HR’s never been accused of being on the bleeding edge, and any type of social media or communications usually finds HR pros trailing the pack.

Take social media as an example.  Lots of potholes.  Full of traps.  No wonder you didn’t try harder to get in the game and use it for communications, engagement, recruiting and more.  Of course, all the challenges can be overcome by using a smart approach to social media, but I’ll give you a pass.

So what’s your excuse for not looking to incorporate texting into you HR practice?  What’s everyone’s excuse?  After all, you’ve probably sent more texts today than you have emails.

And that’s the thing – more people are immediately accessible using text today than email, and certainly the phone.  In addition, use of texting in new applications not only draws people in, but they’re less likely to leave once you get them using your thing – HR – via text.  More from Flurry via Business Insider:

Facebook dropped $19 billion on WhatsApp, Snapchat is valued at $15 billion, and even the anonymous messaging app Yik Yak, despite being a little over a year old, is already valued between $300 million and $400 million. Messaging apps are big business, and here’s why.

Based on new data from mobile analytics firm Flurry charted for us by BI Intelligence, messaging apps retained nearly six times as many users they attracted in their first months compared to the average user retention across all applications. The average retention rate for all apps was 32% in the first month, and fell to 11% by the 12th month. In contrast, messaging apps held onto 68% of their new users after the first month, and slipped just a little bit, down to 62%, by the 12th month.

You have to fish where the fish are.  I’m willing to bet you could go into a conference room today and brainstorm 5 unbelievable opportunities for people to engage with the business of HR via text, and you could bootstrap a lot of the solutions as well internally – you don’t have have to wait on the vendors to do something.

Text provides immediacy, and per the Flurry report, people don’t leave apps once they start using them via text.  That’s called adoption – you want people to try and then incorporate the new app into their day to day lives - then never leave.

The new app you’re introducing?  It’s called HR. 

Get with it.