HR is no more only a person, designation, or function of an organization. It is no more a fundamental activity where human beings are employed. Today, it is about people management, employee experience, and organizational effectiveness. With technology, it has evolved to become an all-in-one portal that provides all services with minimum hassle. The HR applications embedded on websites and downloadable apps have changed the way organizations deliver HR services. The roles, practices, and processes have undergone a drastic transformation. Automation and sophisticated HR software tools are now the new faces of HR. With these tools, the human resource departments have become more agile, smarter, and focused on their actual roles and responsibilities rather than being occupied with incessant paperwork.
Organizations that haven’t adopted the HR tech need to rethink their existing HR processes and policies. Organizations that face high attrition rates, slower HR processes, below-average employee satisfaction rates, and slower growth need to optimize their HR processes with modern tools to remain competitive.
This article elaborates the major human resource management areas, modules, and workflows that organizations can optimize with the right HR technology and tools.
Major HR Processes that Can be Optimized with the HR Tech:
HR tech has become more relevant during the remote and hybrid work transitions. In fact, 90% of the HR leaders plan to increase investment in HR tech even amidst the pandemic. There is no dearth of activities that cannot be optimized by HR tech. Almost all functions, workflows, and operational activities can be streamlined and optimized using modern HR management tools.
Let us see the major areas optimized by the HR tech:
Workforce Planning
The workforce planning process includes addressing gaps in the current workforce, anticipating scenarios such as absences, resignations, strikes, and keeping the optimal number of employees on board. Workforce planning is critical for strategic growth and saving costs associated with unmatched workforces. Optimizing the workforce planning process with HR software tools can help organizations save time and money.
Areas Optimized by HR tools:
- Identifying processes that consume maximum time
- Eliminating waste or duplicate processes
- Talent management
- Succession planning
- Workforce demand forecasting
- Monitoring staff capacity utilization levels
Recruitment:
Recruitment decisions are one of the most challenging decisions that HR managers make. Hiring people comes with huge costs and risks. A significant amount of time is therefore spent on this activity. Sourcing, shortlisting, test administration, referral gathering, background checks, etc., are the most time-consuming recruitment workflows. HR managers also need to ensure that that workforce remains diverse. HR tech can mitigate many challenges involved in recruitment and make the process shorter, scalable, intuitive, and lean. HR tech also provides more scope for recruiting a diverse workforce. Organizations can use recruiting software to optimize the below processes.
Areas optimized by HR Tech:
- Recruitment costs per hire by saving time, resources and scaling the hiring process
- Reduction in time cycle for hiring with automated processes
- Reaching more applicants per cycle with automated emails, integrations with job portals, and global reach
- Increasing applicant convenience by allowing application online
- Reduction in paperwork with electronic forms, letters, etc.
- Eliminating communication gap with applicants with automated emails, notifications, messages
- Automated recruitment test administration to eliminate third-party test service dependence
Training and Development:
Timely training employees and fostering their skills are key to employee retention, engagement, and increased efficiency in the work profile. HRs need to map the employees’ current skillsets, competencies, and personal traits to identify skill gaps and development opportunities. Creating a training program, budget, scheduling training, etc., are major workflows in training and development activity. HR software helps organizations stay on top of everything by streamlining the training process with an integrated LMS (Learning management system).
Areas Optimized by HR Tech:
- Reducing training costs by training more employees with online training methods
- Eliminating the need for trainer’s physical presence and saving travel costs
- Training employees at different locations simultaneously through an online training portal
- Providing learning flexibility by recorded training sessions, self-learning modules
- Tracking learning progress with metrics and progress analysis
- Increase learner engagement with modern course design and techniques such as blended learning, WBT (web-based learning), Gamification, AR/VR simulation, etc.
Performance Management
Performance management has a high impact on employees’ morale, career aspirations, and work integrity. Performance management is not only important for the recognition of achievements but also for identifying improvement areas. However, keeping performance appraisals unbiased, accurate, and justified is not easy. There are tons of metrics that need to be monitored before organizations can proceed with this activity. HRs need to find out answers such as whether the employees are feeling valued or not? If there is a team culture? What kind of commitment employees display towards their work? Employees progress metrics and individual contributions etc. Organizations can use performance management software to manage the performance appraisal life cycle without hassle.
Areas Optimized by HR applications:
- Automating the collection of performance data, implementing performance appraisal mechanism, and allowing employees to track their performance metrics
- Eliminating non-critical factors and bias, reducing errors, and factoring achievements, and evaluating incidents on a case-by-case basis
- Providing employees access to self-assessment and feedback modules via the portal
Compensation Management:
Compensation plans include allocation of bonuses, gratuity, strategic awards, equity grants, overtime pay, etc. For smooth daily operations, establishing compensation policies, approval hierarchies, and audit trails for compensations is essential. However, this can become more complicated when compensations must be provided in multiple currencies for globally recruited employees. Therefore, HRs need to devise a system for accurate and weighted compensation. With HR software tools, HRs can set up a robust compensation module across their organization.
Areas Optimized by HR software.
- Designing and implementing compensation policies,
- Automating payroll with job evaluation functionality
- Salary and employee benefits planning
Globalization has integrated the world economies like never before. Many organizations are venturing into markets that were unpenetrated till now by them. The success of such endeavors largely rests on the capabilities of HRs who can streamline the internationalization process effectively. The HR tools help HR professionals to customize compensation packages for global employees, assist in overseas training, and provide modules for compliance with international labor laws. HRM readily diversifies to meet the requirements even for businesses that operate in multiple locations or businesses that envision disruptive changes. For example, strategic HRM is becoming a prime catalyst for the growth of organizations with a long-term approach. Technology is aligning HRM with the strategic and functional needs of competitive organizations.
Wrapping Up:
Optimizing time-consuming processes with automation frees HR departments to focus on more value-oriented work. However, for intelligent automation to work effectively, selecting and implementing the right HR tech is critical. Investing in the best HR software is ubiquitous to optimize your human resource management.
Author Bio:
James Mordy is a content writer for GoodFirms (a leading Software research company). A voracious reader, an avid researcher, a logophile, and a tech geek, he loves to write about the latest technologies shaping the world. He often articulates the very nuances of the tech world in his blogs. In his free time, he loves to watch movies and analyze global stock markets.
