Technical Debt

Technical debt is when we do not fix problems that will affect us in the future - those problems may or may not have costs now, but will definitely have costs in the future in the form of time, quality, and money.

People and HR teams have technical debt just like our tech partners do, if not more. Why is this? Because for us, technical debt, i.e. expensive future problems, may impact the entire organization for years to come. Unlike our tech partners, we often do not account for technical debt in our planning processes.

Here are a few examples of how People and HR teams can take on technical debt in the form of time, quality, and money:
• Did we not take time to get leader buy-in on our comp philosophy, core principles, and the 'why' behind our rewards programs? Without buy-in, we'll have errors, misalignment, and will explain/justify these foundational pieces multiple times until we prioritize bringing our leaders alongside.
• Did we cut corners on our career framework so that we could solve the real 'comp problem'? We'll have to deal with lack of structure repeatedly on an individual basis by correcting recruiting, compensation conversations, promotions, titling, etc… and then we'll have to correct our career frameworks again later, anyway.
• Did we invest time, talent, and energy into that new HRIS without cleaning up our org structures, job architectures, and processes? We'll probably get to re-implement it again soon in order to scale...maybe even a couple of times.

We do it now instead of doing it right. That’s ok sometimes – we've all done it and it's a normal part of growing organizations. That being said, assessing and being aware of our planned vs. unplanned technical debt should be a critical step in building People programs.
• Planned technical debt, where we intentionally decide to 'do it now' versus 'do it right,' can be a valuable way to prioritize higher urgency/importance initiatives, especially when we have limited resources.
• Unplanned technical debt, where we burn time, quality, and money not having solid structures and foundations in place, can bog down an organization and can spiral to blunt the effectiveness of many/all of our other initiatives.

Either way, someone is going to have to tackle the debt at some point. A future version of ourselves, our organization's employees, and business leaders will usually be the recipients of technical debt and will probably have to pay it back with sizable interest.