The Human Resource Function is at the cusp of disruptive changes. Employees and the external talent pools are increasingly using digital technologies to communicate with organizations. Barring a few, most organizations happen to be rooted in traditional models of engagement with employees.
The most impacted area in HR impacted by Digital is the Talent Acquisition space. In surveys conducted by multiple organization almost 75-80% of job searches are done through mobile phone and a similar number would apply jobs through mobile phone. With the penetration of smart phones and better mobility infrastructure, it is expected that in India too, this number would also continue to keep growing. An organization’s presence across digital channels therefore has a strong impact on jobseeker preferences. This would include Linkedin, Twitter, Glassdoor, Indeed, Facebook and many more which are emerging and are being leveraged significantly by Hero MotoCorp to drive its Talent Acquisition outreach.
Digital is also changing the way employees interact with their organizations. Glassdoor, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook lead the pack on this front, apart from the internal platforms that companies have established. Glassdoor has 33 million users, 10 million company reviews and has 600,000 companies on its list. Out of this, 54% of Glassdoor visits happen through mobile. Given the reach of these platforms, it can significantly impact the reputation of companies. At Hero MotoCorp Ltd. we have implemented Hyphen as a tool to hear employees on a real time basis, rather than sticking to only Annual Surveys. This has enabled us to understand employee pulse and sentiments at any point of time in a day while Glassdoor is used to also get an outside in view.
Digital technologies also enabling organizations to close talent gaps faster. Apart from leveraging Social Media tools to reach out to respective talent pools, use of workforce analytics can enable identify the right talent pools whether internal or external, do a thorough profile analysis and reduce both risk and cost of hiring. If we look at the current trends in HR Analytics, there is a certain realization that is dawning upon HR Professionals. Quality and not Quantity is important when it comes to data sets. Increasingly therefore insights are becoming more important than just collection and processing of data. The second trend that we see is in the area Predictive Analytics. This is much beyond the usual data crunching and can get as deep as Employee Fraud Risk Management, Sentiment Analysis, Attrition and Loyalty Analysis and much more. The third trend we see is use of analytics with other tools such as IoT in determining for example worker behavior, safety, productivity, learning application at work, predicting goal achievement at year end etc.
In Performance Management digital technologies are enabling crowdsourcing of Performance Reviews, continuous feedback and higher levels of collaboration apart from instant recognition for contributions. This crowdsourcing and continuous feedback offer richer and transparent insights from multiple sources thereby increasing the accuracy levels.
Organizations are significantly spending on Leadership and Capability Development and here digital offers significantly richer experience to hone skills. Gamification, MOOC’s, E-Learning, Smaller Learning Bytes, Simulation Labs, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are disrupting the way people learn apart from traditional learning methods deployed. Research indicates that use of gamification for example can enhance learning effectiveness by around 40%. Hero MotoCorp has already implemented Learning on the Cloud through “mySuccess” and is in the process of driving learning through E-Learning, Simulation Labs and Gamification. The next steps are aligning our Learning Agenda to MOOC’s and using Virtual Reality to enhance learning effectiveness.
There are many organizations who have significantly invested in Workforce Analytics to be able to drive people decision, after a thorough analysis of the vast amounts of available people and business data. This data is being utilized not only to understand workforce needs but also to detail out HR Programs Effectiveness and ROI on Investments. The lack of data-driven insights impacts HR’s ability to take informed decisions on strategic issues thereby leading to disconnects between business and HR priorities. At Hero MotoCorp Ltd. significant efforts and investments are being directed towards implementation and leveraging the Workforce Analytics Module and Online Reports Designer on the Success Factors Platform to bring insights to all the HR Programs.
The Road Ahead
Digital is thus poised to radically disrupt HR as usual and redefine the future of the human resources function. Eventually, HR and talent processes and the technology that enables them will no longer constitute their own domain or even be primarily performed by the HR function. Rather, many aspects of HR will become fully embedded in how work gets done throughout an organization, thereby becoming an everyday part of doing business.
- Companies have found it difficult to gather clean, consistent and integrated data. Service-oriented architecture, data analytics and master data management (MDM) of HR data technology will help companies surmount these challenges. Such developments can unify talent management applications and enable companies to integrate data from transactional systems with business data and HR data in a single database. In addition, data on contingent workers can now also be more easily integrated into a single system to give employers a more complete view of all of the workers—employees and contingent workers alike—who are working to create value for an organization. With these changes, and as analytic capabilities increasingly get embedded into software, the dream of a data-driven HR function may finally become a reality—if HR professionals can keep pace. Hero MotoCorp is on this journey already with implementation of Integrated Talent Management System i.e. mySuccess on SaaS Platform and Contingent Workforce Management System with a layer of Intelligence layer built on top of both to arrive at Unified People Decision Making System. All this has to be supported by an extremely capable set of “Data Scientists”, which is probably the most sought after skill set of the 21st Century … who can not only process data sets but also bring in deep insights through their deep understanding of the business, workforce trends, behavioralsciences i.e. cross discipline expertise.
- Digital drive will enable involvement of employees and managers in high-impact talent processes—including recruiting, hiring, succession planning, learning and shaping career paths. All this will happen thanks to an emerging class of social and market-based tools that will let employees manage almost every aspect of their professional lives digitally. Likewise, as mobility applications designed for tablets and smart phones become ever more user-friendly, and as intuitive user interfaces finally permeate talent management software employees will be able to work through a single interface through the day anytime and anywhere.
- Recruiting, Learning, Recognition and Feedbacks through crowd sourcing will be the most powerful tool in the hands of organization. Employees for example will learn together through Corporate versions of You Tube and Flipboard. They will be able to recommend learning opportunities to their teams, provide them insights on careers they should pursue and even recommend to them the right mentors. We also look at talent exchanges where hiring managers and employees find each other without any intermediary as well as possible leadership identification happening through crowd sourcing of feedback from people most affected by the decision
Eventually Hero MotoCorp Ltd. sees systems become more flexible and tailored to meet individual needs and achieve business value while retaining control and structure in the near future to come. But this is just a prediction in the near future … we are not forecasting here for the next 10 – 15 years. The world of Technology is changing very fast and we may need to step up the pace much beyond what we foresee today.
This would require the HR Professional to be abreast with not only the emerging business reality but also be aligned to the tectonic shifts happening in the technology space and be able to analyse how to leverage the same at workplace.
