Digital Transformation: Build, improve, and scale your people processes
People are the single biggest influencer on the success of any business but it is the HR team that enables the people.
The pandemic has catapulted HR into the spotlight, causing the wider business to recognize its value.
Organizations must unlock the full potential of HR and invest in automating and streamlining people operations.
No one cares more about the people than HR, making it the crucial conduit between employees and the organization. From attracting and recruiting employees, to retaining and growing them; HR is responsible for the entire employee life cycle.
People are power — they are the true value of a business. After all, employees are the ones who come up with innovations, develop and market products, and look after your customers. It is no exaggeration to say your company is worth nothing without them.
All eyes on HR
One of the silver linings of the past twelve months is that HR has been catapulted into the spotlight and the function is finally being recognized for being the real superheroes in business today.
As a consequence, leadership and the C-suite are waking up to the importance of investing in tools that enable HR to unleash their full productive power.
HR can no longer afford not to be digital
Its previous lack of recognition has meant that HR was lagging behind other functions when it came to digital transformation. HR managers have been shackled down with laborious admin tasks and clunky operations, meaning they lack the time to be the strategic people partners their businesses need them to be.
However, the pandemic has meant that digital transformation is no longer optional and HR can no longer afford not to be digital. Personio’s Geraldine MacCarthy highlighted two critical challenges that organizations will face if they do not digitize their HR functions:
- Strategic challenges: avoiding digital transformation will mean slower and incorrect decision-making. After all, if there is not digital transformation, there is no data and therefore nothing to back up important decisions.
- Operational challenges: companies that do not digitize HR will experience lower levels of employee productivity and subpar employee experiences throughout the entire employee lifecycle. Ultimately this will lead to a high employee turnover rate, which everyone knows is one of the biggest costs to companies today.
Digital transformation must be democratized
“Every business is different and every business has their own market that they are going after and their own unique mix of employees,” Geraldine tells UNLEASH. “I would really encourage people to think about how they design for people within their business as opposed to every other business out there.”
Digital transformation is no longer just necessary for larger businesses. As soon as a business gets to 10 or 20 people in size, its HR requires digital transformation.
Companies will miss out on the efficiency of providing crucial and largely expected employee touchpoints and be unable to perform simple information-gathering exercises.
A unique challenge
One of the unique things about HR’s digital transformation, compared with other functions, is that you are not only thinking about what your team needs but what the wider business needs as well.
“It is important that, when thinking about digital transformation, HR considers not just what their interface is going to look like but what it will look like for all of the employees and other end-users who are using the tool, ” Geraldine says.
With this in mind, it’s crucial that decision-makers spend some time thinking about how the entire business will experience HR tech software. This might take more time, but if you don’t start with the employee, you’re ignoring most of the end-users, and you’ll be less likely to get the desired ROI on your investment.