By Rosanna Terminio
‘Digital Workplace, Data Analytics, and Science: Human-Centric HR for Company Transformation’ was published in the summer 2020 edition of the German Chamber Ticker. Editor: Noga Feige, Senior Editor of the Ticker Magazine.
Chatbots are already replacing human interaction in recruitment processes: Thanks to big data analytics, they can access the candidate’s data through the cloud and analyze his or her transactional and communication history quickly. This allows chatbots to create an enhanced experience for the user. The introduction of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) into HR processes increases workflow optimization, reducing repetitive admin tasks and cutting recruiting time. Still, excluding specific cases, the HR profession has not evolved following the trends, but rather maintained its mainly administrative and supportive functions.
At present, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced an accelerated implementation of digital solutions, which is not a proper digital transition nor a structured digital workplace. However, it has made evident that, if HR wants to remain current in times of increasing automation, it needs to evolve, shifting to a digitalized workforce and a strategic mindset. In complex and unpredictable times – that is becoming the new normal – companies need to count on employees as a source of competitive advantage. The transformation toward a more technology-enabled environment cannot be postponed any further.
A More Tech-Savvy HR
Recruitment processes are already impacted by the extensive use of social media and other web platforms and software applications, making recruitment even more challenging. This not only requires recruiters to use multiple channels to identify the best talent, but also to remain up-to-date with the latest digital trends depending on the different candidates’ profiles and age groups, exactly like marketers.
This requires HR professionals to enhance their digital literacy and promote digital innovation throughout the company. For example, the growing literature on blockchain applications could have a bigger impact on labor intensity and slow processes in each aspect of HR-related activities, like recruitment, professional growth, career advice, remunerations, and related reductions of costs.
Artificial Intelligence, in general, could also reduce recruitment bias and grant a more diverse and inclusive workforce, helping to match the right candidates to the right positions. That is why employers are increasing their use of online-based assessment tools that include task simulation, gamification, or cognitive technology. By reducing the risks of outdated information or missing regulations, technology can also speed up compliance check-ups.
Today, technology provides support that can free HR professionals from tasks with no added value, allowing them to focus on strategic work such as evaluating the impact of AI, robotics, and digital solutions on the organization, procedures, and work structure. For example, remote teams and flexible work will increasingly become the new normal, requiring companies to manage a fluid workplace. RPA and data analytics tools can help to improve efficiency and analyze employees’ performance while working remotely. As the past few months demonstrated, Virtual Reality and Augmented reality can support remote teams with assistance and training.
Neuroscience and Human Behaviour
One of the hardest tasks for HR departments is change management. Dealing with people and keeping them engaged, motivated, and aligned with the company’s goals and values requires an in-depth understanding of the human psyche. Science-based knowledge could also be a useful tool when persuading leaders that need evidence-based decision-making.
Neuroscience and behavioral science applied to human resources management can help design better strategies, at both the team and the individual levels. Under pressure, conflicts may arise. Interesting patterns in our brains generate different thought processes. Understanding how human dynamics and minds work can help individuals improve their self-awareness and leadership skills, as well as develop interpersonal relations and overall communication inside the organization. Additionally, a diverse workforce implies cognitive diversity, which also has to be managed (e.g., people with certain degrees of mental impairment).
Finally, to increase employees’ well-being in the workplace, as well as their concentration, creativity, and consequently, their productivity, more and more workspace designs take into account how light, temperature, and other variables might impact our brain through our senses. Science shows that we only get two good hours of work a day from our brains. Together with the employee, HR should make sure that these two hours are the most productive ones.
HR will need to assess each individual’s attributes, who he or she should partner with to reach their full potential, and who the company should invest in for the future. A self-aware HR manager will also be cautious about acting based on his own bias when recruiting, designing programs, and developing other internal communication processes. A seasoned manager will know how to push employees out of their professional comfort zone, foster growth, and promote continuous learning.
A Strategic Approach
In my opinion, the future of HR should be called ‘People & Tech Management.’ With the help of digital tools and data analysis – together with scientific information on human behavior and the brain – the practice of HR will play a major role in the reengineering of the organization.
Yet this is not enough. The uncertainty of the new business environment demands HR to assume a more strategic role, connecting with all the different parts of the organization. HR should be able to make the system more adaptable and flexible, anticipate the organization’s future needs by looking inside and outside the company, and help shape the company’s vision.
HR departments will also need to prepare the future workforce, making it more agile and flexible and reinventing the structure to include full-time employees, part-time, freelancers, and bots. This will require HR to identify which skills are in demand for the new organizational structure. In the market’s current volatile environment, HR should be able, together with C-suit level executives, to create some jobs and tasks from scratch, or fuse tasks from different positions. Therefore, training for HR departments should include data analysis tools and foster skills necessary for strategic thinking for all levels of the organization.
Employee Experience: Human-Centric HR Functions
The race for talent will make the employee experience a relevant strategic aspect for companies of every size, influencing the company’s image and brand. The message communicated should be consistent through all channels and business functions, in both the physical and the digital spheres. In the end, employees are our first brand ambassadors, attracting new talents and clients.
Data and AI could support the design of a customized employee experience through a tailor-made intranet space or a structured digital workplace. This can improve decision-making for hiring, engagement, retention, and personalized career planning. If you want to attract the best talent, you must first define what they can get in return, even if you are a known brand.
A digital workplace will create integrated solutions that personalize the virtual support each employee can receive in terms of information, opportunities, and career development inside the company. Many organizations have adopted cloud-based learning management systems that use artificial intelligence to make personalized courses or certification recommendations that can be integrated into one unique platform. To make it work, HR must participate in its development.
Employee data analytics, paired with proper privacy laws, can become a sort of Internet of People (IOP), collecting data from every point of contact with the organization or its environment and suggesting improvements in processes and procedures. This has the potential to increase productivity and efficiency and make the employees’ working time more satisfactory. People analytics can also help HR better understand employee engagement, development, and performance, and how to support the employees in reaching their goals and designing a tailor-made career path.
HR will combine personalized support through the digital workplace with physical mentoring and coaching, identifying the right solutions for each individual, and empowering leaders to act as mentors and coaches.
In conclusion, we can expect a future shift to smaller HR departments, due to the increasing integration of automated technologies. HR will become more strategy-focused, and its professionals will need to equip themselves with a new range of skills, including people analytics, digital HR, strategic workforce planning, behavioral science, and stakeholder management.
The future of HR professionals will include impacting the organization, both qualitatively and quantitatively. To do this, HR must be able to identify each individual’s traits and skills, combining them with the best technology to augment the machine’s performance with a unique set of human abilities, creating a competitive advantage for the company. This will create new roles and jobs within the HR profession, such as people analytics professionals, human-robot trainers, employee experience designers, and so on.
Is your HR department ready for the future?
Rosanna Terminio is a consultant, contributor, and lecturer specializing in innovation and strategy for the organization, as well as a human resources strategist. After a few years of working in Spain, she moved to China in 2008 as a General Manager for AsecorpChina, of which she became co-owner in 2011. In 2012 they developed AsecorpChina/ZhongDao, a division dedicated to Organizations and Human Resources strategy for the Chinese market. Ms. Terminio can be reached by email at rterminio@asecorpchina.com.cn
