What’s the future of HR tech? Helping humans to be their best

Even the most evangelical technology enthusiasts would find it hard to get excited about a system that stores employees’ names and addresses and makes sure they get paid every month. But in the 21st century, HR technology is so much more than a system of record.?

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Teams can collaborate across continents via video and virtual whiteboards; smartwatches can feed back information on whether your workers are sleeping enough; and an algorithm can recommend a five-minute training video just before your hiring manager hosts an important interview. The central HR system is still there, it’s just enhanced by an armoury of tools that – thanks to the flexibility and lower cost of cloud hosting – can grow and contract depending on workforce needs. With effective integration, these systems can ‘talk’ to one another and the data they produce can create valuable insights – from whether someone is thinking of leaving your company to the impact of your diversity and inclusion programmes.?

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For anyone who’s sceptical about the power of workplace technology to effect change, let’s consider some of the impacts we’ve looked at over the course of this newsletter series:

• A sentiment analysis company ran emails from Enron through its software to test it, revealing high levels of tension that would have alerted officers at the time to the potential for a ‘cultural and financial meltdown’, thus avoiding one of the biggest corporate collapses in history?
• A TV-show style quiz helped sales managers at 米其林 to understand why selling inferior products eroded the company’s reputation and could put lives at risk, enhancing brand value by around $100 million just through learning technology?
• A European bank provided employees with ID badges that tracked their interactions, demonstrating through network analytics that the highest-performing branch was also the one where colleagues were most closely connected?
• HR tech came to the fore in the pandemic. According to Kevin Parker , CEO of video hiring platform HireVue , US supermarket giant 沃尔玛 reduced its hiring process from 14 days to just three by using video interviews, and was conducting as many as 15,000 a day when Covid-19 restrictions began in Spring 2020?

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HR analyst Josh Bersin has predicted in his ‘Ten New Truths about the HR Technology Market’ that organisations can expect layers of products and platforms to get even better at integrating jobs and tasks, but increasingly gel together employees’ lives beyond the workplace. The central HR system is the foundation of this stack, with a suite of tools on top performing separate jobs such as performance management, engagement surveys and rewards management. Layered above that there’s a burgeoning range of tools focused on improving employee experience as well as familiar productivity apps such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom . “Thanks to the pandemic, the number one issue in HR is engaging, supporting, and caring for people... [T]he new dimensions of remote work, hybrid work and contingent work are on everyone’s plate,” Bersin says. And making sure employees don’t have to log into 100 different tools just to get things done is as important as providing the tech itself.?

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Despite the clear benefits of having such a rich ecosystem of employee tools, there are fears that too much reliance on technology could impact jobs and wellbeing. The power of AI to automate mundane tasks, for example, has led to worries about longer-term unemployment. In 2019, the Office for National Statistics published a study showing the occupations that were at the highest risk of automation. HR administrators are considered medium risk, with a 58% chance of “some or all of the duties and tasks in this role being automated.” In late 2021, an all-party UK parliamentary group on the future of work called for the monitoring of workers and setting of performance targets via algorithms to be controlled by legislation, and, in some countries, this is already the case.?

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But others argue that the proliferation of technology in the HR space will augment, rather than reduce, the impact the function can have on the happiness and productivity of the workforce. In a volatile labour market, it can automate the transactional elements of the recruitment process such as booking interviews, but free up time for an HR manager to call the candidate, making the process feel more personal. Wellbeing data, even on an anonymous level, can prompt organisations to intervene when particular teams are suffering stress or feel overworked. Learning technology, increasingly powered by algorithms and AI, will play a crucial role in upskilling and reskilling a workforce whose jobs are changing thanks to new, post-pandemic ways of working and digital transformation. The rise of AI at work could also create jobs, as consulting firm KPMG outlined in its 2020 ‘Reinventing Work’ report : automation of underwriting in insurance could enable people in those roles to focus on risk analysis, for example. The key lies in how HR works with the organisation to design work in such a way that this happens, according to analyst company 国际数据公司 . In its ‘FutureScape Worldwide Future of Work’ report , it predicted “a fundamental shift in the work model to one that fosters human-machine collaboration, enables new skills and worker experiences, and supports an environment unbounded by time or physical space.”?

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Almost four decades of HR technology have shown that what it does best is to help humans to be at their most productive at work. The coming decades will not be short of challenges: shifting demographics mean managers will deal with multiple generations in one team; the so-called ‘great resignation’ will demand a rethink of how employees acquire new skills quickly and effectively; and teams will become more distributed as hybrid working becomes more normalised. After two years of working through a pandemic, workers witnessed a more human side to their employer, despite the crucial role technology played in keeping things running. This is the balance HR needs to sustain as it moves into a workplace future where technology plays a supporting role – but is never the star of the show.?

This is the final newsletter extract from?Good Work, Great Technology: Enabling strategic success through digital tools, published by leading UK?HR software provider ? Ciphr . For more insight into how technology can change work for the better,?download the complete book for free , now.?

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Ciphr’s newsletter will relaunch in October 2023 with a new look, new name, and new content. Keep your eyes on your inbox for the first edition, coming soon.??