4 reasons your team isn’t using your talent CRM (and what to do about it)

There’s little that’s more frustrating for a leader than presenting your team with a solution and watching it go unused. Unfortunately, driving the adoption of new recruiting tools is often a tough sell. But it’s also necessary for organizations that want to hire competitively.

Bullhorn’s 2023 Global Recruitment Insights & Data (GRID) report suggests that leading staffing firms are twice as likely to invest in new tech this year. These investments will likely be made in pursuit of the goals we uncovered while putting together our 2022 Recruiting Trends report. Top talent ops professionals care about data-driven recruiting, employer branding, and candidate experience—all of which can be improved upon when teams leverage hiring tech well.

While there are a lot of new tools you might want your team to pick up on, our area of expertise is helping companies get started with talent CRMs like Gem. Here are the reasons your recruiters may be hesitant to dive in with a talent CRM—and what you can do to convince them it’s worth it.

Problem 1: Your team wants to be active in company decisions

Change management consultancy Prosci found that when non-management employees feel their voices aren’t heard, they’re more likely to resist change—regardless of whether it will benefit them. Unfortunately, big decisions like what tech to invest in often come from the top and don’t leave room for employee input.

That means employees who come to work one day to find a new app in their tech stack will likely see that tool as something that’s being forced upon them. They may be slow to adopt it because resisting feels like it’s their choice—whereas using it would be going along with someone else’s.

Solution 1: Solicit opinions on how to use your talent CRM to meet recruiting goals

You may not be able to let employees choose which software the team will use, but you can give them a voice in how new tech should be used. Each of your team members was hired for their expertise. Return ownership of a tool to them by asking their opinions on what it can add to your existing recruiting operation.

In a February 6, 2023 report titled “4 Steps to Drive Adoption of Candidate Relationship Management Technology,” Gartner® analysts Hiten Sheth, Rania Stewart, and Emi Chiba stated that “talent acquisition functions often struggle to grow a candidate pipeline that can meet their organization’s fluctuating talent needs. Recruiting leaders must follow these steps to drive effective adoption of candidate relationship management technology for agile hiring practices.” They analyzed that, “as a first step, recruiting leaders must develop a clear understanding of their organization’s talent goals. Next is to surface gaps in creating a healthy talent pipeline by identifying key metrics. Once this is done, recruiting leaders must collaborate with the wider TA team to lay out their current talent-sourcing workflow to identify areas of opportunities and realignment.”

At Gem, we believe that by making a new tool part of the larger dialogue about strategy, you’ll give employees a chance to provide meaningful input on where it will be most helpful. Have these discussions (or solicit feedback) on an ongoing basis to make sure your deployment strategy continues to meet everyone’s expectations and needs.

Problem 2: Your employees don’t understand how a talent CRM will benefit them

Prosci found that the number one reason non-manager employees resist change is that they don’t understand the reason behind it. Getting started with a new tool like Gem requires employees to change the workflows they’re already comfortable with and learn new habits. 

There’s no incentive for anyone to put in the time or effort required unless they can see the benefits they’ll reap. Organizations that introduce new tech (like a talent CRM) without explaining how they expect it to improve recruiting operations are therefore likely to see lower adoption rates. 

Solution 2: Highlight CRM features that meet specific needs

Use the strategy-based discussions you have with your team to learn where individuals could use more support. Then, plan your talent CRM implementation to focus on these areas, so you can set your employees up for quick wins.

Gartner, Inc. suggests talent acquisition leaders who want to "enable the most efficient set of features in a cost-effective way” should “align CRM platform requirements with the sourcing and hiring strategy. Correlate the CRM capabilities with the assessment of the organization’s needs and opportunities” and “incorporate point solutions to fill gaps” (“4 Steps to Drive Adoption of Candidate Relationship Management Technology”). At Gem, we think this is true both during the initial setup of the software and after strategic pivots that may change recruiters’ needs.

Of course, the CRM you’re investing in may be an all-in-one system that doesn’t require you to individually purchase and/or activate features. In that case, it’s not about enabling features so much as driving users toward them. Prioritize integrations that will power key features that meet your team’s needs and then demo the tool’s capabilities. The sooner these features are fully functional, the sooner your team will be able to see them in action—and reap the benefits.

Problem 3: Employees worry new tech will add more work

Changes to an employee’s role may spark concerns about workload increases, according to Prosci. Employees might think these changes will be temporary (learning new technology) or ongoing (consistently show a certain amount of activity in a new tool). Either way, this belief leads them to avoid new software because they don’t want to add more work to an already-crowded plate.

This fear may be even greater if you’re introducing a new concept, like a talent CRM. Many recruiters don’t have context for what a tool like Gem can do, and may jump to conclusions about how it will add complexity to an already-difficult role.

Solution 3: Show how a talent CRM’s automation tools make recruiters’ jobs easier

One of Gem’s “aha!” moments among new teams is its ability to automate repetitive and administrative tasks. As soon as recruiters see a candidate’s data auto-populate and update, they realize how much time they stand to save—and start proactively including Gem in their workflow.

However, as in the previous steps, you’ll want to deploy these tools strategically. The Gartner report suggests that “after the organizational strategy is realigned and enabled with the most suitable CRM tools, recruiting leaders must choose the appropriate parts of the process to automate.” Specifically, “automation serves to assist in reducing the workload of recruiters, which continues to increase as a result of hyper-competition for talent and the uncertainty of the future of the work. The key here is to free recruiters from nonstrategic administrative workload and enable them to adopt proactive hiring practices through continuous evaluation of bottlenecks for automation.”

Automation isn’t just about making the process faster; it’s also about improving the work experience for your team. As we discussed in solution 1, your employees feel more empowered when they’re asked to use their expertise. Strategic automation choices free them up to spend more time doing skilled (and meaningful) work.

Problem 4: Your team doesn’t have enough support to succeed

Teams that have struggled through previous transitions are likely to lose trust in their leadership team’s capability to support them, according to Prosci. This reluctance may apply even if that lack of support came under a different leader or in a different role.

Support matters because no one wants to be bad at their job. Employees are thus incentivized to stick with systems, tools, and practices they’re comfortable with rather than risk a new approach that might cause their quality of work to decline. Short of a program that penalizes workers for not adopting a new tool, there’s little to convince people in this position to make the switch.

Solution 4: Set team goals and provide training to help recruiters meet them

Get everyone on the same page regarding a new tool by debuting a ramp-up plan to go with the new technology prior to implementation. Your job is to create incentives for employees to switch that outweigh their incentives to resist change. Set goals for tool adoption and offer rewards for reaching them. Then, create an onboarding program to address fears that underpin employees’ reluctance to try a new tool.

The more you can do to personalize this experience, the better. Gartner, Inc. suggests that “recruiting leaders must identify a team of champion users and engage them early to incentivize CRM solution usage.” The report also states that “recruiting leaders should create a CRM platform training program that trains TA team members on an ongoing basis and upskill them on additional system capabilities that get included.” 

In our opinion, for best results, make sure your training works in concert with the other solutions in this post. It should focus on the skills and features that will help recruiters meet their strategic goals, as identified earlier in the adoption process. It should lead new users to features that deliver wins on current projects, thus incentivizing them to learn more. And, it should be flexible enough to change if it doesn’t increase adoption levels.

Because the additional work inherent to training makes employees more likely to drag their feet, build your onboarding program toward the minimal level of use and competence you want to see. It’s tempting to teach every feature so your team can get “the most” out of Gem, but each individual’s “most” will depend on their buy-in. Highly motivated users will have no issue seeking further instruction or experimenting with the tool independently.

Getting value out of a talent CRM through strategic implementation

Today’s talent acquisition leaders have a strong incentive to prove every choice they make is in the pursuit of greater efficiency. This means having evidence of the benefits your employees are gaining from the tools you recommended the company purchase.

The returns of most hiring tech, including Gem, correlate with how much the tool is used. Therefore, the higher the adoption rate among your team, the more value your company is getting out of the tool. 

It’s not too late to sell your team on Gem, even if it’s no longer new to your tech stack. In a time when recruiters know their jobs may be on the line, your team is likely looking for new ways to prove its worth. So, it’s time to bring everyone together for a strategic discussion and map out a plan—together!—to make Gem a part of your workflow and let your company reap the benefits.

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