As software and artificial intelligence continues to make strides and improve performance with the passage of time, so does its role in influencing wide scale disruptions in the HR technology industry. John Bersin from Deloitte Consulting LLP argues that ‘HR industry technology is on the precipice of a total reinvention.
Recent market trends show that investors have been pouring in billions of dollars (more than $2.5 billion to be precise) into HR tech vendors, this was during 2015 alone. A large majority of this investment went into integrated human resource management systems (HRMS), a move which has helped to dramatically change the mid market segment.
The massive technological change involves a shifting a company’s HR systems to the cloud and adopting mini versions of those platforms to the mobile phone on a little ‘app’. HR technology providers are tasked to design applications for employees to collaborate, send feedback, uplift their careers and micromanage other people in their firms more effectively.
This is a stark difference from a few decades ago when HR systems were primarily designed for more ‘core’ human resources tasks such as improving HR administration, revamping attendance records and helping calculate salaries at the end of the week (or month). Technology has now embedded itself into nearly every aspect of HR, including recruiting and grooming top talent, monitoring and maintaining their performance and even checking their stress levels.
Smartphones and use of HR software as a service (SaaS)
Smartphones have integrated their dynamic yet small frames into virtually every single facet of our lives – they have also inadvertently seeped into the workplace and savvy CIOs have began to take wind of it. Employees are now getting access to corporate applications on their mobile devices, this has become easy thanks in part to the easily accessible cloud solutions such as SaaS (software as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service) from the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and Google.
As a matter of fact, SaaS HR software now accounts for more than 56% of Human Capital Management (HCM) systems. This is a noticeable surge from 36% in 2013. The most important features for any such mobile app are simple, cumbersome free dashboards with an intuitive, customizable and scalable HR management solution.
The statistics speak for themselves
Modern businesses understand that technology is more than just a fancy gimmick or a recruitment tool to attract young millennials, it actually contributes significantly o a business’s bottom line. According to research conducted by PWC, more than 50% of executives in the US have already shifted to using cloud SaaS technologies while another 30% plan to adopt it in the next few years.
The following points have been cited as the primary reason why HR executives have shifted to technological solutions.
- Easy to manage employee management
- Helps to elevate employee productivity levels
- Helps to improve cost of ownership
- Reduces operational costs
- Significant improvement of the organization’s structure
- Solves the tasks of work flow approvals
Technology in HR has become an indispensable tool which provides a competitive edge to companies which have the foresight and resources to adopt it.
