Introduction
With organizations trying to navigate the shifting industry scenario, talent has become a notable concern. Companies are constantly competing to attract the best talent and keep the best employees in an increasingly competitive labor market with widening skill gaps. Also, employees prefer a positive workplace focused on work-life balance and employee wellness, coupled with recognition, acknowledgment, and continuous feedback. Naturally, HR must offer a more holistic and meaningful employee experience powered by easy-to-use solutions and new HR technologies. Considering the past year, it is clear that workers are seeking employment within companies that are diverse. Along with also provide equal opportunities, harness a safe working environment and understand ways to improve the work-life experience, so it’s imperative that HR technology is best used to support these demands.
With 2019 being a year of transformative development and technological advancement, HR softwares are moving beyond its base functionality of benefits management, recruitment, time and attendance, professional development, and other standard features. Automation is that element that is primarily fusing HR innovations. With a lot of functions becoming digitalized, human involvement is noticeably decreasing.This is why professionals need to be on a constant lookout for the latest HR tech trends, adapt them to keep their companies at the forefront of innovation.
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Top HR Tech Trends
In a fast-changing corporate ecosystem, the HR function is required to continuously evolve by adapting to the latest technology. To solve this, the HR industry is looking up to technology to be the savior. As such, it is of very little surprise that the HR Tech industry is witnessing the most transformative phase it has seen in this decade. In the past years, digital HR management systems, have become highly-functional, making human resource management experience seamless and more productive.
During this amazing time of digital transformation, innovative HR solutions are set to take centre stage next year. We are highlighting the top digital HR trends that are believed to dominate 2019 and will help companies in making their HR function more productive and efficient with the help of technology.
Practical AI
It is said that if 2018 was the year where everyone talked about AI, 2019 will be the year of ‘practical AI’. With this being said, AI can be actually used to solve real problems that HR and talent leaders face daily. This will enable HR leaders to look at the technology very practically to find ways it can support their goals.AI-embedded HR technologies can also help companies improve the employee experience. The employee experience begins with the candidate experience, and AI enhances the entire employee lifecycle from recruiting through offboarding. AI assists businesses in treating their employees as well as candidates as their loyal customers.
One way to enhance company culture is to improve employee experience which leads to increased employee engagement. Through every advancement taking place, AI-driven technologies will definitely continue to improve and increase throughout the HR sector. For HR, this has a wide range of impacts; from better employee engagement to removing unconscious bias, from improving employee healthcare to streamlining recruitment, AI has a vast array of application areas. In fact, Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) can be embedded within new HR technologies, redefining every HR functionality.
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Remote Workforce
A study by the International Working Group (IWG) found that 70% of employees across the globe worked remotely every week in 2018, proving that remote working has entered the mainstream and is no longer considered an exception to certain job roles. This is supposed to take a front end in 2019. For this, technology has been a key enabler for organizations to spread out globally using a remote workforce. Thus drastically reducing the infrastructure costs and has helped access otherwise inaccessible talent. Remote working is also viewed as a huge employee and company benefit, top talent will be looking to work for companies that are keeping ahead of the times and offering this type of working schedule. Management authorities can take advantage of e-learning by learning to manage a remote team which will upskill profile.
This trend of remote working is only going to keep picking up. At the current rate, remote platforms will become preferable to face-to-face communication, owing to the additional capabilities they provide. As studies already indicate that this technology is useful in ensuring the productivity of remote workers, AI will help manage remote staff in a more organized manner helping them prioritize their workload and offer instant feedback. With software such as Slack, Asana and other HR cloud based platforms, remote working has been made easy to accommodate, which is great, as remote working has been shown to increase loyalty, productivity and boost brand reputation.
Augmented Analytics
The new class of smart software called augmented analytics promises to give HR and employee hiring professionals a more user-friendly way to analyze and draw conclusions from people’s data. An augmented analytics framework is capable of going through a firm’s data as well as analyze it, clean it and even convert these insights into actionable steps. All of this and more can be done with little or no supervision from a technology specialist.
This framework marks the next wave of innovation in the data and analytics market. Insights can be automated by using natural language generation and machine learning which is ultimately forms to be Augmented analytics.
With this novel trend, HR leaders will begin to build and scale their teams and they’ll increasingly need the help of data and insights on the fly to present to customers , business, and relevant stakeholders and help them with driving decision making at a fast rate.
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Talent Management
Companies are increasingly realizing the value of their employees and thus adopting the people-first approach to business. This has resulted in not just investment in good talent, but active support for both the personal and professional development of their employees. They are also using HR Tech to provide clarity to employees on how their contributions impact the business. This results in memorable employee experiences that lead to a drive for recruiting and retention. However, the most important change that is expected in this domain is that of performance ratings. The westwild process is supposedly going to be replaced by a dynamic goal setting, continuous performance check-ins, and crowdsourced feedback. Using this latest HR Tech, employers will be more active in pushing accountability down to the employees, valuing conversation over documentation, measuring iterative progress. This level of employee engagement paired with data analytics can help organizations access the roadblocks to make the workforce future-proof. This transition into a digital workforce is expected to solve the problem of employee retention.
Learning and Development
In the continuous process to create a digital workforce, learning and development will receive a huge boost. Employee training is aimed to get digital and the method of employees to involve themselves with L&D with the assistance of AR/VR solutions and AI will definitely be changed by technology. While L&D is specifically concerned with skills required on the job, several new initiatives offer it externally to candidates that identify themselves with interest in a career path, thereby helping companies identify and assess which candidates are committed to the path. Also to support this new trend, companies are now also developing their employees’ soft skills, such as emotional intelligence, collaboration, and negotiation. Thus enabling the employees to be completely developed for a working environment. Moreover, with a gamified L&D system, companies are trying to incentivize the online training experience for even the most jaded learner using badges, points, leaderboards and community involvement.
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Wearable Tech
The enterprise wearables market is predicted to be worth $18 billion by the end of the year. As per tech experts, human resources will be a big part of this growing proportion. It is expected that wearable devices are going to be used, more than ever for monitoring workplace health. For high-pressure and complex environments, this could have a huge impact.
There’s been talk about intelligent devices in recent years. For instance, the ideal workplace wearable would be one that could identify the optimum time to send a notification. It would study the behaviour and routines of the user, in order to learn the difference between setting up or preparing a task as well as operating a machine.
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Conclusion
When considering trends in human resources management, increased efficiency, ease of use and automation are the future. All of these features share a common goal of making the system as user-friendly as possible. It is understood that the bottom line benefits from a diverse, engaged and mentally, physically, and financially healthy workforce. Ultimately, the actual goal of HR employees is to seamlessly blend the human skills with all the emerging technology. This thus creates the perfect combination of work place experience that fits the working world for all working in the organization.
Looking at all the top listed trends, it can be surely said that HR solutions that benefit employees are on the rise. In 2019, technology is envisaged to make HR teams more productive in many ways. Implementing these HR tech strategies will make the life of the HR department easier and ensure that the organization stays ahead of its competitors.
