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By design, Human Resources is all about people. But does it mean that we should keep it away from technology? Quite the contrary. Does it mean that we’ll be using robots to find and hire people?
That’s highly probable.
Actually, robots in recruitment are already a reality as technology is becoming key in the process of attracting and retaining talent. Automation and AI are just a little section of the latest tech innovations implemented in HR on a daily basis.
Why Is Innovation Important for HR?
As HR is as prone to trends as any other industry, it’s good to have a clue about what’s going on in this area. Why? According to many HR experts, like William Tincup or Anna Ott, HR Tech Consultants, keeping up to date with tech is crucial:
Tech innovation is what keeps HR relevant so we need to be on the frontline.
So, what’s the next big thing coming down the line in HR tech? From payroll automation and soft skill management to artificial intelligence in recruitment and using technology to improve physical and mental wellbeing and prevent burnout. Phew, there’s a lot of it. In order to make it all a bit clearer, we decided to narrow these trends down to nine that might heavily influence your organization (if it’s not happening yet).
If you want to keep your business up to date and make it thrive, stay with us and have a look at some key motions in the HR tech sector and the specific solutions you could implement in your business.
1. Remote Teams
It’s one of the biggest trends (if not THE biggest, because it has considerable influence over a lot of other trends) that has been taking the industry by storm in recent years.Remote work is no longer an exception but is well on its way to becoming the norm across countries and industries. It has become our norm at Monterail, too.
During COVID-19 close to 70% of full-time workers are working from home. After COVID-19 92% of people surveyed expect to work from home at least 1 day per week and 80% at least 3. — according to State of remote work by Owl Labs
The ability to work remotely is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after employee perks, but also quite an administrative challenge—businesses now have to be ready to connect employees in different time zones and take steps to ensure they all have equal learning and development opportunities. On the other hand, it gives employers access to new, previously inaccessible pools of talent while cutting recruitment costs.
How to facilitate remote work?
Fortunately, technology has countless solutions on hand and will no doubt keep focusing on bringing distributed teams together.
Thanks to collaborative project management and messaging suites like Slack or Trello, as well as cloud-based HR platforms, location is no longer an issue. What technology now has to tackle is making sure we’re keeping the distributed teams connected and productive. Giants like Facebook are tapping into the growing remote work market, while software companies are trying to make inroads into these emerging fields. With tools like Focusmate or PukkaTeam, designed to create virtual coworking spaces, we're now able to fight procrastination, enable employees to use their soft skills and make the remote working experience more social—and less lonely.
P.S. There are a lot more tools - we curated a whole article about useful tools for remote work.
What are other ways to facilitate remote work? Taylor Jacobson, Founder and a CEO of Focusmate shared his opinion with us:
I believe great remote team cultures start with trust. You have to trust that people want to win and want to perform, and then find out what they need in order to do that. Often that comes down to offering structure and accountability and finding ways to reduce isolation and provide real human connection among colleagues. As a result, these things are central to the remote coworking product we're building at Focusmate.
VR conferencing might play a role here, too, gradually replacing traditional video conferencing, which is currently the expected norm for companies with employees scattered around the world.
Another aspect you may need to consider as an HR specialist is how any paperwork will be managed remotely. While DocuSign or PandaDoc may be useful, there may be certain documents requiring real-life, non-virtual signatures.
With the Covid-19 pandemic slowly a thing of the past, employees may be looking for ways to visit offices more often and companies need to be able to respond to this need. While we're still remote-first at Monterail, we also created ODRA, an internal app for booking desks at the headquarters in Wroclaw, Poland which also allows us to monitor the demand for hybrid work among our team members and avoid overcrowding our workspace.
Remote recruitment
Remote work obviously changes a lot for recruiters—who have now broader pools to choose from, but also need better, more effective tools to reach the people they want to hire. Sites that connect employers with prospective employees are becoming more popular as they help both recruiters and candidates—examples include well-established companies like Upwork or Fiverr, as well as more innovative platforms like Humans.
2. Cloud-based HR
When you have a remote team, your HR department might be remote, too. This is where comprehensive HR platforms in the cloud—the future of resource management—come in. There are already multiple all-in-one HR platforms available, including the one used by Buffer, that integrate a lot of separate, core aspects of HR management, like payroll, benefits, time management, onboarding, and collaborative software.
Using cloud-based HR software is slowly becoming the norm not only for globally distributed teams. It’s much more scalable, so it’s great for fast-growing businesses, where it allows HR professionals to work with real-time data.
At the same time, the employee self-service model grants employees better control of their data, benefits, and tasks, while giving companies more effective tools to evaluate their engagement and productivity. There’s a clear shift in the industry from using HR software focused on helping HR teams to integrated suites that simultaneously support employees and managers in their jobs.
3. Employee Wellness With a Focus on Mental Health
Employee wellness has an impact on the company as a whole, on team productivity, and on job performance. No wonder it’s a huge trend at the moment—there are a number of projects in the works that focus on helping employees avoid burnout and care for their mental and physical well-being, ultimately leading to higher employee retention rates.
So we’ll see more personalized health and wellness systems fueled by employee data. Platforms using gamification and wearables will continue to grow, but there is a notable shift of focus toward employee mental health. In the US alone, approximately one in five adults experience some form of mental disorder, and companies are starting to understand what that may mean for their overall performance.
There are already solutions emerging to address these concerns. One example is Lantern, a mental health startup that helps fight anxiety and depression using digital cognitive-behavioral therapy tools and has partnered with large digital healthcare providers to offer programs that help people learn to manage their anxiety, stress, and body image.
The example of a digital health provider, Omada app, Source: App Store
What might help sustain mental health is also creating a Workplace Strategy (see how it works for Monterail) which makes the office a meaningful space. According to Forbes:
Organizations creating the right environment for their staff can have a positive impact on employees’ health and wellbeing, as well as their job satisfaction and productivity levels.
The next thing that influences employees’ well-being is the occasional possibility of working from home which enhances personal well-being, good work-life balance, and convenience in everyday issues—also practiced at Monterail:
How We Handle the Remote-First Approach at Monterail
Another topic here is clear and transparent communication which is particularly crucial in the remote-first work environment. Make sure that your company has explicitly explained how it is going to approach work from home and employee well-being after the Covid-19 pandemic. This research from McKinsey shows that precise communication about the current work setup and company goals lead to increased productivity among team members.
Source: McKinsey
4. Employer Branding
For years now companies have been using social media to bolster their reputation and the image they present to both prospective and current employees. A company’s brand and reputation have a significant impact not only on the recruitment process, but also on the organization’s bottom line, reducing cost-per-hire, and bringing in more qualified applicants.
In short, this is by no means a short-lived trend, but rather area organizations have to take a closer look at if they haven’t already. And again, technology can help—from growing job boards and company review sites to career sites integrated with HR software and tools for social media (like an Instagram scheduler). Best company branding and hyper-targeted social ads with employee stories and job offers help significantly narrow the audience and reach just the right people.
Employee advocacy is a key part of the process of creating an employer brand. Platforms like Haiilo connect employees to relevant, personalized content, and help you encourage your coworkers to become true advocates for your organization by sharing their own.
P.S. Here’s an interesting article featuring HR professionals talking about their favorite employer branding tools.
5. Enhancing Recruiting Experiences
Technology is already transforming the entire recruitment lifecycle. Everything’s becoming digitized, from résumés to interviews, and recruitment managers have tools at their disposal that help shape a seamless candidate experience. HR is increasingly becoming all about the “experience”—whether employee or candidate. One significant development we’re seeing in the field is the emergence of candidate experience platforms, like Clinch: tools allowing for connections and conversations between employees and outside talent.
And this candidate experience mitigates one of the biggest issues of businesses today—recruitment.
Businesses have some trouble finding qualified employees to fill their open positions, a situation that benefits the employee over the employer. Furthermore, it’s getting increasingly difficult to retain valuable employees, as they’re relentlessly wooed by the seemingly countless benefits other companies offer.
And that’s where technology comes in, enabling HR teams to tap new resources and solutions to improve their global reach and cater to the individual needs of their employees.
A modern, “consumer grade” experience is nowadays increasingly expected by candidates, job seekers, and even existing employees. This is exactly what organizations can achieve by introducing state-of-the-art technology for talent management. Although the benefits offered by such systems seem to speak for themselves, most organizations continue to approach the idea with considerable skepticism and are slow to devise and adopt a talent strategy.
A platform like Honeypot is an example of HR tech adjusted to the modern world of recruitment. It reverses the usual, well-known flow of recruitment where candidates browse through countless offers and apply for those most attractive. Here, employers take the initiative more than ever before and contact specialists registered in the app with the best-fitted offer. Both parties obtain desired results quicker and easier which constitutes the overall candidate experience.
One technology that is currently seeing broader adoption is, specifically chatbots. Of course, we’re not talking about the whole hiring process being led by a bot (not yet, at least), but a skilled recruiter would be able to significantly increase the pace of the candidate screening process with the help of AI.
Chatbots bring another advantage to the table, as they can help slash the time the recruiters need to respond to candidate applications, and thus create a much more positive experience.
A chatbot can also either take over for or work together with augmented analytics, automation platforms at later stages, managing communications, setting up calls and meetings, asking the right questions, and moving the candidate further in the process—making it (surprisingly) more personal, because you’re not leaving the candidate to wait endlessly for your reply.
6. Learning and Development
Because remote work is one of the biggest HR trends, employee training is moving increasingly to the digital realm, a shift that also allows it to benefit from the latest HR Tech innovations using gamification, AI, and AR/VR. Online employee training is basically a must, with the area developing toward personalized, self-paced courses that fit employees’ individual learning styles.
Technology also presents a lot of possibilities for individualized career pathing, building multiple career path scenarios based on individual employee potential, identifying skill gaps, and reviewing job competencies. Examples of HR Tech tools suited for this purpose include PathSavvy or Talent Guard.
7. AI Analytics and Automation
In today’s world, everything’s about data—and the importance of data management in human resources is unquestionable, especially as teams grow. Tech and tools available to HR professionals today range from simple surveys and employee feedback tools to complex analytics platforms. Talking about advanced platforms, just have a look at Workday. This world’s leading platform for measuring and improving Employee Engagement helps managers crunch the data to understand what drives and engages employees.
Modern HR tools have been gradually more and more centered around smart automation. You can use them to respond to candidates’ questions faster and to handle the job applications your company receives. They’re also highly customizable so you can get them to fit your recruitment needs.
One noticeable trend is augmented analytics - an approach to data that automates insights using machine learning and natural language generation. Experts see augmented analytics platforms as more user-friendly ways to analyze employee data and produce deeper insights. They combine AI capabilities to analyze large sets of data and identify trends or track important metrics. Then, using natural language processing technology, the tools deliver the findings in an easy-to-digest, conversational form. Just like Emma - a Linkedin assistant created by Bunch.io:
This AI-powered Chrome extension gives instant behavioral insights on LinkedIn for prospective hires, sales prospects, and teammates.
You can see a broad use of AI in such products as MindMatch or HRForecast. Both companies use Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to target more talent more efficiently and answer the most burning questions of HR management based on data, not a guess.
The app enables easy knowledge sharing among company members, Source: MindMatch
8. Increased Data Security
The times when payroll handed out actual paper payslips are almost entirely gone. And aside from obvious pro-environmental benefits, what this means is that we need to embrace new ways of securing sensitive employee data in the long run. Keeping data in the cloud, the increasing use of employee HR self-service platforms, and the shifts in data protection legislation, like GDPR, all mean that robust data security, as it pertains to both candidates and employees, will be a growing concern for HR and a must for software creators.
That’s why tech vendors need to find and adopt measures to keep the data that clients trust them with intact and secure, while companies need to put systems and procedures in place to ensure the data is correctly managed and processed. This will definitely be a dominant trend in the tech industry as a whole, and existing HR solutions will need a lot of reworking to give people more control over their data.
One of the technologies that experts hope will reshape this particular area is blockchain. Blockchain transactions can be applied to virtually anything, like personal data, work history, or financial details. It’ll be very interesting to watch the impact that blockchain—alongside other technologies—has on the cybersecurity of our data.
9. Transparent and Inclusive Practices
Along with the demand for D&I practices in the workplace, HR software solutions continue entering the market to promote and support businesses in their transparent approaches. This increases the company’s likelihood of achieving an inclusive atmosphere. From recruitment, allowing for data-driven decisions and non-biased profiling; to data-gathering of employees for performance reviews, based on peer recognition and task fulfillment. Even software completely dedicated to D&I data tracking.
VR is also now being utilized to teach managers and other employees how to reduce hiring bias.
Almost every recruiting platform now has a set of features, reports, and AI recommendations to identify and reduce bias and help companies recruit minority candidates. The analytics teams are moving well beyond engagement into the important areas of pay equity, diversity, and fairness in job progression. Many vendors have solutions for these fairness issues — HR Technology Market 2023
Remain Human and Embrace Technology
Although some people tend to think that automation and similar cutting-edge HR tech trends will remove the human element from the equation, it actually may be the opposite. If we took a closer look at the powerful capabilities they tools offer us in terms of personalization or reaching the right talent, we’d quickly realize they might actually be helping the organizations become more human in the process. How? By letting HR professionals focus on strategic areas and real human contact, and freeing them from repetitive tasks that can easily be performed by software.
It looks like the biggest perk of the latest HR tech trends is that it’s not really meant to replace people. Instead, it’s there to help them make more meaningful connections as professionals and coworkers, and to create more satisfying jobs where they can grow.
However, the golden rule when it comes to trends of all types, whatever the industry, is one - never follow them blindly. Has your biggest competitor just implemented a shiny tool for team training or performance (and boasts about it)? Good, ask yourself whether you truly need this exact tool, too.
Maybe trying an all-in-one HR tool will perform better? Or creating a customized HR app will meet your employees’ needs more precisely?
Looking for more HR tech resources? Check our blog:
- Choose the Right Tech Stack for Your Digital HR Product
- 50 HR Software Solutions You Should Know in 2023
- The Biggest HR Tech Conferences in 2023
- The Global HR Tech Ecosystem—with Enrique Rubio
- Tackling Global Challenges—with Philippa Penfold
- The Role of Data in Employee Engagement
- Managing Company Culture with Data—with Bunch.ai
- Creating Candidate-First Experience—with Hung Lee
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