How To Prep Your HRTech Stack For The Post-Pandemic World – Impact of WorkTech
Posted on 10-27-2020, Read Time: Min
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It’s an irony, how the ‘future’ of work has been reset to the present. Remote work is pushing HR to use technology, enabling it to be more strategic than operational. The HRTech ecosystem gets further definition and structure, broadening itself into WorkTech. WorkTech, although not entirely new, is just simply put, technologies for – Collaboration, Productivity, and the Workforce. Let’s understand this better.
Think about the current work scenario. Collaboration technology enables day-to-day interactions, to mimic the physical workplace – Teams, Slack, and Zoom. Workforce technology could be an HRIS tool to track employee key records, movements, and planning. Productivity technologies, on the other hand, enable a worker to do his/her work efficiently. Think design tools, coding editors, reporting tools, and more.
This brings an important question to a HR leader:
How should I pick the perfect HR Tech stack – the right mix of Productivity, Collaboration, and Workforce technologies?
In my experience, the answer lies with three important levers that will drive your decision. Not a magic bullet, but a blueprint to guide your decision, irrespective of what your existing HRTech stack might be. Automation (or productivity enhancing), Employee Experience, and Data-Driven HR are emerging as important levers for an organization to select or even consolidate their own HRTech stack.
Automation – The First Lever
We love automation, that’s true. However, it takes a little while to realize that the automation technology catered to is just a specific part of the HR workflow. As budgets and stakeholders fall in line, other pending automations line up. The result is what we call a disconnected HR workflow, which is automated to a certain extent, but still has pockets of manual or face-face work.
Think of the classic Pre-Hire workflow. Sourcing of candidates, shortlisting, background verifications, interviewing and offer generation – are they all automated and integrated into one single workflow with recruiters, interviewers, candidates – working seamlessly together?
Pre-Hire workflows have sourcing of candidates as the first step and offer generation and acceptance as the last. Candidate sourcing via automated feeds, especially from social and professional networks is commonplace now. Powerful candidate matching algorithms help recruiters select the right talent within the vast pool of resumes, and applications. Candidate turned applicants are also fed via integrations done to Applicant Tracking Systems which help recruiters to further take it ahead.
Background screening and verifications, the most time-consuming of all the processes, is also automated via email requests for verifications to references. Integrations to background screening systems populates the recruiter’s dashboard in the Applicant Tracking System within almost half hour! And each such step ties into the next, creating a workflow that removes the inefficiency and errors that arise in typical manual processes.
Attendance and shift management, payroll calculations, vendor invoices, approval and documentation and payouts along with daily, monthly, quarterly reporting are other such examples of processes that can benefit immensely from automation.
This is just one case. When looking for automation in other such processes, peruse each set of steps and check whether technology for these steps exist, and if it could be accessed by anyone, from anywhere.
Think of the classic Pre-Hire workflow. Sourcing of candidates, shortlisting, background verifications, interviewing and offer generation – are they all automated and integrated into one single workflow with recruiters, interviewers, candidates – working seamlessly together?
Pre-Hire workflows have sourcing of candidates as the first step and offer generation and acceptance as the last. Candidate sourcing via automated feeds, especially from social and professional networks is commonplace now. Powerful candidate matching algorithms help recruiters select the right talent within the vast pool of resumes, and applications. Candidate turned applicants are also fed via integrations done to Applicant Tracking Systems which help recruiters to further take it ahead.
Background screening and verifications, the most time-consuming of all the processes, is also automated via email requests for verifications to references. Integrations to background screening systems populates the recruiter’s dashboard in the Applicant Tracking System within almost half hour! And each such step ties into the next, creating a workflow that removes the inefficiency and errors that arise in typical manual processes.
Attendance and shift management, payroll calculations, vendor invoices, approval and documentation and payouts along with daily, monthly, quarterly reporting are other such examples of processes that can benefit immensely from automation.
This is just one case. When looking for automation in other such processes, peruse each set of steps and check whether technology for these steps exist, and if it could be accessed by anyone, from anywhere.
Employee Experience – The Second Lever
Employee experience is the sum of everything an employee interacts with in the organization. In the remote workplace, most interactions are enabled through productivity and many other collaboration and workforce technologies (see definitions above).
This lever enables employee voice, builds engagement, and even accelerates business outcomes, as numerous studies have proven. As a HR leader evaluating these technologies, you may need to base your analysis from the eyes of an employee and look for the gaps in usability, functionality, and experience. We have listed some for your reference:
This lever enables employee voice, builds engagement, and even accelerates business outcomes, as numerous studies have proven. As a HR leader evaluating these technologies, you may need to base your analysis from the eyes of an employee and look for the gaps in usability, functionality, and experience. We have listed some for your reference:
- Easy collaboration between employees using Teams, Slack, Zoom, and similar tools along with other productivity tools. Look for applications that enable such collaborations within their functionality, e.g. a Learning Management System that allows learners to drop text messages to the instructor directly.
- Opportunities for skilling/reskilling for employees using learning experience platforms or AI-enabled recommendations that help the learner learn intuitively, and have content aggregated from different learning platforms
- Personalized content discovery based on individual learning goals
- Continuous Performance Management tools that help employees track goals in lieu of their team, department, and organization-wide goals
- Employee sentiment via Pulse Surveys for new policies, safety checks, and feedback
- Faster treatment of HR service requests and queries via intelligent virtual assistants or chatbots
Data Driven HR – The Third Lever
Measuring business outcomes has never been so important, especially post the pandemic. Most of the organizations I’ve consulted with, highlighted a common problem, viz. lack of data – especially on skills, top performers, learning data. The truth is, data driven HR is a focused effort, even mentioned by Stacey Harris, and needs to be built around culture and strategy. If you are looking to build an HR ecosystem that will help support a data driven organization, here are some of our recommendations:
- Identify top five important HR metrics that are used for executive reporting (Hiring, Skills, Productivity, Safety, etc.)
- Look for HR systems within the organization that would provide this data (systems of record, engagement, collaboration, workforce systems)
- Identify whether these systems are integrated well, and provide clean and structured data to be used for reporting
- Design reporting layers using data warehousing tools or even data lakes to generate HR analytics, depending on the type of data being processed
- Implement a scalable integration strategy that allows for addition of newer systems, in the future. For example, if the organization is slotted to have three-four more new systems to cater to safety, employee wellness, and collaboration, all from different vendors, it would be helpful to devise an integration strategy using middleware to leverage data from all such systems
From HRTech to WorkTech
HRTech is at a crucial inflection point, as it finds its way into WorkTech. HR technology, earlier created for full time jobs, face-to-face interactions, and fixed job descriptions, is transitioning into WorkTech, or technology needed for the modern remote workforce. Flexible jobs, working from home, audio and video collaborations, online learning, part-time or gig-workers – we’re going to need more technology.
WorkTech will cause us to look differently at technology for hiring, onboarding, engagement, and usher in newer ways of looking at productivity, collaboration, and workforce management too. All, in the flow of work.
That said, CHROs or HR leaders must review existing HR technology stacks and look for support for newer WorkTech upgrades by their HRTech vendor(s). Specialized features needed for your organization can also be analyzed and identified using the three levers of automation, employee experience, or data driven HR needs. Once you understand the purpose and the need for such features, the next step would be to consult with technology consultants to help you with the Build or Buy decision.
At the end of the day, prepping your HRTech stack for a whole new world of HR could mean different initiatives for different organizations. But the end goal would always be better HR, better humans, and better businesses.
References:
WorkTech will cause us to look differently at technology for hiring, onboarding, engagement, and usher in newer ways of looking at productivity, collaboration, and workforce management too. All, in the flow of work.
That said, CHROs or HR leaders must review existing HR technology stacks and look for support for newer WorkTech upgrades by their HRTech vendor(s). Specialized features needed for your organization can also be analyzed and identified using the three levers of automation, employee experience, or data driven HR needs. Once you understand the purpose and the need for such features, the next step would be to consult with technology consultants to help you with the Build or Buy decision.
At the end of the day, prepping your HRTech stack for a whole new world of HR could mean different initiatives for different organizations. But the end goal would always be better HR, better humans, and better businesses.
References:
- https://ss-usa.s3.amazonaws.
com/c/308463326/media/ 29995f44b47bf40397105042862537 7/BigReset2020_v4.pdf - https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/insights/focus/technology-and-the-future-of-work/redefining-work-workforces-workplaces.html
- https://www.gartner.com/en/human-resources/insights/hr-technology-strategy
- https://www.marketwatch.com/story/work-from-home-tech-stocks-the-next-big-thing-or-shiny-new-object-2020-03-13
- https://webcdn.ultimatesoftware.com/static/pdf/miscellaneous/IDC-Technology-Spotlight-Unified-HR-for-Greater-Business-Value-3-2011.pdf
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PVikCyky6k
- https://www.sierra-cedar.com/wp-content/uploads/Sierra-Cedar_2019-2020_HRSystemsSurvey_WhitePaper.pdf
- https://www.toolbox.com/hr/future-work/articles/evaluate-hr-tech-post-covid-19/
- https://hrexecutive.com/solutions-and-strategies-to-ease-the-return-to-workplace/
- https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-ceos-guide-to-competing-through-hr
- https://www.mercer.com/our-thinking/career/performance-transformation-in-the-future-of-work.html
- https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/people-organisation/workforce-of-the-future/workforce-of-the-future-the-competing-forces-shaping-2030-pwc.pdf
Author Bio
| Jomy John is the AGM- Presales at Harbinger Systems. She has 15 years of experience in consultative sales, research and writing across different technology domains and industry verticals such as HRTech, eLearning, and Banking & Finance for customers across North America, Asia and Europe. Within Harbinger, Jomy has lead PreSales teams and has consulted various product development companies and enterprises for their technology needs and helped them to come up with short term and long term solutions. Her focus areas includes research and analysis in upcoming trends and challenges in the HR Technology space. She strongly advocates for Diversity and Inclusion, and also is a Regional Leader for Lean In, with a technology circle for women technology leaders in Pune, India. Visit https://harbinger-systems.com/ Connect Jomy John |
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