The people’s function has always taken great pride in playing the unique role of nurturing relationship with employees and keeping their morale high. Over the last decade, with evolving employee expectations, there has been a paradigm shift for people’s function, upending their work model. Technology has become a critical element and an enabler for HR to conduct their work efficiently and optimize the employee experience.
Revisiting HR Functionalities Through the Technology Lens – The Rising Importance of a Digital Ecosystem
Technology has become central to the people’s function and it will lead the way for HR in future and will define a lot of interventions in the coming times. The pandemic has accelerated the pace of major technological trends and pushed HR leaders to rethink their roles. The emerging new format of work known as the hybrid workforce is driving HR to rely on technology to support and connect with their employees. To make organizations future-ready, HR is responsible for facilitating technological changes to articulate a model that revolves around delivering a positive employee experience. Like any other function, human resources also need to develop a robust digital ecosystem that will enable them to improve their functions, be it new employee onboarding, rewards and recognitions, training sessions, employee engagements, and more. Technology can help HR better understand their workforce, analyze employee journeys, and optimize their experience. In addition to this, the people’s function needs to embrace gig workforce and machine workers.
HR Tech Trends That Are Here to Stay, and You Should Invest In
1. A Boundaryless Workplace for Access to Global Talent Pool
Many organizations have started embracing a geo-agnostic approach when it comes to hiring the right talent. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that geographic boundaries are not a hindrance anymore. This means that a lot of HR activities are virtual—hiring, documentation, onboarding, employee-centric programs, and more. People champions will have to shift their focus on how employees work rather than where they work from. Investing in the right technology can better equip talent leaders and organizations to maintain and foster connectivity amongst the employees and support boundaryless work through virtual collaboration.
2. Sustained Hybrid Work-culture
Two years ago, remote work was only common in certain fields. As we fast forward to 2022, most organizations have adopted a remote work culture and are shifting towards a hybrid work model. It is important for organizations to adapt to the new changes to make their workforce feel supported and valued. While offices are gradually opening up, firms have to restructure their office culture to support a hybrid work model.
3. Data and Analytics to Drive Intelligent Decision-making and Improved Employee Experience
The focus on analytics and data-based initiatives will also see an acceleration in 2022. People’s function must collect more and more meaningful data using automated HR systems throughout the employee life cycle. The ability to formulate hypotheses and analyze data will help enterprises in understanding complex issues and suggesting more convincing approaches. And as we are in the state of transition, we may fail at certain levels, but that should not deter us from evolving and we need to fail more than succeed to figure out what’s not working for us.
Takeaways
Technology will continue to be the centerpiece of the evolving people’s functions, and therefore it is upto talent leaders to adopt new-age technologies and adapt to these trends.
Here are a few tips that HR leaders can consider:
- People’s function needs to prepare themselves to embrace technology in a completely new way
- Data will continue to remain central in devising strategies that enrich the employee experience
- Organizations have to become more transparent. The people’s champion need to play a role that fosters accountability and enables the leaders to lead their team with empathy and transparency
