2020 tested our grit and determination but the pandemic is far from over in 2021. What changed significantly was the way we function and interact. From digital transformation, the entire world went into digital acceleration mode making a digital-first, remote work a necessity rather than an alternative.
And like everyone else, HR too was unprepared to handle a sudden gear change to complete remote work and digitally managing employee lifecycles. A few misses that shattered the employee experience were:
-
- Knee jerk reactions to let go of employees in anticipation of future losses
- Increasing work hour demands from employers on stressed-out employees trying to balance work and home.
- Setting up remote work protocols as a challenge for many as there was no or limited remote work practice in the organization
- Collaboration and emotional challenges of working in a remote work environment.
These issues not only caused setbacks to the organizational goals but also diminished employee confidence in the testing times.
As the digital acceleration continues, the organizations are banking on HR Tech for a seamless employee experience. Let’s see how HR Tech can drive this change.
5 Ways HR Tech Can Streamline the Fragmented Employee Experience
With organizations and employees adjusting to the new normal; the HR function now has a strategic role to play in 2021 and beyond. Armed with the right HR Tech, a digitized HR can reimagine people management and performance management, talent acquisition and retention, employee upskilling, and employee wellness. The way forward in 2021 is to prioritize employee experience and rethink HR practices from the perspective of the new normal.
The silver lining in the pandemic times is that organizations are now more open to the idea of work from anywhere. This makes a digital-first, cloud-based HR a key driver in a fragmented work environment. You now not only need the automated processes but also efficient solutions that unify digital touchpoints of your employees to enable an agile, flexible, yet cohesive workplace.
Let’s talk about how HR Tech can streamline the fragmented employee experience this year.
1. People management and employee engagement with cloud-based HR
Managing employees to understand their skills and pain points and to engage them have been a focal point for HR to drive productivity. People management becomes crucial especially when employees cannot be ‘seen‘. In a scattered workplace, it is now even more difficult to gauge employees’ problem areas and anticipate their requirements. Add to that the HR has to balance between organizational goals of reducing costs and meeting employee expectations. Now is the time to enable employees and HR Tech can help them achieve the desired productivity.
Cloud-based collaboration and productivity tools can empower employees to work collaboratively. With cloud-based tools in place, employees can connect in real-time, have better control over their data, and seamlessly collaborate with peers. It also enables HR to track and efficiently manage people in real-time.
This year we expect to see investment in HR Tech that engages employees to maximize their productivity and enables HR to hire, manage, track, and create a balanced workforce.
2. Continuous performance management
Employee performance management is as important for the organizations as it is for the employees’ career paths. Performance management will see a significant shift from annual cycles to continuous performance monitoring. This will not only help employees be noticed and feel relevant but also get timely feedbacks to adjust their sails and better their performance.
Performance management software brings together employee information, work inputs across projects, engagement, etc. in one place to not only evaluate but also predict an employee’s performance to drive timely actions. A data-backed approach to performance management can link employee performance to the business unit’s performance and in turn company performance. The right tools can help you better manage internal communications with your teams and align them with the organizational goals. The continuous performance appraisal not only boosts employee productivity and inches you closer to your organization goals, but it also helps groom employees, heightens employee engagement, and retain them.
3. Virtual recruitment and onboarding
If we have to continue working in the new normal, we will have to reinvent current recruitment and onboarding practices. Virtual onboardingOpens a new window and recruitment are some of the most challenging tasks for HR because the employees may feel disconnected and a little less enthusiastic to join your company. But on a positive side it can help you tap into a global workforce and prioritize employee health and safety in the time of the pandemic. In an increasingly agile and remote environment, the focus now is on recruiting a talented and skilled workforce, irrespective of time-zone or location. The cloud-based HR solutions can enable an organization to juggle with different work solutions – full-time, flex-time, remote or telecommuting, contract and gig-workers, and much more. While the workforce planning tools can help you build a healthy mix of regular and contractual workforce and balance organization costs.
HR tech can help you in diverse ways to streamline the virtual onboarding and hiring process. Many solutions offer analytics that can match skills and job roles for you to reach out to potential employees. These tools can enable employee referrals, which can help bring in like-minded people together. Employee referrals make new employees feel more comfortable as they already know someone in the organization.
4. Training, retraining, and upskilling
The new normal requires everyone to upskill and retrain themselves to better align with the changing requirements post the pandemic. It is important to have online learning and development programs that can enable employees to stay in tune with the latest technology and trends and upskill themselves to be more productive and efficient.
Data-driven, analytics powered HR tech can help you craft personalized learning programs based on employees’ interest, skillsets, and future aspirations. You can not only earn loyalty but also prepare employees to be well-prepared and perform better in times of uncertainty. HR tech can help you bring in learning management systems to better structure learning programs and track employee success in gaining new skills. Employees can be better engaged if they can participate in virtual discussions, resource sharing, and learn through gamification.
5. Employee wellness
Employee wellness is crucial in these tough times, especially when there is a limited physical connection with the outside world. No more coffee breaks or company parties makes employees’ lives dull and mundane. Add to that the lack of physical activity because of working from ‘bed’. This impacts employees’ overall health. Thus, an integrated approach to employee physical, mental, and emotional wellness is paramount.
HR Tech can help organize virtual happy hours or parties on online meeting portals or host watch parties for employees to relax and connect. A shift to an asynchronous communication model where an employee can respond at her own pace can help them maintain a work-life balance. A host of medical software are available for virtual consults with the doctors which can be roped in to help them with their health problems. In the future, HR Tech can be integrated with health tools and employee wearables to send them reminders like a water break or 10 minutes walk to ensure physical well-being.
AI-Driven HR Tech for Enhanced Employee Experience
HR tech is more than automation. Artificial Intelligence is slowly making inroads in the HR space. With employee data at disposal, AI-powered HR Tech can help you streamline employee experience. With AI-enabled HR, the organizations can
-
- create a customized career plan for employees
- personalize their learning and development programs based on employee interests and how well they align with the organization
- better understand employee needs by using relevant data to understand their pain points
- pair employees with the right projects and the right teams
- match job roles, locations, and skills for AI-driven recruitments
- use chat bots to solve everyday employee problems
Wrapping Up
HR Tech can help your organization and employees stay agile and adapt to the uncertainty that we carry forward in 2021. With the right solutions in place, you can anticipate your employees’ future needs of resources, tools, and training. HR Tech can help you create a more human and cohesive work environment by empowering employees to collaborate, scale up their efforts, and be more productive. It can help you monitor their engagement and performance to manage them and better align with the organizational goals. AI-driven HR tech can help you be creating meaningful and relevant experiences by placing them in the right roles and crafting customized career paths and learning programs from them. A cloud-based HR solution can help seamlessly bring together a global, scattered workforce in a remote yet connected work place.
How did HR Tech help you bring together a scattered work-force in 2020? What is your strategy to better your efforts in 2021?Share your thoughts with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window .