or worse after using this for a week?”If the honest answer is “worse,” you must send them back to the drawing board—no matter how advanced the technology is.
The Real Bottom Line
The most powerful HR technology in the world is not the one that can predict when someone might leave.It’s the one that makes them wake up thinking, “I don’t want to.” When empathy stops being a slide in the corporate values deck and becomes the default operating system, digital transformation stops feeling like change management.