Human resources technology investment is a booming industry. Huge sums of money have been invested in the last three to five years and there appears to be little or no slowdown in the amount of tech investment that is happening in this business-critical department.
It would be relatively safe to assume that a global pandemic has fueled a certain amount of this investment. The world moved indoors two years ago, work from home became the new normal and new hiring practices for remote workers as well as hybrid working took shape when the return to the office eventually happened. Simply put, the nature of the human resources landscape, recruitment initiatives, office life and workforce management have changed so it is unsurprising to see a huge amount of investment happening as global organizations look to handle and manage this change in a way that gives them a competitive advantage.
In this article, we are going to look at a few of the areas where the investment funds for HR technology are being focused as well as some of the reasons why this might be the case.
HCM and payroll
No major surprise here, in fact all of the investment in human resource technology has a logical path attached to it. If the workforce is changing, with recruitment initiatives focusing on hiring remote workers globally regardless of location, then there will be an increase in workforce management activities. Human resources professionals and leaders will require software and infrastructure to manage all of this. With it being 2022, it makes the most sense to attempt to manage all of this in a cloud environment.
Therefore, a new human capital management system might be in order. This is a cloud software system that enables HR professionals and team members to manage the employee experience. Depending on the quality and depth of the HCM that was purchased, this could be from initial hiring and onboarding all the way to retirement. This would mean the HCM data and digital tool capabilities could manage initial employee data around onboarding and payment, through to the selection of benefits and pension options, the length of their contract and even retirement date.
It is not hard to see why HR professionals would be interested in such an all-encompassing digital platform that can help them find out a lot about their global employee base. All the information they would need is available at the touch of a button.
Payroll software, especially the kind that can support integrations with any HCM system, is also high on the agenda for HR tech investment consideration. All of the reasons outlined above to justify an investment for HCM also apply to payroll delivery and management. More employees, different types of employees and employees based in several different countries and continents means a lot more data complexity for global payroll to manage. They would require a global payroll control platform and digital software to ensure that all new employees, regardless of their type or location, are paid accurately and on time each month. This is a significant factor in employee well-being and employee retention, so it is no surprise that it is being prioritized at global organizations.
Talent acquisition
For the last decade or so, it has pretty much been a global war for talent as global companies seek out the best available talent to help them drive their business forward. It is a hugely competitive environment, and as soon as a company has identified a qualified candidate that they wish to employ, they are immediately up against competition who have also identified the same candidate. It can then become something of a war, as both companies attempt to recruit this candidate into their organization. Various different factors come into play here, such as salary and compensation, benefits, working conditions- including remote working opportunities, digital capabilities, modern offices, and equipment as well as company reputation.
So, as a way of gaining a competitive advantage in this war for talent, companies are looking to invest in technology that can help them identify, secure and quickly onboard new employees around the world. This technology can help them filter through the various application forms, identify, and separate skill sets, establish qualifying criteria, and really help to move the process along from initial contact, to interview stage right true to contract offer.
If a global organization claims that they are interested in finding the best and more suitably qualified employees around the globe, then they must operate with the best HR technology and digital tools that can give them the highest chance of securing these preferred candidates. This is an evolving space, there are a lot of new entrants to the market here, and there have been huge software and digital cloud developments in the HR space around talent acquisition, which you can expect to continue for the foreseeable future.
Mobility and deskless workforce
It is a new era of work. Office life is being redefined and is currently in a state of flux and constant change. HR managers and executive leadership teams are dealing with the reality that a lot of their employees do not wish to return to the office on a full-time basis. There is a need to be flexible and accommodating as these staff members also find themselves with more options than ever before thanks to the new acceptance around remote working and remote hiring.
So, it is something of a delicate balancing act that involves keeping hold of existing employees and ensuring that employee engagement and satisfaction levels are high, plus recruiting externally for the future in a massively competitive hiring market. Mobility and deskless workforce investments are therefore on the rise in the HR technology investment space. HR leaders and professionals are looking at global mobility programs and policies- which could enable them to allow the foreign nationals who work inside their organization to work from their home countries or at least regularly visit them while being permitted to work from these locations too.
Deskless workforce is about remote access to technology, documents and procedures for a global workforce that may be constantly on the move. This involves accessing applications in the cloud via a range of different devices, mostly mobile, tablet and phones and ensuring that the global workforce have the ability to access the information they need and do their jobs outside of the traditional office desktop environment. The old office environment is simply not the future, and those who fail to move with the times and work on their mobility and deskless workforce technology may find themselves behind the curve or below expectations when it comes to their recruitment policies.
There is a need to respond to what is happening in the market in terms of recruitment as well as to listen carefully to the preferences of a global employee workforce who have more options than ever before. There should be a keen interest in mobility and deskless workforces if it is simply the case that the talent is there, and they have the ability to do the job. Employees should not be restricted by traditional, legacy or pre-pandemic views on what work life should be like. This lends itself to the kind of inflexibility that causes organizations to lose staff quickly and in large numbers.
HR tech investments are being focused on systems such as HCM and payroll as this can help HR departments easily manage their employees through a SaaS and integrated system that provides easy access to their employee’s data and information. HR technology can also help in the war for talent to help HR leaders easily recruit and onboard new employees, as well as then having the ability to provide a deskless workforce with the digital tools that they need to do their work efficiently.
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