HR Trends In The Digital Age

Many core functions of HR vary in intricacy and often overlap or connect, especially when it comes to the data required to execute them. This has made HR technology solutions very in-demand.

A recent PwC survey of no less than 600 HR and HR IT leaders across six continents shows that up to 74% plan on spending more than the $310/year per employee already deployed on HR tech. Attracting and retaining talent and developing recruits’ potential, influence as much as 58% and 43% of HR technology decisions respectively. Additionally approximately $148 billion is now present in the HR cloud solutions market.

Below are some of the key trends (both old and new) commonly adopted in three core HR functions in the digital era to boost efficiency and realize other desired goals:

Hiring

Targeted Advertising

With the advent of social media and other online professional platforms, job advertisers have transcended individual publishers, creating ads that will only be seen by people that fit their hiring criteria.

An employer can put out communication about a vacancy knowing well who it is reaching in regard to age bracket, marital status, gender and many other attributes.

Beyond the basic ad functions on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MeetUp posts, recruiters can also follow public threads by communities of like-minded professionals on messenger based-apps like Slack and knowledge-sharing sites like Quora.  This allows them to pick from a niche pool of candidates.

Refined Applicant Tracking

Applicant Tracking Systems have been widely adopted in collecting resumes, with software like Shortlist Connect helping hundreds of companies sift through multiple applications for shortlisting based on criteria presets.

Additional automation in products such as the cloud-based Oracle Taleo, Bullhorn, SmartRecruiters and ApplicationStack assist HR departments in automating supplementary communication to applicants in various stages of hiring, simplifying pre-screening and interview scheduling through self-service interfaces.

Remote Interviewing

The applicant pools for several jobs are now more commonly comprised of candidates in several geographical locations making organizing of face-to-face interviews something that delays the hiring process. Video interviews have therefore replaced some of the preliminary stages of selecting employees.

Applications like Skype, Zoom and WebEx for live conversations and skeeled for pre-recorded interviews, can be used to establish whether a potential employee is willing to move across state lines or make cultural adjustments requisite for a particular job, before face-to-face meetings.

Semantic Search Technology

Common searches like the Boolean one relying on keywords often times produce results similar to casting a fishing net the catches any random water creatures. A semantic search goes beyond giving results that just fit a generic description.

Tools like Monster Power Resume, TextKernel’s Search! and TalentSquare’s search engine will for instance, help an employer find a coder who’s proficient in “Java”, but also likely to be a good long-term fit for their organization, by gauging context where language is lacking in a resume.

On-boarding

New employees tend to create a lot of work for HR. Gathering compliance-related documentation like tax forms, distributing instructional materials (manuals, handbooks, presentations & talking head videos) and training on use of internal communication networks among other activities require meticulous tracking.

Software tools such as Organimi simplify creation of organizational hierarchy charts to help new recruits understand the different people they report to on different matters, a function that is also impressively executed by the slackbot feature in the cloud-messenger app, Slack, along with assigning tasks to their respective performers.

Lessonly, facilitates delivery of educational materials, going beyond tutorials to support revisiting of completed lessons during their tenure, while Scoro and SentricHR enable support working with remote teams and improving employee-manager engagement respectively.

After training of new hires, employers need to determine whether their prevailing training programs are effective. TalentSoft, 15Five and OfficeVibe all facilitate gathering feedback from participants, with TalentSoft supporting training budget handling.

Appraisal

Many organizations operate with set objectives which evolve overtime, creating variations in the targets of different departments like marketing and sales.

HR is required to evaluate employees’ performance/productivity relative to criteria that goes beyond generics like punctuality and teamwork to product units sold, new client accounts brought in and billable hours.

Software tools come in handy particularly in handling performance appraisal data, whether collected through interviews or automated methods like digital logs generated from point of sales terminal software or data entry dashboards.

With products like BizMerlin and Impraise, rating can be performed with confidentiality options, definition of review templates and automated reminders available.

Are you leveraging the HR trends in the digital age?

All in all, the digital era continues to transform the field of human resources in ways that are beneficial but also challenging to the supply of opportunities.

Let the professionals at ASB Resources guide you in identifying how to apply the various digital technologies available in the field of modern HR. Schedule a call with one of our experts today!