The top technology considerations when starting your HR digital transformation project
Do you have the ability to successfully manage your people data in a unified way? Or the ability to channel relevant information into the right hands at the right time – be that HR teams, departmental managers or frontline colleagues?
The backbone of success in terms of driving business results will involve a motivated and engaged workforce. This includes the ability to optimise and devolve HR processes and empower managers and employees alike, with relevant tools and information to make a real difference in their day-to-day roles.
Employers have more pressure on them than ever before to ensure that they’re delivering on employee needs in the workplace – and creating the high employee engagement scores that can attract and retain capable people.
Today, your staff expect recognition, job security, financial security and clear avenues for the provision of feedback, plus the knowledge that it’s being listened to and acted upon. When these qualities are clear in a company’s culture, it’s reached a status that employees, and prospective hires, want to be part of. So, for example, do you think that your team members feel like they can collaborate easily for the good of their own career paths within your business? Is your company delivering the tools and processes that really drive success for employees – the kind that leads to those aforementioned high levels of engagement?
The efficient collation of people data that is timely and suitable for analysis will be key to supporting employee engagement and recognition. Planning for both of these things, as well as balancing people and purpose, will all contribute to the secret sauce that organisations are looking for – the ultimate people experience.
Whether your priority right now is upgrading your HR tech stack, unifying and integrating solutions, improving employee engagement or developing your people experience – we look at the top five key considerations for businesses looking to kick start their digital transformation project.
Integration capabilities with the rest of your HR tech stack
A HR solution wouldn’t be complete without a payroll companion for example. Some businesses will use a number of platforms, tools or systems – others opt for a unified approach to view as much people data in one system as possible. Your solutions should ideally integrate seamlessly together, so considering how your new piece of HR tech will sit with the rest of your stack, particularly in terms of the ability to share data between solutions, is important but often overlooked.
A single sign on process to access your people technology helps you achieve a high security standard for your applications and an easier and unified way to login and view your data without having to maintain multiple sets of credentials.
Larger businesses with learning management systems, people and workforce management platforms and talent management tools will want to consider how these parts of their business currently work together. Successful implementation of a HR transformation strategy will likely include joining up systems and processes across your wider HR and people teams.
Ability to easily manage your workforce
Ensuring your people data is accurate can be a challenge; from difficulty in managing start and leave dates of employees to changing employment contracts and managing duplicate employee records.
Understanding how you relate to your colleagues and what all the roles are in your organisation is important when it comes to feeling fully engaged with your business. A system that enables you to drill down into org charts and display key information about colleagues makes it easier than ever to get your head around the organisation you work for and grasp what everyone does.
Candidates (who may become future employees) wishing to join your business deserve a stellar experience too, so your HR tech could include a way for candidates to view and easily apply for jobs, ensuring that high-quality talent find it both attractive and easy to become part of your business.
Having a single calendar view of a rolling 12-month period of an employee’s annual leave, absence, schedule and public holidays can help save time by ditching the need to search for, or access, different screens and systems. Having a holistic view of employees’ leave and absence records helps HR and managers to oversee and approve requests more easily, as well as make informed strategic decisions and take any necessary actions.
Mobile experiences to enable employees to self-serve
With so many workforces on the move again, it’s now more important than ever that we deliver frictionless, modern experiences for employees that measure up well against the multitude of personal apps and software we use on our mobile devices every day. In addition, when it comes to optimising HR and moving away from everything being centrally input, managed and actioned, there’s no better way than empowering employees to take ownership and do much of it themselves. In fact, more and more employees will expect a self-service experience from the tech they interact with at work, and the ability to do this without the need to be at a desk or in the office, and at a time convenient to themselves will enable them to do this.
A great mobile experience for employees could include an app with the ability to onboard new recruits remotely, view and sign documents, inform them about outstanding activities that need to be completed, view organisation charts and enable them to submit leave and clock in and out. Empowering employees in this way in turn helps your business cut admin time for managers, keep data more securely and become completely paperless.
Analytics, dashboards and KPIs
The ability to turn data into powerful analytics to monitor KPIs and inform decision making should be a key requirement of any HR transformation project. A KPI-focused system will enable you to create and view dashboards for a wide variety of users, each with their own set of KPIs that might be specific to their role or the function that they work within. The ability to actually use and understand the data you’re collecting in a HR system will be the crucial bit.
For example, a system that enables you to attain key information and trends that otherwise might not be apparent, or where an individual (or team) might otherwise be required to be the middleperson in a process. In other words, many organisations often have someone responsible for managing and processing the data; mashing it all together, refining it, formatting it, and sharing it, by which time the data’s already out of date.
Your people analytics should be easy to access, with no need for separate login details. The ability to share data with end users, or create a PDF and format it as required to be passed on digitally, will give you more flexibility to put information and invaluable people data in the hands of those who need it.
Your system should make data analysis or data discovery easy for any type of user. This could include the ability to look at recruitment data, so you can use it to attract a diverse pool of candidates for a role, based on relevant information. The ability to see the make-up of candidates that progress from their initial applications, right through to the offer or acceptance stage can help you manage your talent acquisition strategy more effectively and share learnings with other departments.
Choosing the right technology provider to partner with
Traditionally, there are two types of software companies: specialist providers of sophisticated, functionality-rich, operationally specific software for power users and single departments’ usage, or vendors of multiple software products that exist on one common platform but are, typically, less powerful or functionally rich.
We don’t ask you to choose, Access PeopleXD is an end-to-end HR solution with unified payroll for UK and Irish businesses that can transform your people strategy, while giving you absolute freedom and flexibility to adapt. It provides a fully integrated suite of Payroll, People Management, Workforce Management, Talent, Digital Learning, Recruitment and Analytics Software.
Access PeopleXD is a mobile-first, 100% SaaS platform, delivering access to the latest technology at all times with no manual upgrades required.
For an informal conversation about whether cloud-based HR software is the right way forward for your business, talk to an Access HR software specialist today.
