Modern-day businesses operate in a cutthroat competitive environment. Organisations strive tirelessly to cut through the white noise and accelerate growth. The secret to business growth and prosperity is deeply rooted in hard work, consistency, and adaptability. Companies today have understood the criticality of hiring and retaining talent- people who have the ability to meet dynamic workplace needs.
A skilled team is critical to an organisation’s growth. HR’s expertise can profoundly help companies to create a positive employee experience that enables them to retain the best talent. A robust HR department can play a crucial role in creating a company culture that promotes continuous learning, emphasises employee engagement, and empowers employees with the right tools and skills.
HR happens to be the collaborative hub of the entire organisation. HR interacts with all silos, disciplines, and departments. They are the key entity that aligns workplace practices with the company culture. Progressive companies are leveraging state-of-the-art human resource technology to quickly adapt to evolving requirements. Automation is transforming the HR department wherein paper trails have been replaced with digital systems and more workloads can be transpired through a single interface.
Incorporating HR technology can help companies to nurture employees by eliminating manual processes and streamlining all HR functions under one roof. Rather than depending on different technical systems, human resource technology is enabling greater collaboration and efficient communication across all verticals.
Nurturing the talent:
Business leaders recognize the necessity of nurturing employees to achieve their business goals. Happy and content employees work harder and improve their personal productivity by 12%. Inversely, unhappy employees can bring down productivity by as much as 10%. A healthy working environment that embraces strategic practices such as fair salaries, flexibility, transparency, incentives, career prospects, etc can significantly improve employee retention and employee engagement.
Nurturing talent starts at the recruitment stage. Companies need to have a solid hiring strategy that attracts the right applicants who are aware of the brand and are aligned with the company culture. Everyone in the hiring process including hiring managers and recruiters must establish and follow a standardised process to reduce the likelihood of a bad hire. Job descriptions and job postings across all channels must be tailored to the specifications of the qualities/skills that the position requires. This small step can help HR to build a more qualified pool of talent.
A robust, streamlined onboarding process can improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%. According to a 2015 Brandon Hall Group research, companies without an established onboarding structure are more likely to lose the new hires in the first year itself. HR can create a role-specific onboarding checklist to ensure a smoother transition and scale the hiring process infinitely.
As an agent of communication between employees and management, HR can conduct regular individual reviews, employee satisfaction surveys, and group discussions to gather feedback about every aspect of the business. This feedback can inform management about the changes employees seek and design solutions to mitigate dissatisfaction. HR acts as a culture advocate who ensures that everyone in the company follows policies and procedures. When organisations grow and scale their operations, HRs ensures that the company’s working culture also evolves. HR leaders play a very important role in shaping and nurturing the brand values as well as the corporate culture.
The HR department also spearheads the upskill strategy of the workforce. They are responsible for constructing a skills gap assessment to ensure that the right people are promoted to the right roles. Under the purview of HR, organisations can deploy technological tools to deliver leadership development and communication courses to managers and help them triumph. Organisations that support and help managers succeed, drive better growth than those who don’t. It also attracts more qualified candidates to the company.
In progressive companies, HR undertakes cost-effective team building activities to create a more engaged and collaborative workforce. Although a minute task, these activities are designed specifically to create a positive work environment where employees are supportive of each other. Mentoring and nurturing the workforce can improve interdepartmental communication and collaboration, benefiting both the company and individuals.
The role of technology in human resource:
HR technology is transforming how companies manage their workforce, upscale their productivity while reducing operational cost and administrative errors. Advanced technology is allowing enhanced retention of new hire and top-performing employees as well as providing support in management and administration work.
Organisations have a variety of HR technology and tools at their disposal. The 3 primary types of HR technology are:
- AI– AI algorithms automates the end-to-end hiring process by analysing the labour market, matching job specifications with candidate skills, and creating elaborate, accurate job descriptions for job postings.
- Learn management systems (LMS)– LMS is a framework that facilitates the storage, distribution, and tracking of all learning and/or training content of the company to relevant employees.
- Self service technology– AI-powered self service platforms allows employees to access HR information 24X7. It could be queries related to healthcare policies, company holiday, or updating personal information.
6 contributions of HR technology to company growth:
- Faster hiring process- HR technology can optimise the hiring process to ensure critical positions are filled promptly. An empty position is a liability for the company because it reduces productivity and profits. AI can help HR teams to comb through endless mounds of applications and select potential candidates befitting the job postings. An application tracking system can help track, manage, and communicate with a huge number of applicants. This saves time and ensures positions are filled quickly.
- Easier scheduling and staff management- Scheduling applications can help managers to define staffing needs and manage all scheduling needs. Efficiently managing the workforce is a critical function of HR that directly impacts productivity. HR technology can enable organisations to track, manage, and record employee attendance and ensure that positions are adequately staffed at all times.
- Better performance appraisals and assessment process- Performance appraisals and ongoing assessments can be automated with the help of HR tools. Managers can set reminders for personal conversations with employees to provide them much needed feedback as well as encourage them to provide 360 degree feedback about the company. Managers can send out forms to all employees to gather insights about various policies and processes.
- Simplify administration processes- The right application can allow managers to oversee scheduling, time approvals, and requested paid leaves through a single interface. This reduces time engagement of managers and simplifies administrative processes. Instead managers can spend time on more critical tasks.
- Improve oversight and compliance- HR technology allows companies to set up alerts for specific requirements such as overtime budget and automate the monitoring process. This eliminates the need to manually monitor employees’ logged-in hours as well as reduces room for error.
- Better forecasting- Most of these human resource tools come with in-built analytics. These tools collect data over time and enable companies to identify recurring patterns. This is beneficial for financial forecasting as staff performance is a key element of a company’s growth strategy. HR technology provides insights into essential staff metrics, which allows managers to make right decisions that will help the organisation grow.
In conclusion,
HR leaders can guide companies to build inclusive, collaborative workspaces that embody the company’s structure, hierarchy, and culture. HR plays a vital role in fostering champions with leadership skills and retaining the best talents in the organisation. HR tools can complement HR leaders to build and manage teams, extract the best performance out of them, and contribute to the overall productivity and growth of the company.