The HR department is the department in charge of the most important assets of a business organisation. They maintain the lifecycle of employees and are in charge of the overall employee experience. HR processes typically include; recruitment, onboarding, retention, training and development, offboarding, compensation and benefits etc.

Technology has impacted everything we do, it has changed the way we get most jobs done, and has in fact created in itself new jobs and has ended the life of many too. Communication technology with platforms like Slack has made the job of HR much easier, and so has it happened in other areas. We shall be considering more in this piece.

HR is a field that will remain relevant for as long as human beings work, it can only go extinct if robots take over. Technology has impacted the way the HR department gets their job done. In many ways it has made the job easier, in many ways it has also increased the expectations of staff and employers from HR. 

In this piece, we intend to examine the impact of technology on HR practices. HR practices include the responsibilities of the HR team like onboarding employees, talent development, offboarding etc, how they go about performing them and how all these interact with the goals and vision of the organisation.

After reading this article, if you are still sitting on the fence about incorporating tech for your HR you should be able to make a decision and if you have already taken the way of tech, you may discover other ways to improve. Sit tight and let’s go!

1. The Recruitment Process in HR:

ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. It helps in gathering applicants information, organising them and filtering them as customised by the organisation.

This suggests that no human eye may come in contact with an employee’s information until the stage deemed necessary by the HR. ATS helps to sort applicants along whatever parameters you have set. It further helps to automate many of the repetitive and basic processes in recruitment, leaving staff with more time to focus on more important matters, thus improving the quality of hires. 

This has in no small way changed both how we hire and how applicants apply.

2. Information Management:

Yeah, this is another thing that used to overwhelm the HR in those days. Organising the personal information of staff in such a way that it is readily available is quite the job. With information management technology, this has literally become a breeze. 

You should know that the HR does not just gather information for its own sake, they are gathered to inform the growth of the organisation in some way. Information about the competence and experience of staff is very important to an organisation. Information management systems like SAP HR have changed the trend.

SAP HR includes features that allow any number of staff who should have access to such information to access them without the logistics of reaching the HR and waiting for a reply. However, it should be noted that these technologies are constantly being updated, therefore, there are limits to the customizations that can be done with them per time.

3. Communication: 

While there is always more correspondence between a particular department and another, say sales and marketing, it is an entirely different story for HR. Every department in an organisation wants something from the HR. So the HR happens to share the same relationship the sales department has with the marketing team, with every department in the organisation.

With the sales and marketing departments information is constantly exchanged and acted on as the sales output is a result of the marketing plans. The output of all other departments are simply a result of the quality of the employees which the HR has a level of control over.

HR has a lot to say to others and others also have a lot to say to HR, so I dare to say that communication technology has favoured the HR department in your organisation more than any other department. Communication technology involves all the tools that we use to create, store and exchange information. Social media is a communication technology; video conferencing tools like Zoom are communication technologies tools like Slack- a messaging app that connects team members also belong here.

There is much more ease in the exchange of information. In some cases, especially when Human Capital Management softwares like SAP HR are put to good use, the HR is entirely boycotted in the information exchange process, which they greatly appreciate. HR greatly benefits because a bulk of the responsibilities of their work is related to gaterring, applying and dispersing information.

4. Training and Development:

From time immemorial, it has been the responsibility of the HR to train the most important asset of the organisation. With technology, the waste that occurs as a result of mistargeted training offered to fulfil all righteousness will finally cease. 

The training organised by your organisation would now be properly targeted and the results of such training and development well measured and fine tuned. With HCM tools like SAP HR, your HR can easily tell where a staff is lacking and what they need, progress after training can also be measured.

This is what is called targeted training and it invariably increases productivity and employee engagement. It also attracts top talents who are only looking to grow in deficient areas as well as reduces employee turnover.

5. Employee Engagement:

Employee engagement is the level of commitment and enthusiasm an employee feels towards his job. The higher the employee engagement the more unlikely you are to lose that employee. The higher the employee engagement the more an employee puts efforts towards growth and development which increases productivity. When your employees are engaged the work culture of your organisation simultaneously becomes more positive. In this age of digital transformations, with a healthy work culture change is easily managed thus the growth of your organisation is inevitable as your employees root for you.

With technology, engagement activities that could not be done physically because of time and other hindrances could be moved online, there could be get togethers online, anonymous surveys could be carried out online too.

As long as there are problems there will be businesses arising to solve them, and as long as this happens there will be a need for people which firmly proves that the HR industry is going nowhere. While this is true, the ways of working are radically changing as a result of technology.

Technology has impacted HR processes from recruitment, to communication, to training and development and to employee engagement. Your action going forward should be a review and transformation of your HR processes to ensure that your organization is maximizing technology so that her most important assets are not subpar.