HR Technology Predictions: Sustain The New-Age Digital Transformation with Your Employees

Digital Transformation is a fiercely-chased competitive process for all modern businesses. Most transformational gurus pitch for “customer experience and personalized journeys’ as one way to achieve holistic digital maturity. That’s the obvious and most-preferred route that most businesses are ought to take. However, that’s not the only route.

We have interviewed a handful of unique widely-acclaimed leaders in the industry who propose starting the journeys into Digital Transformation with their own organizations first. We identified the recent Human Resource Technology (HR Technology) trends that are enabling business leaders to deliver on Digital Transformation objectives. Every emerging tech is converging at the base-level of doing business, enabling employees and decision-makers to manage organizational goals together, and with unmatched agility.

Source: McKinsey & Company

In this article, you can learn about the top business leaders making their first set of HR Technology predictions for 2020.

The common binder in these HR Technology predictions – “Keeping your employees digitally active may provide just the right amount of push to grow and sustain your objectives from building a powerful transformational story for your business.”

Digital Transformation Pivots on HR Technology

Every business unit can showcase its unique ability at the workplace by pivoting its operations on HR Technology. 

Yes, digitization is intensifying, and therefore, every human element in the journey needs to adapt to the change.

Technology is an enabler in every digital journey. But, companies are shifting focus to humans and their ability to make machines smarter and efficient in managing various tasks, interactions, and information retrieval.

IBM’s report found out that leading companies report their people, processes, products, services, and technologies set them apart. Their operating models include responsiveness, innovation, and brand and market reputation focus, all while providing consistent outcomes. And, human-machine interaction is the central cog in driving change.

According to Microsoft’s EVP and President, Microsoft Global Sales, Marketing & Operations, Jean-Philippe Courtois, “Organizations are ‘at risk’ if they’re not already demonstrating effective use of technology and robust digital-first strategies to power people’s experience of the business.”

According to HR Director at Microsoft Australia, Ingrid Jenkins, “Transformation is underpinned by a digital mindset that is a unique interplay of technology, people, and process, and technology can also be used to vastly improve HR processes for employees and managers, resulting in a snowball effect of positivity and paving the way for even greater digital transformation within a business”.

According to a recent TCS report on “Business 4.0 principles“, technology is enabling various organizations in adopting four specific behaviors and deliver better business outcomes. These are:

• Mass personalization, marketed to unique customers and industries
• Monetized data, scaled to meet changing market demands and create exponential value for all stakeholders
• Collaboration and Partnerships, to create new opportunities in the ecosystem via product innovations, developments, and talent sourcing
• Risk management and preparedness

Recommended: 5 Ways Artificial Intelligence is Reinventing HR Technology

AI Will Improve Employee Productivity

Jeremy Reymer, Founder and CEO of DriverReach, an applicant tracking system built specifically for the CDL industry says –

“In the recruitment process, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Automation (IA) will dramatically improve productivity, assisting HR teams by eliminating mundane workflow tasks, ultimately accelerating the hiring process. Not only will continued technology development and implementation improve the recruitment cycle by automating regulatory and compliance-related tasks, but AI also ensures HR teams are maximizing candidate touchpoints in the most effective manner possible. As a result, technology, such as applicant tracking systems, creates better conversations with prospective employees.”

UJET‘s CEO and Founder, Anand Janefalkar said, “In 2020, AI will dramatically improve the employee experience (EX). The ability to automatically and instantly collect data from across multiple channels, analyze it and provide actionable insight will enable support agents to more quickly, easily and accurately address customer inquiries and come to highly satisfactory issue resolution.”

UJET is a leading provider of customer support communications and solutions.

Natural Language Programming (NLP), An Able-Ally to AI-based HR Tech Operations

Doug Dennerline, CEO at Betterworks says –

“AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) can be used to create powerful visualizations that HR and business leaders can drill down into to identify areas of focus. And, Betterworks is working hard to be on the bleeding edge of applying these advances to the HR Tech space. We think HR leaders need to become more focused on business results. Our best customers are ones were an informed CEO who understands the importance of her or his people working with an HR leader who is focused on business results and using continuous performance management and coaching to help achieve those results.”

With Enterprise AI coming with full-force to transform various industries already, we can expect this HR Technology prediction to become a reality very soon.

According to a joint Altimeter-Prophet report, companies are investing significantly in training and development to modernize employees’ skillsets for the digital economy. However, only about half are investing in new digital talent.

Read More: AiThority Interview with Dr. Satya Ramaswamy, Executive Vice President at Mindtree

Despite knowing that employee experience is a key element in Digital Transformation journeys, businesses either continue to give it a miss or don’t do enough.

HR Technology Prediction on Making Digital Credentials as a Currency

Jonathan Finklestein, CEO of Credly, the leader in digital credentials says –

“While we don’t know everything the future of work will bring, we do know that many major workforce trends are supported by credentials.

Digital credentials provide individuals the ability to trade on the currency of their skills in a way that is portable, verified, and provides a context of their knowledge and abilities. Employers that are fluent in digital credentials are well-positioned to make their hiring practices more efficient and effective. To adapt to the evolving labor market, verified digital credentials will be the currency of our workforce in 2020.”

Cognizant stated that 16% of the total revenue should be set aside to drive Digital Transformation. Organizations need to understand the likely impact of their investments on costs, revenues and profits to plot the most effective digital strategy.

Employee Communications: SMS and Virtual Meetings for Internal Communication

Matt Reid, CMO of EZ Texting, the leader in SMS Marketing software for business says –

“Open communication with employees continues to have appeal. In 2020, companies will begin texting their employees for everything from hiring updates to office closures. Texting is a great method of outreach for customer service, and if you think of employees as customers, texting becomes another way to easily, effectively communicate with them.”

Are You Socially Acceptable as a Company? The Rise of Comprehensive Social Strategies and Brand Presence

Matt Thomas, President of WorkSmart Systems says –

“Within the past two years, we have seen an increase in HR departments implementing recruitment marketing into their talent acquisition strategy. With the advancement of technology, the majority of today’s candidates are searching online to find vacant positions. As we head into 2020, we will see a rise in organizations building a more comprehensive social strategy and brand presence to attract job candidates.”

WorkSmart is a Certified Professional Employer Organization (CPEO) providing small to medium-size employers with an integrated Human Resources solution.

Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) Will Help Speed Up The Hiring Process

Nina Cofer, Product Marketing Manager at BreezyHR says – 

“Hiring teams will be able to set a particular hiring process in motion and only need to have interactions with candidates themselves rather than software. Automated tasks can be programmed through recruiting platforms, applicant tracking software, and more. This will help recruiters sift through resumes faster, identifying qualified candidates easier, and reduce any hiring bias that can interfere in the hiring process.”

Currently, BreezyHR provides small to medium businesses with feature-rich, intuitive and user-friendly recruitment software.

Recommended: Jumpstart Your Tech Journey With These CES 2020 Updates

Make Way for Digital-First, Employee-Best Approach

How to start your Digital Transformation journey? You can start by training every employee as your best resource. This would help them to become digital-natives in the company. The various human resources based on their ability to work with machines and technologies.

These new-age technologies are:

• Marketing and Sales Technology
• Mobile and Enterprise Communications
• AI and Machine Learning
• Voice and Chatbots
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
• Big Data and Cloud Computing
• Analytics-based Knowledge Management
• Social Media and Threat Perception/Predictions
• Cyber Intelligence

Business leaders have two options to make their first choice in 2020 – either to build their own digital transformation roadmap or outsource to the digital transformation services provider. Both have their own hits-and-misses. These need to be independently analyzed and intelligently experimented with, to avoid any erroneous decision from ruining your digital transformation ambitions.

In the period between 2020 and 2024, we can expect technology to grow in stature as a digital-first enabler, supported by the best talents in the companies that have just recently begun their transformation journeys. Do you agree with this set of HR Technology predictions for 2020?

(To share insights and stories on your tech-based digital maturity journeys, please write to us at news@martechseries.com)