HR Technology: what's the future for HR?

Technology is ready, digital transformation has been accelerated by Covid-19 in all organisations, and people are demanding more meaningful processes. We are moving into an era where HR focuses more than ever on strategy while managers and teams take accountability of their development. We conducted an international research and identified the most important HR trend. Keep reading!

We are moving into a world with more resilient and accountable individuals that push teams to behave like "micro-enterprises" and transform the HR department to a supportive institution that accelerates performance and growth. Welcome to Distributed Talent Management.

Everything is aligned for HR to move towards a more strategic approach that brings value to employees and managers. All trends point out that talent management will be distributed between HR, managers and individuals. Data-gathering is not HR's task anymore, but a computer's. HR has been transitioning from top-down approaches to more continuous touch points. However, the current crisis has accelerated the adoption of new ways of work, teams and organisations are more agile than ever before and people are tired of meaningless corporate administration.

Priorities for HR

In traditional HR programs, decisions and communication are top-down. HR usually communicates with managers and then with the employees. In that communication flow, a lot of information is lost. It's HR's job to create programs that are more efficient and relevant for people. Employees need a supportive institution that enables them with tools to perform better and grow at their own speed. In our most recent research, we identified the biggest HR priorities during the current Corona crisis. It was not surprising to see that the number one priority for HR is to embrace digital transformation. This result is due to the urgent need to connect the organisation with the employees, and of course, the imminent need for people insights. Technology is ready to make this shift happen. However, HR still needs to align their traditional processes with the way organisations, and more importantly teams operate today.

What you need to know about Distributed Talent Management

1. It's all about enabling individuals and making them accountable for their own careers:

As an HR professional, your role is to give people the right tools for everything they need to drive results. You should do this by measuring engagement, offering learning opportunities, tracking performance and setting up a clear work-life balance policy. It doesn't matter if you are a 30k people organisation, technology is there for you to use it and optimise the process.

Your role is to understand people's dynamics and distribute the ownership of some processes. For example, why should an employee wait 2 years to access a leadership course? If she considers that the course is relevant for her growth and aligns with her career path, and she has the time for it now, she should be able to grow her skills. Technology is just a facilitator, you're the strategist behind the scenes that makes everything work. Just make sure the tool is aligned with your organisation's culture and values.

2. It embraces digital transformation:

There is no point in keeping everything on paper or in an Excel sheet when there are many efficient tools out there that can make the paperwork disappear. In our latest research, we found out that digital transformation is the most urgent priority for HR in more than 100+ organisations. Covid-19 has accelerated this process. Do you remember the bunch of people that were struggling to join and participate in an online meeting a few months ago? Now everyone knows how to do it. And that is only a basic example. Digitisation is happening everywhere, so it's better to embrace it now instead of getting surpassed by others.

3. It urges you to stop working in silos:

HR integration is a natural result of implementing a distributed talent management approach. When every employee has its own profile with all the data on it (skills, competencies, performance, learning and even compensation), it will be easier for HR to do some other tasks, like workforce or succession planning. HR will also notice what skills may be needed in the future and set some strategies in advance. HR will be fully integrated, will gain more and better insights for decision making and a complete overview to efficiently manage the entire workforce and bring more value to the organization.

FAQ

What you need to know about Distributed Talent Management?

It's all about enabling individuals and making them accountable for their own careers:
As an HR professional, your role is to give people the right tools for everything they need to drive results