What to look for when Organizations plan to use Technology to achieve their HR strategy
To achieve strategic business goals, it is necessary to allocate strategic goals to each department in the company and the HR team shares importance in achieving these strategic goals. Although many assume that HR functions are to organize events and employee paperwork, the HR world is far more advanced than you ever imagined. I will share my experience of working with local companies and gathering requirements for North American-based organizations and I believe Sri Lanka is stepping into the global HR practices gradually. Let’s see what are the pain points in the non-automated HR functions.
Is your Performance appraisal not a repetitive task?
To Execute these HR strategies, leaders, and managers need to identify the best and weakest areas of their employees as they are the key success factor in achieving the strategies. When choosing the performance appraisal methodology most commonly used is the 180 Degree, where the employee and the supervisor both contribute to the appraisal goals creation and rating. A 90-degree method will solely rely on the supervisor and he/she will set up goals and the rating then feedback will share with the employee. Depending on various factors such as employee count, industry operating and the strategic plan to measure the performance, an organization selects its own methodologies. In Modern times, there is a trend of 360 performance appraisals where peer reviews or customer reviews considered for the goal rating. Hence, conducting manual appraisals is a cumbersome process for the team.
What about Employee Reward management?
Compared to the year 2016, I see there is a vast development of company cultures, and how they treat their employees mainly must be because of the global exposure through social networking. And how serious is the company towards transforming their manual business processes to automatic systems? This is where the HR information system plays an extraordinary role in supporting day-to-day HR needs. According to Armstrong’s Handbook of Reward Management Practice, we can say that an HR system must have the functional ability to provide non-financial rewards such as positive feedback, recognition, etc as well as financial rewards of pay reviews. Hence it should align with organizational reward policies and practices.
Benefits management for wages or office staff can be a hassle and a systematic method of handling employee benefits will lessen the burden from the HR team. No wonder that companies try their best to implement less human error benefit calculations and a standard set of eligibility rules for each type of benefit. For instance, we may calculate a vehicle allowance based on the salary grade between A-B to receive X amount. A large corporate may have multiple rules for worker eligibility.
No idea of using past absence records to predict next year?
You have already stored records of how employees utilise their annual, casual leaves or the Vacation, floating holiday Time Offs. But what’s next? Are you not planning to use these data to the next level which is to view insights of how these data will contribute or hinder your next HR strategic goal, employee turnover, or employee motivation? Hence, selecting technology to use with HR functions must enable the HR team with more dashboards of information rather than the employee's absence history.
Now when you select an automated system by getting rid of paper-based or excel based HR work, you must check the following.
- Modern HR Information system with new design and architecture.
- How are local HR practices influenced by global HR practices and management?
- How does the HR system adapt to changing business needs?
- Flexibility and a configurable system.
- A Centralized system for all HCM, planning, and financial needs.
I strongly believe that an HR system should be more engaging and interactive with the employee rather than just log in once in a while to apply for Time offs or review annual appraisals. What are your suggestions to improve this area?