In the battle to attract, retain top talent, and respond to emergencies with agility, HR technology has played a vital role. The impact of digitization on HR has been profound, elevating Human Resources from a back-office support function to a strategic people operations organization and significant stakeholder group within a company.

As we all are aware that the COVID-19 pandemic changed numerous aspects of how we live and work and has been a significant catalyst that has transformed our outlook about people, work, and culture, shifting the focus to employer branding. The new world of work warrants agility, adaptability, innovation, and customer-centricity as the key components of work culture. Remote and hybrid mode of work has shifted how leaders and co-workers connect with each other. Employees are no longer anchored to their desks; they are increasingly mobile, location-agnostic, and demand more flexible work arrangements. The fact that companies need to transform their learning culture as 2020 has seen a paradigm shift in employee growth and development as the millennial employees are keen to work for companies that allow opportunities to grow.

Tata Chemicals, look forward towards creating a vibrant work culture where the best minds are connected and driven to perform at their optimum by exploring digital innovations — HR tech tools, collaboration tools to reach out to employees. Hence, R. Nanda, CHRO, TATA Chemicals came onboard with BW PEople Journalist, enlightening as to how have they valued the importance to embrace a forward-thinking approach, in order to sustain organizational culture, build meaningful relationships, and gain deeper understanding of work dynamics is more than ever.

1. Today, HR technology delivers a competitive edge for employers. How do you think digitization has revolutionised the HR industry?

Since "necessity is the mother of invention", the COVID-19 pandemic has made many organizations around the world rethink and accelerate their digital transformation journeys leading to increased investments in HR technology. As per Deloitte Consulting LLP, the HR technology marketplace is a $400 billion market globally[i]. In the past year, the Indian sector saw a flow of $116 million.

As work from home became the norm, digitization and collaboration became the need of the hour with more and more organizations scrambling to get more HR Tech tools in place. In the battle to attract, retain top talent, and respond to emergencies with agility, HR technology has played a vital role. The impact of digitization on HR has been profound, elevating Human Resources from a back-office support function to a strategic people operations organization and significant stakeholder group within a company. Today’s HR technology is moving rapidly to web-based systems to deliver data and services such as employee self-service (ESS), online recruiting, web-based training, online applicant testing, and online benefits management. Many organizations now support HR portals, which provide one point of contact/integrated platform for a range of HR services.

2. With digitization comes a new era of technologies, keeping that in mind what do you think should be the new mandate for the industry, and how is Tata Chemicals utilizing those digital tools?

 Industry's new mandate should be to enable employees, guide managers, and leverage artificial intelligence and analytics to make the most of workforce talent while connecting people and workplace technology. More and more business leaders no longer see HR as an administrative function or a support function, but as a line function or even a strategic partner, the company relies on to deliver quality to its customers. 

We at Tata Chemicals continually invest in best-in-class technologies across our plants to ensure optimum operations. The company initiated the implementation of key digital programs - Transportation Management System (TMS), HCM System (HRMS) integrated with payroll on a new cloud-based and mobile-enabled platform. In addition to this our digital transformation journey continues under OTON ( One Tata One Network) with other functionalities getting added in a phased manner. 

3. The pandemic has resulted in a huge and unprecedented spike in technology spending and is an implicit instance of data-driven revolution. What is your organization doing to embed data-driven methodologies into their DNA and what’s the short term and long term financial implication?

 The Company is on the Industry 4.0 journey where businesses are increasingly adopting digital technologies. It has realigned its internal teams, re-baselined the IT Strategy and Digital Transformation roadmap with an enterprise focus. The IT and digital function has played a major role in tackling the challenges of Covid-19. It enabled secure and productive work-from-home options for employees, provided seamless remote operations of key systems and transactions, provided market intelligence and sales dashboards.

The company is continuously leveraging digital technologies to convert data into knowledge, insights, and wisdom to ensure future plans and deliver benefits to growers. We use data analytics in almost every sphere of the company- manufacturing, sales and marketing, customer experience, finance, etc. With such wide application of digital HR tools, investing in these technologies isn’t just about a decision about costs and mitigating risk anymore. In the new era, it must also be aligned with the organization’s long-term strategy. However, in terms of expenditure financial implications of data analytics won’t be significant but teams need to constantly keep slicing and dicing the data to gather relevant insights.

4. How in the HR industry Automation or AI can be the silver bullet for HR managers, CHROs?

The capability to design sources and solutions to understand more about any business is at the core of growth for any organization in the new normal. Automation and Artificial Intelligence help increase the employee's efficiency as well as monitor employee well being at work which can be extremely critical where the workforce is deployed either in remote or hazardous tasks. They also free up senior management time and help focus energy on managing the workforce. The use of AI to enhance productivity at workplaces is expected to be one of the leading trends in India’s HR industry this year.

Along with automating repetitive administrative tasks and setting up a chat-bot to answer FAQs, AI helps HR managers make time-sensitive and data-driven decisions that can be devoid of human bias. For instance, while screening candidate resumes, AI tools will shortlist candidates based on their experience, educational qualifications, and skills instead of external factors, such as gender, age, or appearance. Through AI-powered tools, HR managers are now able to use data collected through employee surveys, feedback, and exit interviews to create recommendations for the management to increase employee engagement and create employee-centric policies.[v] With limited resources, HR needs to leverage technology to manage employee health and safety tracking quickly at scale, while keeping mental wellbeing top of mind.

5. Does investing in HR technology give a competitive advantage to a company? If Yes, how?

Effective management of a firm’s human resources is a key source of competitive advantage for organizations. Increasingly, the delivery, support and management of HR all depend on technology—specifically, human resource information systems. HR technology today prioritizes restructuring in line with organizational transformation and operational synergies. Building capacities to scale up new business through new hiring and internal capability development, making it play a pivotal role in the future of talent acquisition, retention, and growth. Therefore, investing in HR technology does give a company a competitive advantage. It contributes to a positive financial impact on company’s bottom lines and hastens moves towards strategic corporate goals.

6. The debate around the HR tech revolution is no more about job displacement, and machines taking over humans. It is, in fact, the age of human empowerment with technology. In a true sense, what role has technology evolved to?

When new or improved functionality is added to an HR system, it is an opportunity to re-examine the way a process is done. For example, HR workflow technology can reduce the cycle time of processes and streamline decision-making. Also, in the old times securing employee records used to mean locking a file cabinet. But now, best HR practices have to include security for the digital data, with best-in-class user authentication and robust firewalls.

Technology has changed the way HR departments connect with their talent pools, store information, and analyze employee performance and productivity. When the technology is used efficiently it makes the HR practices well organised. At an overall level, technology makes it easier to gather and break down data on employees, transform all processes from hire to retire, making it easier for teams to collaborate effectively, managers to leverage the competencies of their teams better, and so much more.