In any organisation, human resources are one of the most active and most overloaded departments. Needless to say, HR professionals deserve all the help they can get. This article covers the key benefits of HR Technology, and how it can help take the load off your HR team.
Before cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and smartphone apps, HR professionals were constantly struggling to keep up with hiring, compliance, and endless piles of paperwork. This meant less time could be spent really pinpointing and connecting with the best candidates, which has a huge impact on businesses long-term.
HR Technology is now available, and offers numerous benefits allowing greater efficiency by simplifying tasks such as payroll, recruitment, training, and recordkeeping.
What is HR Technology?
HR Technology (or HR Tech) is an overarching term for any software or hardware that helps automate vital HR functions. Whether it’s employee payroll, talent acquisition, performance management, or benefits administration, HR Technology helps make these processes easier for your team.
The use of HR Tech has rapidly increased in recent years, with a PwC survey reporting 74% of companies plan to increase their spend on HR Technology. But why exactly is this?
The Benefits of HR Technology
It’s no surprise that the demand for HR software is steadily increasing, as the technology continues to change and benefit the face of HR in numerous ways. Here are the top reasons why HR technology is now vital, and you may want to consider implementing it into your business.
1. Greater Efficiencies
Hiring new talent is a costly and time-consuming process. Before the digital age, companies had to rely on newspapers, job listings, and face-to-face networking to source new hires. It would then take a lot of time and money to winnow hundreds of applicants to a small handful of carefully selected candidates.
Now, thanks to the benefits of HR Technology, recruiting has become much easier. Recruiters can now cast their net wider to find the right talent, with a range of online job advertising tools, such as job board multi-posters, PPC & Programmatic advertising, social media and more.
Once collected, whittling down applications from a large talent pool can now be done more efficiently with screening software powered by AI, such as CV parsing tools that automatically scan CVs for relevance. This ultimately saves HR teams time and money sifting through CVs manually.
2. Better Candidate Quality
In the past, even with multiple interviews and candidate screenings, it wasn’t uncommon for a new hires to fall short, resulting in both time and money wasted.
Using recruitment software solutions in the early stages of the hiring process avoids the risk of making the wrong hire for your business. The use of AI for example ensures that any unconscious biases recruiters may have are avoided, and the best applicants aren’t unintentionally written off.
Additionally, humans make mistakes, it’s only natural. The use of AI technology to find and select the right applicants ensures only the best candidates make it to the final stage of the hiring process.
But even with the most advanced recruiting software, HR professionals have the final say. In the foreseeable future, finding the perfect candidate for the job will depend on a recruiter’s ability to intelligently automate the hiring process.
3. Less Paperwork
HR teams have always had a hard time staying compliant. Laws and regulations are always changing, and HR departments need to deal with more and more information and paperwork in order to ensure compliance. And, until recently, storing that data could be an issue. A HR department had to have dedicated IT storage capacity to stay compliant.
Today, companies can securely store data in the cloud. Cloud computing allows HR professionals to conveniently search, access, and organise personnel data and other important electronic files. Thanks to cloud technologies, HR departments don’t need expensive storage rooms and file cabinets to keep everything in order.
HR professionals no longer need to stockpile forms or complete them in duplicate. Even government institutions allow people to easily access government forms online and print them as needed. As far as paperwork goes, HR compliance has become completely streamlined.
Not only is storing in the cloud convenient, it’s also secure, password protected, and won’t get lost in a fire or flood. This protects sensitive candidate data, ensuring your business is being GDPR compliant.
4. Smoother Onboarding and Training
The HR process is the same for every new hire. They need to deal with the same policies, formalities, and paperwork. They face the same issues and need to answer the same questions. If several new hires are joining the company at the same time, the onboarding and training process can get stressful for the new employees, HR staff, and everyone else involved.
To smooth things out, more and more companies are using HR Software in the onboarding and training process. This software can help automate certain parts of onboarding process, creating greater efficiency and an overall better candidate experience.
Some examples include automatically sending onboarding tasks such as offers, contracts, questionnaires, and background checks. The completion of these tasks can then be accurately tracked against each candidate, giving your HR team complete visibility over their progress.
There are now also AI HR chatbots available, that can manage the employee onboarding journey by responding to their questions throughout, and help gather the necessary documents and information.
By automating paperwork management, HR chatbots leave the more humanised processes to the HR pros, such as helping the new employee get better acquainted with the company culture and feel more comfortable in their new role.
Instead of waiting for an HR professional to become available, new employees can hit up the chatbot at any time of the day and get instant replies. To analyse the experience of the new hires, HR bots can also send them small feedback sheets and quizzes.
Digital training platforms allow companies to train new hires more efficiently. Since such platforms are available online, managers and HR staff no longer need to take time away from work to train newcomers.
Not only do virtual training programs allow HR teams to train a larger number of new employees, but they also allow them to effortlessly track the progress of each employee.
5. Better Performance Management
By facilitating regular employee reviews, collecting supervisory feedback, and monitoring performance, HR staff are the ones who are driving the performance management process. Technology helps them streamline the process and eliminate many unnecessary steps.
At the moment, we are entering the next, data-driven phase of performance management. About 71% of businesses claim that people analytics are a high priority in their organisation. The widespread adaptation of people analytics can be attributed to its ability to help HR pros make better decisions related to their company’s workforce.
As part of the performance management process, HR professionals can apply people analytics to sentiment data collected from thousands of interactions between managers and employees. They can use the findings to create actionable insights and make data-driven decisions related to matters such as cross-functional team staffing, succession planning, and promotions.
6. Fewer Errors
As mentioned, the use of HR Technology reduces the chance of errors occurring within your business that can cost you, whether that’s through non-compliance, or simply duplication of effort taking up your team’s time and resources.
For example, companies that rely on paper-based systems where data is inputted manually are at a greater risk of errors. The use of HR Technology means any information stored is likely to be more accurate by automating redundant tasks and integrating information system-wide.
Looking for a new HR system?
The benefits of HR technology we’ve spoken about are easily attainable for your business. Our Talent Acquisition Platform comes with numerous tools that make the HR recruitment process simpler, from attracting talent and automated candidate screening all the way to onboarding and hiring.
Interested? Book a demo with one of our consultants today!
