You Got Whatsapped by the Future of HR
It’s that time of year! You’ve attended one too many New Year parties, you went on your winter break to some warmer destination but still need more sleep, and you wonder what this new year has in store for you. At AKT, 2017 is a digital HR transformation year. The digital age that has disrupted the way we do business and has altered how we transform our business. So, what’s in store for HR this year?
Most transformation efforts, in particular for Human Resources, in the last ten to 15 years have focused on improving efficiency and effectiveness. For HR, this was characterized with inquiries and transactional work shifting to lower-cost channels; eg, online, self-service, service centers, and driving tiered service delivery models, shared services and outsourcing operational activities. Much time was also spent by the Human Resources function to differentiate and specialize their HR roles; eg, COEs, Shared Service, HRBPs, while aligning these HR roles to business functions, creating partnerships. The buzzwords: global, consistency, systems, and data warehouses, populated many and all internal presentations.
Although HR has (hopefully) moved on, we should credit that previous efforts were not without value. Many leading companies realized improved efficiency, lower costs, greater automation, and improved strategic focus — they’re the ones who are best placed for this new digital HR generation.
The past focus on HR efficiency and effectiveness came at the expense of the employee, the actual customer of these cheaper, automated and aligned services. Articles after articles have documented the user failures and low adoption of earlier enterprise resource planning (ERP) self-service platforms. Why? They were not designed for the “customer”: the employee.
Tomorrow’s HR Model Delivers Simplicity and Insights
Your employees want easy, intuitive, insightful from HR. Don’t believe us? Think about a day in your life. We’re surrounded by services helping us in every aspect of our lives, just a FaceTime away from an expert ready to remotely fix our plumbing. Siri is picking my songs and Alexa is arranging my adventures.
This is all designed to save us time, making up for the hours we’re losing to commuting, reviewing, and WhatsApping. And it’s time we want to spend in exciting and Instagrammable ways – trying new foods, travelling the world, and spending time with friends and family. We do not want to spend a lengthy amount of time on the phone to our bank or online to try to make a booking.
HR goes mobile
Global online retailers, like Amazon and eBay, who are also leaders in customer service have realized and acted upon this already. Their HR has integrated global infrastructure across governance, technology and operations, with the Low-effort customer experience principle in place for their employees. Specifically, their employees enjoy the channel of their choice to activate/resolve their personal employee processes simply and with a timely resolution.
Want to update your timesheet from your smartphone? No problem … right?
If you’re not focusing on mobile HR service delivery, you’re at risk of falling behind your employees’ expectations and your competitors. At AKT, we don’t even see mobile as a new platform any more, it IS the platform.
Check our website, www.aktglobal.com, if you don’t believe us — it was designed mobile-first!
The proof is there: HR departments’ adoption of mobile technologies grew 21 percent this year and expected grow an additional 17 percent in 2017.
While initial uses of mobile technologies within HR were largely limited to recruiters redesigning careers sites and application forms for candidates who were searching for jobs on their smartphones, today few HR technology platforms remain untouched by the mobile trend. Leading cloud vendors, like SAP SuccessFactors, are often developing apps on mobile first, then deploying piece to the web.
From HR management, record-keeping, time and labor, to talent acquisition, payroll and leave management, there are many HR transactions that are being delivered by cloud-based HCM solutions via mobile today. While solutions, organizational processes, and approval requirements may vary, the point is that nearly everything that is available via desktop is also available via mobile.
No matter what stage a company many be in their mobile enabled HCM solutions, everyone agrees: no mobile correlates to no credibility. With more than 47 percent of millennials finding their next job while on their mobile device, organizations with no plans to implement mobile enabled HR technologies are twice as likely to be viewed as having no credibility internally and externally.
Mobile in 2017
Looking forward, the biggest projected growth in mobile use in 2017 will come in onboarding solutions.
We also believe the next phase of mobile will involve greater use of voice-enabled technologies and artificial intelligence tools that further enhance or customize the user experience across HR technology platforms.
Want more details?
In HR Delivery in the Digital Age white paper, AKT presents the latest digital HR findings, and we describe how HR managers and leaders should embrace and deliver upon this new Digital HR paradigm.
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