Getting Your HR Tech Stack Ready for 2021

It has been approximately 9 months now since COVID-19 gripped the world. The pandemic has changed the lives of countless people, both personally and professionally. Businesses around the world have been hit hard and have adapted as necessary to the pressures of a global pandemic and lockdown restrictions. Ultimately, anything that disrupts employees and business processes, has significant consequences for HR professionals like us.

One of the consequences of Coronavirus in the HR scene has been the acceleration of digital transformation initiatives. Organisations have been pushed to modernise their HR platforms to keep up with the needs of their workforce during this crisis. Now is a good time to think about the preparedness of your HR Tech Stack for a post-COVID business climate. Here, we will explore just a few areas that you might want to consider.

Recruitment

Coronavirus may have halted your business plans for some time but was unsuccessful in stopping your growth entirely. Renewed growth now means you’re hiring again - or will be soon - and you need more awesome people to join your company. COVID-19 has left many highly skilled candidates seeking new opportunities and it can easily become slow and overwhelming to try and find the right people with strong knowledge in your industry.

Application Tracking Systems can help you navigate the hundreds more applicants that you’re doubtless going to see. ATS tools make the recruitment process efficient with algorithmic matching and automated candidate management. Each step is centralized and streamlined, from posting jobs online to communicating with the candidate and scheduling interviews. The right Applicant Tracking System will help prepare your business for post-COVID-19 hiring success.

Onboarding

So, you’ve hired a new team member to join your organisation and they are excited to get started. Trust me when I say that you do not want to make a bad impression on their first day. Joining a new company can be daunting at the best of times, but this has become a lot tougher during a pandemic that has forced millions to work from home. Onboarding processes traditionally rely on face-to-face interactions.

During these extraordinary times, technology solutions that manage the whole process, ensuring everything runs like clockwork, can greatly improve a new starter’s experience. Automated processes and reminders make sure induction tasks are completed, forms are filled in, conversations are started and connections are built. Digital onboarding tools will help you set new starters up for success in a post-COVID-19 environment where they may not meet their new colleagues face-to-face for many weeks or months.

Engagement

Employees are likely to value feedback and peer recognition even more during remote work than when working from the office. In a post-COVID-19 environment, many people are missing out on water cooler talk, coffee chats, high-fives and shout-outs. Imagine if you had to hop on another Zoom call just to give a colleague a shout-out for doing a great job. Zoom fatigue is very real, and too many video calls can be draining.

The pandemic has meant that we’ve had to reimagine the employee experience in many ways, especially when it comes to employee engagement. There are many digital tools and apps that can help your business amplify those organic kudos moments with comments, reactions and emojis. Powerful tech solutions that manage check-ins, 1-on-1s, OKRs, pulse checks and reviews will help you to nurture employee engagement in a remote workforce.

Learning & Development

Many organisations around the world have been forced to cancel or postpone in-person learning programs in response to the coronavirus. However, working remotely because of COVID-19 should not put a stop to you upskilling your employees. Businesses that want to thrive in 2021 and beyond can’t afford to pause capability building for too long. Although COVID-19 has been the catalyst for a rapid shift towards digital learning, such platforms were already on the rise before the pandemic struck.

Some digital learning providers have been offering good deals on their services to encourage new customers to embrace and accelerate this transition. It’s relatively quick and easy for your team to sign-up with a suitable off-the-shelf Learning Management System (LMS) to keep the lust for learning alive. So give your workforce the skills they need with a digital solution that makes L&D your competitive advantage in a post-pandemic world.

Data-driven Strategies

Even a dissertation would not be enough to emphasize and illustrate the importance of data in today’s business world. If you think that data does not matter to HR, then think again! Data is so crucial for HR professionals. For example, when building a powerful business case for new HR initiatives that you need to share with senior leadership. Having the right data at your fingertips from one single source of truth will boost your cause. That’s where the value of an HRIS platform post-COVID-19 will come in.

One common data source means you can plan, manage and improve people processes. Crucially, cloud-based HRIS platforms are accessible from any place at any time. Joined-up data from a single source will allow you to gain the real-time insight necessary to make better and more agile decisions in a new, post-pandemic world. Protect yourself from further business disruption caused by poor data integrity with a new HRIS platform.

We hope that you don’t feel overwhelmed with everything discussed here. You do not need to tackle all of it in one go. However, with so much uncertainty right now, it’s too easy to defer and delay decision making - but this often leads to longer-term business disruption. A better strategy is to prioritize your needs and create a plan and timeline for the type of HR tech initiatives that you’d like to introduce. We would encourage you to give it some thought and make a case with your business leaders.

Remember, DayoneHR is available if you need any help navigating your HR Tech Stack requirements. Fill in your details on our contact page and one of our HR Tech experts will get in touch.