Software that measures what motivates employees, provides insight into what learning is useful to a specific role, and helps workers monitor their wellness are just a few examples of recent innovations in HR software observed by Josh Bersin, principal, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
They are also among the technology-related trends that appear in “HR Technology Disruptions for 2017: Nine Trends Reinventing the HR Software Market,” a report written by Bersin and unveiled at the HR Technology Conference and Expo in Chicago.
The trends demonstrate how the HR technology marketplace is shifting from tools that automate traditional HR practices to technologies that reinvent how people work. Bersin notes that investors plunged $2.4 billion into HR technology vendors in 2015 – a 60 percent increase from the prior year, according to CB Insights.
Much of the investment went into newly integrated human resource management platforms for the mid-market, driven by massive technological changes. These changes include the shift from cloud-based applications to mobile applications; an explosion in analytics and artificial intelligence; and the emergence of video, social systems, behavioral economics and wearable computing. Such changes go hand-in-hand with a shift in business focus.
“Today, companies are less focused on automating and integrating their talent practices,” said Bersin. “They are more worried about employee engagement, teamwork, innovation and collaboration. They want HR technology solutions that are engaging, useful and productivity-oriented. Integrated talent management is still important, but the real focus is on reinventing how people work – on creating team-based tools for goal alignment and coaching; on putting in place systems to provide feedback and measure engagement; and on rethinking the way we measure performance, manage careers and enable individual learning.”
Encouraging organizations to stay aware of transformational changes that will shape the year ahead to help guide their investment decisions, here are top 9 of the most influential disruptive trends:
1. Accelerating revolution of performance management: Leading organisations are changing the way they manage and measure performance with periodic check-ins; shared goals that are transparent to the entire team; and feedback from employee peers, managers, direct reports and even customers. This demand is spurring the growth of vendors with systems to manage and automate this process.
See: Key Insights into Technology Trends Shaping the Modern Global Workplace
2. Convergence of engagement evaluation with feedback and performance: Most performance management systems are now built around regular team quarterly, monthly or event weekly surveys and assessments to monitor engagement. Events such as hackathons and product innovation sessions also are built around always-on feedback.
3. Explosion of growth in people analytics: The future of analytics will likely involve correlating data with sales, operations and financial data, so organizations should look for vendors who have experience in these areas. They should also watch closely vendors focused on building artificial intelligence and process automation tools to make analytics easier.
4. Innovation in the learning market: Driven by the tremendous demand for skills building, corporate learning continues to evolve. Disruptive trends within this area include the growth of intelligent learning systems that can recommend and push learning at the right time, and systems that embed learning content into business processes.
5. New landscape for talent acquisition: Several disruptive changes are driving innovation in this massive market. These include new systems designed to handle everything from sourcing to candidate onboarding; systems that score job applicants based on social interactions on various professional websites; and application of artificial intelligence to the candidate management process.
6. Growth in contingent workforce management, gig work and part-time work markets: Contingent workforce management systems can include software for vendor management, and time tracking and scheduling systems. Gig work networks that match workers to projects are morphing into recruiting and skills management sites. Companies that serve contractors looking for work are also growing.
7. Evolution of team management tools and their merger with HR tools: Tools to help people collaborate, set and share goals, and work together as teams are starting to support integration and partnerships that embed these functions into tools employees already use to get things done. This trend is likely to accelerate.
8. Explosion of wellness and fitness apps – and their potential merger with employee engagement: Expect to see the accelerated growth of tools, systems and platform features to manage wellness, work-life balance, employee activity, and ultimately personal performance.
9. Development of digital HR, including self-service, artificial intelligence and robotic process automation: The tools of AI, robotic process automation and self-service transaction integration can enable a comprehensive redesign of the employee experience to dramatically reduce costs and improve the value of HR itself.
Also read: Qualifying Salary for Employment Pass Applications to Be Raised from January 2017
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