Human resource management is a crucial business function. Typically, human resource operations are handled manually—from preparing payroll to analyzing employee performance. But recent developments in technology have changed this for better. Attendance, employee contact details, credentials for compensation & benefits, which were earlier managed laboriously are now streamlined with the help of technology. HR technology has made HR practices more efficient.
HR tech covers each stage of employee – starting from pre-employment to post-employment. Here are some ways HR tech has transformed human resource management–
- Recruitment
Recruitment has been a heavily labor dominated process—from posting openings to collecting resumes to screening candidate for suitability of the applied position. Online applicant tracking systems, a major technology enabler in human resources, has taken away the tedious manual work and made application screening more efficient. According to a report from Jobscan, over 90 percent of fortune 500 companies use an applicant tracking system to streamline their recruitment process.
Using applicant tracking systems, saves a lot of time, and productivity is increased multi-folds, as it takes the load off recruiters in manually going through each resume and scheduling interviews. This has also reduced the number of recruiters required by companies. Some AI-based applicant tracking systems further reduce the effort to find out candidate details and directly send details to recruiters without having to find them. Thereby making screening candidates more easy.
- Employee performance analysis
Regular employee performance management is an integral part of human resource management. So far much of the performance management is solely done with personal assessment, which requires looking at past and present performances of employees. Today much of this work has been taken over by specialized applications which track employee’s daily responsibilities and recommend ways to improve performance.
Further, performance management tools improve employee engagement through transparency, recognition, and feedback. It makes easier for employees to see their contribution to organization’s goals.
- Instant communication
Prior to technologies like Slack, most of the communication among employees happened over email. A single email sent to all employees, which further required everyone to respond. Now Slack and other mobile apps have occupied communication space, and made communication more seamless and swift.
Project and collaboration tools such as Asana, Notion, etc have provided an impetus in optimizing workflow across teams and made communication more easy. Currently, Slack, among other project management tools, boasts of over 10mn daily activeusers. This has led to increase in productivity. The communication feature is also extended to mobile apps, where employees can stay connected 24 hours, building a perpetually connected workforce. This also facilitates companies to build cross-border workforces to work seamlessly.
- Security
Employee details are confidential and need to be locked away from unauthorized people. Earlier, in order to secure employee information, piles of documents and files had to be hidden and locked away in drawers. Now cloud-based applications store information and protect with top- notch cloud security. The access to this information is limited to a few professionals The adoption of cloud-based HR applications has steadily pick traction among organizations.
- Learning & development
So far training and development programs have been in-house programs. Today most organizations provide access to cloud-based classrooms or third-party applications for learning. A few organizations partner with SaaS (Software-as-a-service) to execute learning programs. More specifically, these applications are called as learning management system. These programs are cost-effective (as they are less resource intensive) compared to in-house talent development programs.
Lately companies are moving to immersive technologies like VR to enhance learning among employees. Given technological magnificence, the cost associated with using VR is high, but it has good overall impact on skill development. Earlier AR/ VR were limited to technical simulations in industries such as manufacturing, supply chain, etc. Now soft skills training has emerged as major use-case for AR/VR.
Given the benefits that companies can reap off HR tech, the demand for HR technology has been steadily growing among companies, which accounts for the growing number of HR-tech providers. The current market is valued at $400 billion. Undoubtedly, companies are increasingly realizing the potential HR tech has to increase productivity. New providers are also emerging, building a larger and better ecosystem, where innovation is taking place at a rapid pace. Emerging technologies such as AR/VR have paved way for immersive learning, employee orientation, and more. Overall, HR tech is progressively advancing human resource management.
