HR, the frontrunners, who drove massive transition during the beginning of the pandemic, thank HR tech tools for making them possible without much hassle.

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Remote working is the new normal, the ‘POPULAR’ words that take place in every single blog ever since the pandemic began. All the working ways and even the personal lifestyles have changed due to the worldwide effected lockdown.

Amidst all these commotions, the savior that ensured business continuity is technology. Without the help of technology, IT and other sectors like retail, telecommunications, BPO, etc., would not have functioned as they did. Their situation would be the same as the automotive industry and manufacturing sector.

This period, though has negatively impacted society and people, has accelerated the implementation of positive changes and trends in the HR industry. Digitization of workplaces and processes, remote working, flexible working hours, autonomy in work are no more a distant dream but today's reality that is going to stay here till we need them. All these changes were possible because technology facilitating them.

HR, the frontrunners, who drove massive transition during the beginning of the pandemic, thank HR tech tools for making them possible without much hassle. The HR processes were digitized, and the HR has much time to invest in formulating strategies and looking after the employees rather than doing just the mundane administrative works.

Here are a few business impacts created by HR tools in this asynchronous working environment.

Enhanced Employee Experience

Today's experience age is forcing companies to stage the best experience for their employees and customers. People do not buy products anymore, but they buy experiences. And with the global workforce and consumers becoming more and more digital-savvy millennials, who grew up with the Internet, the companies must use more technology to give them the best experience.

Nowadays, companies are leveraging tools in onboarding, employee surveys, feedback delivery, recognition activities, etc., to keep the employees engaged and motivated. The engaged employees do not leave the company easily and stay and innovate for a longer period. This, in turn, will decrease employee turnover and increase the employee satisfaction rate. And companies must focus on enhancing their employee experience now more than ever as the employees feel isolated in this remote working environment.

Alignment of Talents' Goals to Organizational Objectives

Experts in the HR space reckon that HR is the only department to have a holistic perspective on talent alignment to business goals and strategies. HR tools, which can also be considered as business tools, including OKR, SMART goals help businesses to track and monitor the individual goals of the employees. Many organizations fail because they do not align the teams' goals with the company's vision, mission, or goal for that particular year.

If the goals are aligned, for which tools like OKR can be helpful, even the stretch goals can be achieved within a few years. Manually tracking goals and trying to align in this highly competitive business environment is highly risky because you would get no accurate data to build your strategies on. Besides, you will be wasting time and effort by not focusing on actual productive work. The line between HR and business partners is disappearing because of the increasing roles of HR.

In this remote working scenario, HR tools ensure alignment, and HR can help Employees and business leaders to develop strategies if there is misalignment.

No-Bias Workplace Can Create a Strong Workforce

Managers always tend to have a recency effect if they do not have a tool to track and manage the feedback sessions and performance achievements of the employees. This recency effect either makes the manager remember only the recent achievements or failures, which would impact the employee's appraisal process terribly. As a result, the employees will leave the company, and there will be an increase in the employee attrition rate. Not only recency bias but also the halo effect, primacy effect impacts the performance review process leaving no room for objectivity and growth.

On the other hand, if the feedback sessions are stored and referred whenever required, the performance evaluation will happen in a fair way, and the employees will start believing in the company and processes. When the employees trust their employers, they give their best to bring out outstanding results. The no-bias workplace can do miracles in terms of performance, innovation, and growth. Processes like continuous check-ins and 360 degree feedback tools will be helpful in creating a workplace with no bias.

Leaders will be on the Rise

360 degree feedback facilitates upward and downward communication. Each person will learn about his/her strengths and weaknesses through feedback from peers, managers, direct reports, clients, and other stakeholders. These reviews will help in nurturing the future leaders of the company and improving the leadership skills of the existing leaders. And since this feedback delivery happens anonymously, the environment will not become highly competitive with a grudging attitude.

Along with some suggestions of development plans from AI-powered HR tools, real leaders will emerge and experts in different domains will be increased.

Data to Build Powerful Strategies

Things are happening remotely, and there are no face-to-face interactions. In these times, data analytics and reports can help in building powerful strategies that drive businesses to sustain and thrive even in these uncertain times. Data assists and takes the lead in predicting the future of the business and market. The strategies developed based on numbers hardly fail but it should not be any number. The data reports should be real-time and tailored to your business. Performance management software can help you get analytics based on your employees' performance and productivity.

Leverage comparative analysis and other methods to use the facts and figures to their fullest to come up with working strategies to take your business to greater heights.

The future is digital. This saying has become obsolete. Because today is digital, and tomorrow is Artificial Intelligence. Keep your business updated to the current trends to run it for a long time.

(The given article includes the inputs from Shankar Krishnamoorthy, Co-Founder & CEO at Synergita)