No matter what industry you’re in, the old saying is true: your employees are your greatest and most essential asset. That means that your human resources department is responsible for not just managing your employees, but also has a great influence on your bottom line. This makes your HR department not just a smart investment, but a mandatory one.
You should keep an eye out on the latest developments in the field, because things are changing fast in HR. In a report published last month, Josh Bersin described how the focus of HR technology is changing in 2018. He highlighted the 10 most notable disruptions to come:
1. The focus shifts from automation to productivity
HR automation is no longer a foreign concept to any business, especially beyond a certain size. Things like online payroll, record-keeping, interview and hiring, assessment, compensation are now business as usual – so what’s the next big step in HR evolution?
Productivity. Companies are now working on HR software that can help teams counteract employee burnout while increasing focus and engagement. Businesses need software that will help people navigate the overwhelming nature of the digital workplace and its many different messaging and alert systems.
2. The cloud is no longer a matter of “if”…
… but a matter of “when” and “how”. It’s safe to say that cloud-based HR has become all the rage in the last few years. Still, while the cloud HR and payroll system is a critical system for any business, it can be replaced. According to Bersin, only about 40% of companies are currently using cloud human capital management (HCM) solutions, most likely because the migration often takes 2-3 years or even longer. Furthermore, most companies are focusing on talent and team management software.
3. Continuous performance management is the key to transformation
End-of year reviews are stressful for employees and require managers to discuss the work performance over one year in an hour-long meeting. In short, it’s a hassle for everyone involved and has little value when it comes to receiving and implementing feedback. It’s time to build a new, ongoing process for goal setting, coaching, evaluation, and feedback.
More than 70 percent of the companies in Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report said they are reinventing the performance management process in their organizations. Most leading ERP vendors are working on the tools needed for this transformation, but a fast-growing set of exciting new tools has also entered the market, including Alliance Enterprises, 7Geese, HighGround, Impraise, Small Improvements, TINYpulse, and others.
4. Feedback, pulse survey, and analytics tools are booming
To implement continuous feedback effectively, organizations need a set of tools that facilitate continuous listening, which goes well beyond annual surveys. Smallish vendors are working hard to build easy-to-use yet sophisticated platforms to help managers and employees collect feedback, pulse survey data, and open-ended comments quickly.
These offerings will likely be open-ended data systems similar to the systems companies currently use to measure customer interactions. Well-run companies now understand that in a sense, employees are more important than customers— because when employees are managed effectively, customers tend to be happier.
5. Corporate learning is being reinvented
Companies are rapidly adopting new learning platforms, including “experience platforms,” a new breed of “micro-learning platforms,” modernized LMS systems, and new AI-based systems to recommend learning, find learning, and deliver learning. Virtual reality is also becoming a viable learning tool.
These tools are able to not only deliver learning content, but also curation, tracking, recommendations, and AI-based prescriptive learning. Vendors such as Axonify, Grovo, Qstream, Practice, Blackboard, Fuse, and many others are building what we used to call delivery systems—products that let you take various content and arrange it so it’s spaced out, organized, and delivered exactly as learners want it.
The focus is clearly shifting from what employees have to learn to what they consider they need and want to learn – delivered the way they want it. Furthermore, they can also contribute by posting their own videos and evaluating their colleagues.
Virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) are going to be big in the learning and performance support market. From crowded stores to dangerous construction sites, these technologies can replicate pretty much any challenging context that employees need to practice, offering solutions to big, real-world training problems.
6. The Recruiting Market is Changing – Fast
Some companies still think recruiting is as simple as applicant tracking: posting jobs, capturing resumes, scoring applicants, and then interviewing and hiring. Today, recruiting is actually far broader and quite complex and consists of:
- Building an employment brand, reaching out to universities and talent networks, and creating a network of alumni who speak well about your company
- Recruiting candidates into your network, candidate marketing, building talent pools, and communicating with these prospects as they think about changing jobs
- Job posting, job advertising, building a compelling career site, and hiring contingent recruiters or gig networks to find people
- Strategic and direct sourcing, which typically involves recruiters or smart software systems finding and reaching out to possible candidates, identifying passive candidates, and selling candidates on the company
- Onboarding and orientation
This complex process is the reason why the recruitment software market is the most dynamic and exciting space in HR tech today. Most of the big, legacy platforms have still not been modernized, but many disruptive players are trying to grab a slice of the recruiting market, including HireVue, SuccessFactors, and Entelo. These providers offer features such as a video-based assessment system that can literally read candidates faces and assess their honesty and the quality of their answers (HireVue) and a series of candidate and interviewing tools designed to improve diversity and reduce discrimination (SuccessFactors).
7. Employee wellbeing is becoming big
The market for wellbeing tools and solutions is big, complex, and not yet clear. Health insurance has become fairly widespread, but employers are now pushing preventative measures that are meant to keep employees active and healthy, rather than treating any medical problems that might occur. Over time, the focus of these programs has shifted from reducing insurance costs to actually helping employees perform better, engage with their colleagues, and contribute to a positive company culture.
The HR technology market now offers numerous tools, platforms, training programs, and analytics systems designed to measure, monitor, and improve our wellbeing at work. Wearables are a big part of such initiatives, since they can help monitor employee activity and wellness, and even facilitate various competitive programs meant to motivate employees to get into shape.
Large companies such as Oracle are already offering wellbeing solutions embedded in new releases of their software. Independent solutions are also being developed by Virgin Pulse, Castlight Health, Limeade, and many others.
8. The people analytics market is now grown and mature
It’s now known that whoever holds data holds power, so naturally, your workforce data should be of paramount importance. Consequently, people analytics has come out of the shadows and is now a mainstream part of HR and business itself. Every major HR platform provider now has a Big Data cloud service, a set of embedded analytics dashboards, and many advanced reports to help predict attrition, identify bias, and segment the workforce.
New solutions such as Visier (a product that can literally integrate all your HR data into one powerful analytics environment), Cornerstone OnDemand HR Suite (a system that integrates heterogeneous HR data), allow you to bring together all your employee data into one place, so you can easily get meaningful insights.
The bottom line is that sound people analytics is now a must-have. Organizations that fall behind in their ability to hire, manage, and develop analytics practitioners effectively will suffer.
9. Intelligent self-service, communications, and employee experience tools
In today’s HR technology environment perhaps the most important new market is the fast-growing need for self-service, employee experience platforms. These fast-changing systems bring case management, document management, employee communications, and help-desk interactions all into one integrated architecture.
This is a new and exciting market. Vendors are offering smart chatbots (focused on a single domain), intelligent agents, and amazingly fun games that make training, expense reporting, time tracking, and almost every other HR function easy.
10. HR departments themselves are becoming disruptors
Today’s HR teams are quickly innovating by experimenting with new performance management models, new learning strategies, new ways to reduce bias, and new techniques to recruit and coach people. They’re no longer waiting on vendors to create software that they can use – they’re figuring out their own processes and then looking for software that accommodates them.
While we tried to sum up these trends, we still encourage you to read the full report if you’re interested in staying ahead of the curve when it comes to HR. These technologies will not only help you stay competitive on the job market and improve your employees’ performance, but they will also become essential tools in the very near future.
