While the rest of the professional economy moves into digital, HR is beginning to catch up. India, with the fastest growing economy in the world, is leading the charge by way of digital HR management tools like intelligence-driven recruitment technology, employing wide use of chatbots to improve and simplify communication. Plenty of companies have begun replacing personnel filing cabinets with data-driven, responsive, agile software to recruit, manage, and maintain human resources initiatives. HR Tech is undergoing a transformation to mirror consumer-centric practices. As one Forbes writer puts it:
“The next journey for HR leaders will be to apply a consumer and a digital lens to the HR function. Along with this comes innovation ready to compete with the rest of the world.”
We’ve written about employee engagement and how vital its importance is to productivity and even profitability. Now, the focus has shifted to a new trending term. The “employee experience” is defined as the sum of the various perceptions employees have about their interactions with the organization in which they work. According to The Active Job Seeker Dilemma Study, 56% of HR professionals are looking to enhance their employee experience by allocating more budget to training and giving more rewards. Companies like IBM, General Electric, and Visa are investing in user-friendly technology that promotes learning among its workforce.
HR leaders Diane Gherson (IBM) and Susan Peters (General Electric), are working to revamp HR practices to deliver an employee experience that is human-centered, meaning customized, technologically advanced, and memorable. GE even created a position around the latest HR buzzword:
“We define employee experience simply as seeing the world through the eyes of our employees, staying connected, and being aware of their major milestones. In the last year we have appointed a Head of Employee Experience and we are developing a strategy to create an employee experience which takes into account the physical environment our employees work in, the tools and technologies that enable their productivity, and learning to achieve their best at work. All of this is part of continuously evolving our HR capabilities.”
According to researchers at SHRM, it has been a goal for HR professionals in recent years to make performance management much more data-driven and team-oriented. Popular performance tools like Mavenlink or Desk.com provide multi-channel customer support, workflow automation, case management, performance monitoring, and internal chat capabilities.chat rooms.
According to research by Deloitte, feedback-based technology tools and systems will become a major theme in HR platforms in the coming years. These tools can give companies info on their employees’ needs, performance initiatives, change management strategies, just to name a few. Employees can be surveyed more often, allowing for quick and easy check-ins.
Intuit estimates that by 2020, 40% of the US workforce will be comprised of contingent workers, or those used recruited as contracted, project-based, or temporary workers. What’s interesting about this prediction is the implication that HR professionals and talent managers are now using sophisticated software, much like sales and marketing analytics, to drive interactions between employees and brands, for not only recruiting, but also for enhancing the overall employee experience. “Sourcing systems are becoming much more intuitive and can pick up on certain cues that will give employers a whole new level of insight,” says Eric Presley, chief technology officer at CareerBuilder.
The recruitment and talent acquisition market alone is worth more than $200 billion, according to Deloitte. The market is made up of hundreds of tools designed to streamline the multi-faceted HR initiative, and many of the best are built to plug right into Linkedin.
Some of these platforms include SmartRecruiters, Lever, Greenhouse, and Gild. These platforms have helped companies recruit strong job candidates, market and brand themselves, post and distribute job postings, manage and interact with job boards, conduct pre-hire skills assessments, perform background screening and psychological testing, interview candidates, and manage the entire complex process from end to end via applicant tracking and recruitment management systems.
Automated HR includes process automation, artificial intelligence tools and self-service transaction. The accelerated automated process improves employee experience and dramatically reduces costs while at the same time improving HR’s abilities. For example, IBM is now utilizing an artificial intelligence application that incorporates employee onboarding, employee mentorships, and frequently asked questions. Introducing their automation process has been proven successful in driving employee engagement.
Wellness apps have been shown to increase productivity and employee loyalty, employee engagement, and promote teamwork. Companies such as Aetna, Google and Johnson & Johnson have seen success with wellness programs. Since it’s implementation in 2003, Johnson & Johnson’s company-wide wellness program has helped reduce the company's overall numbers of smoking by 42%, reduced their overall weight by 55%, and cut back on stress levels by a reported 58%.
