#249 - Healthcare HR Software Failure: It's Not the Technology

Why Healthcare HR Tech Fails: It's Never the Software

Featuring Stephanie Wright, Founder, Wright Talent Advisory

Only 43% of HR professionals say their HR technology is effective. Fewer than half. These are organizations that ran vendor selection, sat through demos, built a business case, got budget approved, signed a contract, and went live. Then more than half of them looked at what they bought and said it was not working.

Luke sits down with Stephanie Wright, a healthcare TA implementation specialist who has worked across Workday, Phenom, and other major platforms at health systems including Carilion Clinic. She launched Wright Talent Advisory in Dallas to do full-time what most HR leaders only do once in a career.

🗺️ Process Before Config. But You Can't Fully Avoid the Overlap.
Stephanie's honest answer: organizations that do requirements work ahead of time still end up in design conversations where the configurator is explaining the system in technical jargon while the client tries to map it to their current workflow in real time. The process work helps. It does not eliminate the messy middle. Plan for both.

🔥 The Real Reason Implementations Underdeliver
It is not technical blockers. It is change management treated as a checklist item rather than a work stream. A 30-minute Teams call and a PDF is not change management. Your project team members are your champions, if you actually organize and amplify them. Most organizations do not.

🧪 UAT Gets Compressed. That Is Where Things Break.
User acceptance testing is almost always squeezed because design ran long and executives want to hit the go-live date. Stephanie's fix: get hiring managers into the sandbox early, run them through edge cases, and treat testing as a change management moment, not a technical exercise.

📋 Before You Sign Anything
Know your internal resource gaps before a vendor ever walks in. Assume the projected timeline is optimistic by at least 25%. Ask the vendor what they will need from your team and where they see gaps. That conversation rarely happens, and it costs organizations every time.

Connect with Stephanie: wrighttalentadvisory.com or LinkedIn.