In this episode of the HR Digitalization Podcast, Anna Carlsson and Emira Blomberg meet with Åsa Landin, founder of People Dimension and an experienced digital HR consultant, who shares insights from nine years as an advisor and project manager in both small and large organizations.
The conversation moves from strategy to practical execution: how to set clear goals, secure resources, understand your target groups, and avoid getting stuck in old ways of working. We also discuss common pitfalls such as lack of mandate, outdated technology, and underestimated change management – and how to turn these challenges into opportunities.
A recurring theme is the importance of linking digitalization to real benefits and long-term value. Åsa shares concrete examples of how organizations can build engagement, create sustainable structures, and make smart priorities to drive change that truly makes a difference.
This episode offers both strategic perspectives and hands-on advice for anyone looking to succeed with digitalization projects – whether you’re facing a system procurement, a transformation journey, or want to future-proof your HR function.
Tune in to get inspired to work more purposefully, avoid unnecessary obstacles, and build digitalization that delivers real impact.
Note: This episode is in Swedish. A translated transcript is available below.
Transcript:
Anna Carlsson: Today it’s time to talk about the important question of how to succeed with digitalization projects. Here I’ve turned to one of my skilled colleagues in the industry, Åsa Landin, who has deep knowledge and long experience of digitizing HR work. She runs her own company, People Dimension. We talk about why some HR projects succeed while others don’t turn out as well, and what it actually takes to create long-term impact.
The conversation moves between changing existing processes, implementation, and management – but mainly lands on the importance of creating engagement in the organization, understanding the benefits, and daring to prioritize what really makes a difference. Åsa shares concrete experiences from both large and small organizations and various types of projects.
Anna Carlsson: Welcome to the HR Digitalization Podcast, Åsa!
Åsa Landin: Thank you so much!
Anna Carlsson: And of course we also have Emira here.
Emira Blomberg: Yes, it’s so nice to have you here, Åsa.
Anna Carlsson: Today we’ll talk a bit about digitalization projects. And I’m thinking that… We talk about many different things here in the podcast. A lot is very forward-looking. But today I think we’ll be concrete. What actually happens in reality, out in the organizations? And that’s why we’ve invited you, Åsa.
Åsa Landin: Exciting!
Anna Carlsson: Yes, so now you’ll get to share with us. But first – who are you and what’s your background really?
Åsa Landin: Yes. Well, my name is Åsa Landin and I usually describe myself as a digital HR consultant. What I do is help companies improve their HR processes and routines with digital support. And I started my company People Dimension almost nine years ago.
Anna Carlsson: And you’re on your own there, right?
Åsa Landin: I’m on my own but I collaborate with other consultants that I bring in and work with on different assignments where needed. My background otherwise, before I started the company, is that I was originally educated in psychology, with a master’s degree in psychology. And then I’ve worked broadly with HR in various line roles. But above all, I’ve worked as a consultant – employed consultant – and that has included both working with performing and improving HR processes, but mainly on the supplier side of HR systems, implementing them with different clients.
Anna Carlsson: But now I’m curious about the psychology program and now digital. How did that happen? Was it curiosity, an interest, or what made you go down that path?
Åsa Landin: Yes, that’s a really good question, but I don’t actually think it’s that far apart. Even if it feels that way sometimes. But understanding people is kind of the foundation of everything. But I think that my first jobs were really that I ended up straight into the IT area and different types of businesses and I developed an interest in that and how it can improve ways of working.
Anna Carlsson: I think it’s still a certain type of interest. Otherwise you probably wouldn’t take it on. What do you think, Emira?
Emira Blomberg: I also think it’s very good that you have psychology as a foundation. I imagine we’ll come back to that later in the change projects you lead – behavioral change and cultural shifts. Having psychology and organizational psychology with you, I think, is very valuable.
Åsa Landin: Yes, absolutely right.
Anna Carlsson: And Emira, what experience do you have with these kinds of digitalization projects and improvements of processes and routines? What did you call it, Åsa?
Emira Blomberg: Yes exactly, so actually from two angles. Partly internally I’ve been a project participant in these larger, complex, group-wide projects. When I worked at Folksam we reviewed the entire organizational design – that is, competence profiles – and mapped them into a big hierarchical system as a basis for being able to digitalize later. So that was one such big project. But then I’ve also worked on the tech side, and especially at Assessio, when you bring in occupational psychology tools into your HR department. Then it also comes with having to ground yourself in the understanding of what the data actually means and how to suddenly relate to the new data points you’ve gained. So then it became more that I helped with the implementation – but from the supplier side. So that’s my short experience of it. And also this that I already mentioned a bit, that it’s always behavioral change that’s the key. It’s actually quite easy to learn a new system. That’s not the issue.
Anna Carlsson: That’s not the problem. And I also have to add my experience. I actually hadn’t thought of it before, but I realize now that this is also something where I started. My own business journey was to run these types of projects just like you do, though not as much changing the processes or reviewing all of HR’s way of working, but rather working a lot with the change itself. And who should be involved and how do you run a good project? And nowadays I go in and look more at strategy and how projects are set up, and give feedback, rather than running the projects. So I think this is so much fun, and I experience that there are more and more projects happening. What do you think?
Åsa Landin: Yes, absolutely. A lot is happening and you feel like you need to keep up.
Anna Carlsson: Yes exactly. What makes your job interesting? Is it that keeping up, or what’s the best part of what you do?
Åsa Landin: Well, I think it’s so much fun to create improvements, to create value and link it to HR, which is my subject that I’m a nerd about. So that’s what’s fun. To see how we can create improvements for something, do it more efficiently, better quality, make it better for managers and support their leadership or management so they do things right. So yes, driving improvements is really fun. And also fun that you get to come into different companies and it’s really the same subject, but you look at it from slightly different perspectives, which makes me learn and find it super exciting in those areas as well.
Anna Carlsson: Do you also look at measurement afterwards? Follow-up?
Åsa Landin: Yes, we’ll get into that. But it depends a bit on how clear we are in setting goals and so on, and seeing what effect we expected and if it actually turned out that way.
Anna Carlsson: That’s interesting. Because just yesterday, when we recorded this, I had a meeting with the network I run with various large organizations, which is also why I mentioned there are a lot of projects. More than half of them were out looking for new systems because things weren’t working anymore, or improvement needs, new needs – and even in large organizations that already have systems, they redo and change things. At the same time, there are many others in the world who are also running various projects. And then we also talked about measurement, and that people aren’t that good at it. But we’ll come back to that. Should we start at the beginning, when you get hired? When people reach out. What drives this issue for you? To come in – and then you can say, maybe it’s not what you think is optimal – but what starts these projects, as you see it, the ones you’ve been involved in?
Åsa Landin: Well, most often it’s that people realize they need some kind of system support, and then I might be asked to come in and help specify requirements and lead the actual procurement and with suppliers and so on. It can also be that they’ve already decided to implement new systems, or that they want to review what they already have and run a project around that. And then it might be that they need help with project management, change management, and support in that process. And it can be anything from me leading the work itself to me being more of a sounding board or mentor to someone else who’s doing it. Less often is it – though maybe what I think is most important to start with, whether you do it on your own or with support from someone else – it’s to understand how… What is it you actually want to change? What is it that… How can you improve these HR processes with digital support, and why should you do it?
Anna Carlsson: So you don’t start with the “why,” but rather… It’s a bit like now when we talk about AI – that we must use AI. Yes, but why?
Åsa Landin: Yes.
Anna Carlsson: So you don’t really start with the idea that we have a need in the organization to work in new ways. That it isn’t efficient enough. Or we don’t get the data out. Instead, it’s more like “we need a system,” or what?
Åsa Landin: Yes, but maybe you have more of a, how should I put it, an overall feeling that there’s something that needs improvement, but not so precise. What is it? What effect do I expect from this? And as I see it, that becomes the guiding factor for what priorities to make, in what order and what to do. For example, if it’s about procuring a system, then it’s important – and unfortunately there aren’t systems that are great at absolutely everything – so it’s about coming with your needs and requirements and from that understanding what is driving us, and that guides what you should do. Maybe it’s not the systems themselves, but the integrations behind them that are the problem. So there can be many different issues to tackle, and that affects what you need to do to get the effect you’re after.
Emira Blomberg: And that effect – can you see any patterns in it? Like, is it automation of something people are after? Or is it about collecting data in a way they haven’t done before? Or what is it they want? Can you see any trend there?
Åsa Landin: I think it’s often that you realize you want to improve your HR processes with digital support. One thing might be that you need to get control over your master data, and that can be from a quality perspective, from an efficiency perspective, or GDPR handling – making sure data isn’t just being sent around randomly. So it can be different issues. Also, that you want to support your managers and give them good tools to be good managers, so they get guidance in the work they need to do, and also to create shared routines and processes so it’s not up to each individual manager. Then you get a common baseline, so to speak.
Anna Carlsson: You mentioned GDPR – but have CSRD and the pay transparency directive also driven some new projects now?
Åsa Landin: I think maybe not those issues on their own, but together – because it’s important. It’s on the agenda to get control over your data. Because we need to be able to pull data both for internal needs that arise, but also external ones. Or we need to report on different things. And if our data is very spread out in different places, and maybe not of good quality, then that eats up a lot of time.
Anna Carlsson: Yes, absolutely. Because I’m thinking back – if you’ve now been running your company nine years, doing these kinds of projects – how many years since GDPR? It was introduced in 2018, and that triggered quite a lot of these projects. But it just continues with requests and projects, really.
Åsa Landin: Yes, I think it’s ongoing all the time. And the fact is, there are so many companies – even fairly large ones – that… They have a payroll system where they get a lot of their data and have done certain things, and then they have some smaller systems for different areas. But to consolidate that data into, say, an HR master and get unified, strong processes – whether you call it an HR system, LMS (learning system), recruitment system, etc. – to get a whole ecosystem of what’s needed, many companies haven’t been able to prioritize that for various reasons. I think GDPR helped at that time to motivate it internally in organizations. And now with the new transparency directive, I think that also helps – it brings in some harder values that make it easier to justify the investment.
Anna Carlsson: Then I also have a question about AI. I imagine that if you want to use AI as a tool in your organization – beyond just having it as personal support – it requires a lot of data to actually be able to use AI services in different solutions. Has that in any way had an impact now? What do you see in your projects and requests?
Åsa Landin: I don’t get requests specifically because of that, or that it’s the driving factor. But I do see that it is the foundation – because even if we’re not working with it now, we know it’s coming. And the foundation for that is that we have control over our data, so that we can use it the way we need later. So we can’t escape cleaning up there and getting quality into our data. Building that now also creates a good foundation for the future.
Anna Carlsson: What would be the optimal approach? Thinking about how organizations look different and have different competencies. But when do you think… How should one think about projects? What would be the optimal – to bring in a sounding board? When should you do that? Should you start early? (That might be a leading question because I think so.)
Åsa Landin: You mean whether to bring in external help.
Anna Carlsson: Yes, if you should bring in external help. What type of competence do you need? Is it really possible to make the right choices? Because it’s always about perspective – what do I know, what can I do, what do I have close at hand – to be able to make the best choices in creating a digital and data-prepared environment. What’s needed? When can I handle it myself internally, just asking my closest colleagues? And when do I need someone else to bounce ideas with?
Åsa Landin: Well, if you have the opportunity – it depends on your own staffing situation, what competence you already have in your organization. But if you’re going to bring in external support and feel that need, then I think it probably creates the most value in making the plan, as we talked about earlier. To get help understanding – from my reality, my company’s needs and challenges today, and based on the way we work today – where do I start, and what type of digital tools or approaches would help us on that journey? So you invest time, energy, and money – because these kinds of projects do consume both money and quite a lot of time from the organization – in making sure you prioritize correctly. If you have that competence yourself, then great. But if you don’t, I think that’s where you get the most value from bringing someone external in. Then, when you’re implementing a project, like making improvements, I think it’s an advantage to have someone in the organization who has combined experience – understands HR, understands IT and digital, and also project management and change management. It’s not always easy to find the same person who can lead it, but in my experience, these issues affect these projects from different angles. So it’s an advantage to have that type of competence to help lead it.
Anna Carlsson: So basically, to get it right from the start.
Åsa Landin: Yes – and also in the actual change work and in the actual implementation of new processes and routines. Because if you only look at it from the IT perspective – if you have a project manager who only knows IT – then it’s important to have HR involved very closely, and have a very tight collaboration, so you really understand that “this is the way we want to build the new HR processes, and here’s how this system should support them.”
Anna Carlsson: So in two phases. That early stage – making the right choices and thinking through all the perspectives. A few years ago, I did an episode about when some people forgot an important piece while doing their project. And it created huge problems. So just having someone experienced who can be a sounding board in that – to give perspective. “Have you thought about this? Have you worked with that? How do you think here?” To give perspective on how much effort it really takes, and to choose right. And then we have the implementation and the whole change part. But the idea itself – it’s like with all technical projects – people tend to be a bit careless with the implementation.
Emira Blomberg: I think it’s no secret that, one, HR has too small a budget, and two, that external help is brought in far too seldom.
Anna Carlsson: And too late.
Emira Blomberg: And too late, yes. So we do want to highlight that. It’s no secret. But I also think that if we want to help people who have never done this before, then we should be self-critical too. Because often the way we talk about these things gets very fluffy. We talk in big terms like HR processes, change projects, effects, and so on. But if we get super concrete – what’s the first thing you do when you start? Now you’ve been hired for something. What happens on the first day they get you into their organization?
Åsa Landin: For what type of… or for what kind of assignment, mentally speaking?
Emira Blomberg: But let’s say then – what could be a common assignment where people need help with digitalization?
Anna Carlsson: Reviewing their processes and digitalizing.
Åsa Landin: Yes, well, let’s say a common one is that you’re going to implement something – you’ve procured something, or you’re going to drive changes through a project. What I think then is that the first thing is to get to the bottom of: what is it we want to achieve with this? If you haven’t already done that when deciding what project to run – exactly what effect do we expect from this?
Emira Blomberg: Do you help with formulating that then, like that’s where you start? I also think it’s a bit like how we work with product development, actually. Internally we sometimes struggle to get super concrete about what problem we’re trying to solve, instead of just going straight to “we need this feature.” So it’s kind of the same thing. So, the first thing you do is to make sure the problem and the expected effect are described properly.
Åsa Landin: Yes, I think that’s what will influence everything afterwards. It’s completely guiding, because you’ll come into situations where you need to prioritize, and you’ll be dealing with different issues – and if you don’t keep that front of mind, it’s very easy to drift off in a completely different direction than the one leading to the intended effect. Because you’ll uncover so many things, so many stones to turn, so many good ideas you’ll want to improve and change. And then it’s very easy to get pulled into all that and miss the goal – the most important thing.
Emira Blomberg: How often is this effect described in concrete business values? Like money saved? Or… you know, if we’re self-critical. That’s something we’ve also talked about – that HR maybe isn’t always great at showing its own raison d’être, because business thinking doesn’t always come naturally. Do we express effect in money, or how do we express effect?
Åsa Landin: Yes, often before a decision about an investment you do a business case, and then it might be in time or in money – and time can be translated into money. But it varies a lot depending on what motivation is seen as necessary and how concrete you need to be about it.
Anna Carlsson: I also often look at it from the strategy angle. Why do we need this, what do we want to achieve? What’s the organization’s strategy? What’s HR’s strategy? What’s the HR tech strategy that should support achieving these goals? And it’s not always about money. Sometimes you just have to be very clear: if we do this, we can reach this overarching business goal. If we don’t, we won’t. And I find that if you work closely with your steering group or leadership and discuss what kind of goals to set, it’s not always beneficial to only frame it in money. Because then it can end up being seen as just a savings list – how many people should we cut? And that’s not the point. The point is – just like now with AI – that we want to change how we act and deliver more value to the organization in a different way. And that’s not always easy to express, right?
Åsa Landin: No. It’s not easy to express, that much is clear. But I still think spending time trying to understand your “why” is very important, and to get as concrete as possible. Is it about becoming more efficient in some area? Or is it that we lack quality? Or that we need better support for our managers? What is the fundamental need we actually want to solve?
Anna Carlsson: And this is really true for all projects, isn’t it? Back to your product development projects. Why? For whom? Who is this supposed to help? What’s our target group? And then keeping that clear, so you return to it all the time when making priorities. Like: “Yes, but this is what we said.” Do we need to adjust our goals because we’ve learned new things? Or does the goal still stand? Okay, then we shouldn’t chase after this other thing you’re drifting towards.
Emira Blomberg: Exactly. Because as you said, it’s not always tied to product development or new revenue streams – sometimes it’s about building capacity, or improving something like our NPS score.
Åsa Landin: But back to your question about what to think about and where to start. That’s one piece, but another important question is: who will own and maintain this when it’s done? Those people need to be part of the project, and they need to set things up and learn during the process. That’s how they build competence and understand why different decisions were made and how it’s supposed to be used. Coming in afterwards to pick that up – that’s much harder.
Emira Blomberg: So this idea of having a project team and then handing over to a maintenance team – that’s a big no-no.
Åsa Landin: I think it complicates things, at least. It makes it much harder. Not impossible, but definitely not the easy way.
Anna Carlsson: Has that always been thought about? I feel like it’s more like: “Oh right, we’ll need to take care of this afterwards.” And that’s a problem. Because if you don’t, the environment won’t evolve. It gets stuck at the level from when you started. You have to allocate resources, you have to redistribute, and someone has to take responsibility for this new system or systems.
Åsa Landin: Yes, absolutely. And from different perspectives. Partly the technical/system side, but also – as you said – the people/HR strategy side. How should digital tools support that? So it’s both strategic – what do we need to achieve given our strategy, as the business and the world change – and practical: how do we configure the system, who changes it, who listens to feedback from the organization? Because in projects you can only plan based on what you know and consider as many aspects as possible. There will always be things you miss. So you need routines and processes for capturing that afterwards, continuously.
Anna Carlsson: So those are the things you do in the beginning – review them, right?
Åsa Landin: Yes, and also identify who should be involved in the project. And another important piece is allocating time. This is, I’d say, always an issue. Prioritization between regular day-to-day work and project work. When you say, “You’ll be part of a project now,” you really need to free up time for that. It’s not enough to say, “You’ll work this many percent on the project.” You have to say exactly what tasks will be taken off their plate, because those won’t resolve themselves. Requests from the organization will keep coming in. So what will be removed? Will someone else take them? Will a consultant cover them? You have to be very concrete about it, because it won’t solve itself. That issue needs to be tackled.
Anna Carlsson: I’ve seen many projects where people really suffer because no one accounted for that. And it’s not considered at the start either, when calculating costs. But it costs a lot – in resources, in engagement. People need time for this. But that often gets swept under the rug. “Oh, I didn’t think about that.” We’ve talked about the cost of the system and consultants, but not the internal cost.
Emira Blomberg: And then it comes back to describing the effect of a successful project – being able to show that it’s an investment and not just a cost. It is a cost, but also an investment. And I think that’s very important.
Åsa Landin: And another important thing at the start is understanding your current state. Where are we today? Because it’s not just about implementing a system – it’s about improving the routines and processes that the system should support. So how do we currently work with those routines and processes across the organization? And where do we want to get to? That helps you understand how big the change really is, and that influences how you set up the project, how much time you need, and for whom.
Emira Blomberg: We’re not in the age of process mapping anymore, are we? But it feels like that’s what we keep coming back to. Like you said, understanding the current state. And I think very few people actually know their current state. Maybe they had a process, but it evolved, or maybe they never had one – it just grew organically. So they don’t really know where the bottlenecks are, what the real problems are. You’d really want a super-smart system for that. There are systems for process mapping, but they’re so clunky.
Åsa Landin: Yes.
Anna Carlsson: But with process mapping – and then also looking at what we would want. Not just: “This is how we do things, and this is how we’ll put it into a system.” That’s a trap, right?
Åsa Landin: That’s the next question. Hopefully you’ve thought a bit about that before procuring a system. Because it’s the system that’s supposed to support the process. And then you have to make sure the system can actually support it. But as you say, it’s not about just putting existing routines into a system. It’s about: how can we improve them with digital support? And part of that is, when you implement a project, there will be situations where you need to make decisions about different processes. You see: this is how we do things today. We could do it differently, better. Someone owns that process and has to decide: is this how we’ll do it? And those decisions can take a lot of time. So you need to have thought about who your process owners are, and make sure they’re involved. They’re not only requirement-setters for what needs to be done, but also part of how you secure the decision-making process. Otherwise, that can delay the project.
Anna Carlsson: Because it can get a bit like the “Swedish model” – everyone has to give input, and it takes forever before you reach anything. It really should be: the project gathers input from some people, and then the project team drives it forward, and the decision-makers make decisions there.
Åsa Landin: Yes, and that mandate needs to be clarified beforehand.
Anna Carlsson: Exactly. So then we have this about mandate and structure – who’s involved, what issues go to other forums, where more input is needed. Because otherwise a project goes incredibly slowly if you try to collect opinions on everything. That’s just not possible.
Emira Blomberg: Isn’t this the biggest challenge of our time? You two were both at HR Tech in Amsterdam, listening to that Nitel… guy I can’t pronounce.
Anna Carlsson: I wasn’t there.
Emira Blomberg: Oh right. It was the last talk, when they had a panel. What was his name? Votering… Voter-something. He said: “Leaders need to make 100 % of the decisions with 50 % of the information.” And that decision-making – I think that’s also, speaking of AI – so many don’t understand that we need to train ourselves in intuition. We need to train in decision-making more than ever. Because it won’t necessarily get easier to make decisions just because we have better data. Right?
Åsa Landin: No. What we want in HR is to bring in more data – that’s kind of the ultimate goal, to take more data-driven decisions in HR-related questions. But when it comes to processes and routines and how we do them best – that’s a different matter. And as I said, it’s about finding out who has important input, listening to them, and then making a decision based on that. And also not being afraid to set up structures that allow adjustments along the way. You can never know everything up front. You make the best assumptions you can, but you should be prepared to adjust as you go.
Anna Carlsson: And you also need to think – and maybe this happens more now – that you shouldn’t only look at it from the HR unit’s perspective when implementing something new or changing a process. But also: how does this affect different roles? The employee, the manager, the HR organization. Right? It’s about keeping all those perspectives in mind when making decisions. If you’re not used to that, it can be a shock. Like: “Oh, we hadn’t thought of that. We’ve never worked like this before.” People just stuck to their model.
Åsa Landin: Yes, when you make these kinds of changes, it’s an opportunity to reflect and reset. And what you’re pointing out now is super important – understanding who’s affected, your target groups, and spending time on that. Who are they? How will they be affected? Maybe because we need their input, or because they’ll be part of the future way of working. And you need to understand their everyday reality. One target group that’s usually very important here is managers. Understanding their day-to-day. What takes their attention? What’s happening for them? How do they currently work with these issues? It’s very easy for us in HR to think everything revolves around HR and HR processes. But every target group has their own mission. So we need to understand their mission and reality – what takes their focus, what they prioritize, technical barriers, everything that affects them. Only then can we create value for them. And sometimes that means: we’ll create value in areas X, Y, Z, but for some groups something might actually get a bit worse – so it can be better elsewhere. And then we need to identify that clearly, and why, for each target group. Because it differs. That way we can be clear in our communication over time, explaining the “why” to the right groups, in their forums, and adapting training and support to their needs. That’s how we help them. So yes, target groups are super important.
Anna Carlsson: And that brings us to the change project side of things. Running a parallel change project that focuses on the target groups and their “why,” and then giving them tools and so on. Do you work with that too, or is there a separate change leader? Have you experienced that?
Åsa Landin: I’ve never had that luxury.
Anna Carlsson: Once.
Åsa Landin: So I usually act as both change leader and project manager. Those issues are part of the project. They influence how successful a project becomes. But another thing that’s often underestimated is the technical infrastructure in the organization and the legacy you step into. Because we might implement a great system, super easy to use, with excellent processes and routines set up. And it might work perfectly for an employee who controls their own time, sits at a computer all day, and has that as their tool. But there are many groups of employees who don’t sit at computers, who maybe only log in on a shared computer somewhere, without their own account. They might not even have a personal email address – so we can’t send them reminders or notifications. That whole area is hugely important for organizations that aren’t purely white-collar. And it can really shape the experience of what we deliver. If it’s clunky to access, if it feels like resistance, if they don’t have time, if there’s no good place to sit – or can they get it on their phone? But that’s their private phone, and we can’t demand that. So there are lots of factors like that which affect the result, and you need to account for them.
Emira Blomberg: Old stuff lingers. And old systems too, I guess. I like that you’re raising this. It’s so easy to just talk about white-collar organizations and ignore everything else. But of course it’s a completely different challenge in blue-collar-heavy organizations. Do we still say “blue-collar”? Is that the word we use?
Anna Carlsson: “Kollektivare.”
Åsa Landin: “Kollektiv.”
Anna Carlsson: Sometimes people use that word.
Åsa Landin: And this is an important topic for change. White-collar and “kollektivanställda” – or “workers” – some of the old terms feel outdated.
Anna Carlsson: “Knowledge workers.” But even if you use your hands, you use knowledge to do your job. It’s an interesting question. Because when digitalization projects started, it was white-collar organizations doing them. But now it’s incredibly relevant for every organization to ask: how do we meet our employees as everything gets more digital? These are big decisions. Because suddenly the organization has to decide: should employees have access? Should we start giving them devices – like work phones – so they can actually do their jobs going forward? Because more and more, every job will be digital in some form. So what does that mean? And this issue often pops up in projects and becomes a huge deal. Suddenly IT says: “We can’t afford that.” But no one thought of it earlier. Well, now we’re here – now we have to think of it. But if you only bring it up when you reach that point… That’s why we’re talking now about all the things you have to think about. There’s a lot to pull on from the start.
Åsa Landin: Yes, and this isn’t usually something that changes because of an HR project. It’s usually something you have to influence over time and manage alongside the project.
Anna Carlsson: But you can also influence it. It depends on the organization’s ultimate goal – if you want to be a more modern organization. A modern organization uses technology, AI, data. And then suddenly you have to ask: do we provide the means to become that organization? I worked in one organization that wanted to be digitally leading, with a large collective workforce. And this issue had to be solved within the project, because suddenly it was something that affected everyone. Before, it had just been small pilots here and there.
Åsa Landin: How exciting.
Anna Carlsson: It was very interesting.
Åsa Landin: What I’ve seen is more often pilots – like testing in one department, giving them their own phones or tablets – but not a decision to roll it out to everyone as part of the project.
Anna Carlsson: So it ends up being a combination of several other projects in the pipeline, where you see the benefits. But at some point, you have to make that decision: how will we function in the future?
Åsa Landin: Because as you say, it affects everything. It’s not just this one access issue – it’s lots of other things that are already digital or will be soon.
Anna Carlsson: Now we’ve talked about many…
Emira Blomberg: Now I’ll zoom in on another perspective. Speaking of legacy and what the challenges can be. It can be legacy in the form of behavior, but it can also be legacy in the form of existing systems. And I think we have an enormous challenge ahead. I also see this from a product perspective and the requirements placed on us as system vendors. For example, we ourselves are looking at adopting a new smart solution to get better at defining problems in our product development. And then we need integration with our existing systems. And just that little thing is like: “No, it doesn’t exist.” “Okay… what do we do then?” It’s so easy for it to become a chain reaction and turn into a tidal wave of challenges just because you look at one small piece, due to old system legacy. What do you see here, Åsa? Sometimes I feel like it becomes almost completely unmanageable—what challenges especially large organizations face when they’re standing there with their current systems. The system vendors can’t keep up. New cool, smart solutions show up. There are no integrations. What do you do?
Åsa Landin: Truly—the “small” question. What should I say? It’s usually a big mix of systems and a technical debt that most companies are sitting on. And the question I often encounter is that we’re going to integrate—make the HR system the master for all employee data going into our internal systems. And that means, of course, that we should be able to integrate to change in it or from it—whether it’s the old or the new—and then from there feed the rest of the systems. And then usually you also want to create efficiency all the way: register data once and not risk having to update it in all the other systems, gaining efficiency and secured data. In that, we might create an integration to Entra ID that creates the account controlling all other internal systems. But beyond that, it varies depending on how the next system is built and whether it can handle that.
Anna Carlsson: And receive it.
Åsa Landin: And receive—receive those parts. So it usually ends up being a mix: we automate and create integrations for those that can already receive data, while where there’s technical debt and work is needed, you handle it manually for the time being. It doesn’t create efficiency to build a lot of special solutions for that if it’s going to be upgraded to more modern systems anyway. You generally also need to do a thorough review of the technical landscape: what systems exist, which systems contain employee data, and how should data flow? That’s quite important.
Emira Blomberg: Yes.
Anna Carlsson: Exactly—that map: what do we actually have and what does it imply? Because once you start pulling one thread, you suddenly realize you have to pull another, otherwise you won’t reach the goal. But I also think you shouldn’t… I often say: sometimes people think, “This system we have isn’t good—we want a new or better one.” And then there are lots of things you can do through upgrades. The consequence might not be buying something new, but simply understanding how it works and learning it.
Åsa Landin: Exactly—looking at it with fresh eyes and perhaps reviewing old ways of doing things that you’ve always done, and sometimes you’ve forgotten why you did them.
Anna Carlsson: Exactly. But looping back—successful projects: is there anything else you think is important? We’ve talked about lots of important things—everything is important—but anything more?
Åsa Landin: Yes—just to summarize a bit. What I think is important is clear goals—understanding the “why.” And having staffing in place: identifying who should be involved—people who are engaged, want to do this, and actually have time allocated. And that we’ve also broken down what we’re going to do into a clear time-and-activity plan. That’s often a key, because everyone is so overwhelmed with their own work. You need a lot of lead time to plan when different things should be done, especially when many are involved. So it’s also important that those affected have a clear time and activity plan to lean on.
Anna Carlsson: So you know that this week—or these weeks—I need to be engaged in the project and I should do something. Or here I have to deliver X then—so you know it well in advance.
Åsa Landin: You can’t just scrape together five people to do something with a week’s notice. That’s impossible nowadays. You need good lead time. And I’d also add decision power: having the decision-makers on board for different questions. If we get to, “We have a process to improve—can we do it this way?”—who decides? And when it comes to resources—which it almost always does in a project—if there’s something else deemed more important than what we’re supposed to spend time on, then in the steering group—(I haven’t talked much about having a steering group)—you need people who can make those calls. And if we can’t get the time, the project must be replanned based on the new conditions. Often people don’t think of that if it isn’t made explicit—then they just try to solve things anyway without the prerequisites, and it doesn’t turn out well.
Anna Carlsson: So a clear steering group with a mandate.
Åsa Landin: Both your own and a joint steering group if you have a vendor—because sometimes you need to escalate to the vendor side too.
Anna Carlsson: So different types of steering groups depending on where you are in the project lifecycle—whether it’s a pre-study, procurement, or implementation.
Åsa Landin: Yes.
Anna Carlsson: But it’s about having mandate.
Åsa Landin: Yes, that’s it.
Anna Carlsson: But a steering group has another effect too—they become very well-informed.
Åsa Landin: Yes, and that’s important because they become ambassadors—people who can spread the word. If you include people involved in different parts of the business, you get buy-in.
Anna Carlsson: Do you have any rule of thumb—who should be in it? How high up should they be?
Åsa Landin: Quite high, actually. Because in the project, with the routine steering meetings, we operate within the framework we’ve set: the project must adhere to X, deliver Y, with these resources, etc. But when we hit a problem that the project can’t resolve within its scope, then we must have people there who can make those decisions. And that tends to be quite high up in the organization.
Anna Carlsson: Exactly. And I think it’s fun to discuss these kinds of questions with the people who lead the organization as a whole.
Åsa Landin: So, a few things: resources and how we plan them; technical obstacles—understanding them and how to deal with them if they exist; and then the target groups—really understanding them. Not just drawing them on a slide, but actually investing time and effort to understand them, and also building anchoring via reference groups. We can think, talk, and understand as best we can, but along the way we also need input from our target groups through a reference group—so we can ensure we’re on the right path and capture input during the project, instead of it becoming a big “event” at launch. That’s also good to consider. But the most important is the “why” for each target group—having that crystal clear when we’re out communicating. If we have it internalized, it comes naturally and clearly, so others can pass it on—like a unit manager who needs to brief their team. It can’t be too fuzzy, as you mentioned.
Emira Blomberg: And here I really think there’s room for improvement in product and implementation. On the product side, we’ve already mapped “juicy stories,” made our Ideal Customer Profile, and our user personas. Really, we should…
Åsa Landin: Absolutely.
Emira Blomberg: …just copy them outright. Or ask for them from the product company or the vendor whose system you’re implementing—start there and try to map them against your own. Do they match our business?
Åsa Landin: What a great idea!
Emira Blomberg: I keep thinking we’re sitting on silos. It’s so similar—like marketing and recruiting we’ve talked about before: how similar Customer Acquisition and Talent Acquisition are, and how we should find synergies. It’s so obvious here that we should work more closely.
Anna Carlsson: The thing is, in many cases when you start this, you haven’t begun procurement yet—so you have no vendor to discuss with. That’s where it’s good to bring in external help again. People like you and me and others who’ve run projects before—we already have a bank: “These are typical issues; how do we look at them; how can we describe this; here are examples.” Because it’s a challenge. It’d be great, but it depends on where you are. If you’ve already procured a system, then you can do that.
Emira Blomberg: Yes, or if you can’t, at least start mapping user stories—write them down. And when you look at vendors, you have a much better basis for comparison. Then you can send it to—now I’m super naïve, I know—send it to the vendor like a brief: “These are our user stories. How do they map to your solution?”
Anna Carlsson: We haven’t touched on procurement, so maybe we shouldn’t dig into that—otherwise we’ll never finish. That in itself is a whole thing: how you actually create the RFP and so on. There’s a lot there.
Åsa Landin: There’s a lot to dig into there too.
Anna Carlsson: I wanted to ask if you have any special success stories—what has made something really good? Is it the things we’ve already talked about?
Åsa Landin: I’d say yes—it’s the things we’ve discussed. When you manage to get those in place and allocate time for them—especially getting them into the plan—you have good conditions. You’ll still run into issues, and you do, but that’s the nature of it. Another important point to carry with you when running the project: it’s very easy to be in your own bubble and think everyone else will just get it. Back to target group analyses, etc. But the key is: when we deliver—go live, launch, whatever we call it—that’s not when it ends. That’s when it starts. And I think that’s a mental shift for everyone in a project. You see the finish line—“we just need to get there.”
Anna Carlsson: Cake and balloons.
Åsa Landin: And that’s absolutely important—that’s when we deliver what we promised. But that’s when it begins for everyone else. Up to then, they’ve only received some info that something’s coming. That’s when things start happening, and that’s when we need to be out there communicating and reminding. It’s always a change we deliver, and people are creatures of habit. They might attend training and understand how it’s supposed to be—but then everyday life kicks in, and it’s easy to slip back into old patterns. So you need a plan for staying close—how we remind, how we communicate, and how we gather input from those affected. We will need to adjust along the way. And those early tweaks—some will find them a bit… well, many find change hard. So don’t be too quick to change—let the change journey run its course a bit, then see: “Okay, once they’ve gotten used to the new way, how does it work?” Another point: in HR we’re very service-minded and eager to help. So when managers don’t understand or don’t quite know how to do things, if we’ve decided to enable managers to do their own tasks, we mustn’t step in and do the manager’s job. We should support them in how to do it and be persistent—otherwise we’ll block the very change we were trying to create.
Anna Carlsson: Great advice. It’s so important. That ties back to what you said at the start: thinking through the support organization—who’s responsible for the system, who can collect feedback, and how we do that. To wrap up: now that things are developing so fast with AI and digital solutions—does this become different now? Will it be small projects all the time? Do you see any change? I feel what we’ve talked about applies to both big and small solutions—the scope just changes. But have you seen a change? Do you think it will become different now?
Åsa Landin: I haven’t seen a change tied to that yet, I’d say. But what I’m thinking is: what you can do now is secure your data. That’s what most people are thinking: we don’t know exactly how this will affect us—no one has the answers—but we do know data will be the basis. So what we can do now is ensure we have a good structure for it—and that also involves integrations and such—making sure quality is there, that data isn’t scattered, that we have good control. And also that we’ve consolidated data so we can retrieve it easily and use it for today’s needs.
Anna Carlsson: Exactly right! Do you have any final advice you’d like to share, or have we covered everything? Anything else?
Åsa Landin: No, I think we’ve covered it. But if I should summarize briefly, it’s this: the why, I think, is the key.
Anna Carlsson: We’ve said that—exactly. Why are we doing this?
Åsa Landin: And then allocating resources and time for those who will carry it out, and understanding your target groups. That’s probably it.
Anna Carlsson: The three most important pieces of advice. Thank you so much for coming here to talk with us about this. Honestly, we could probably have gone on for another hour—digging into how to run a procurement. How do you do that smartly? There are so many solutions out there, and new ones pop up almost every day. I get emails from someone wanting to tell me about their new smart solution—wow! We’re in a transformation… what should we say, a race car?
Emira Blomberg: Yes, absolutely.
Anna Carlsson: Well, thank you so much!
Åsa Landin: Thank you for having me. What a fun conversation it was! Great topic.
