What do people generally think of the HR department? Mountains of paperwork. Tedious calculations for payroll and taxes. Close surveillance of employees’ leave applications, sick records and ensuring no employees are absent more than deemed appropriate. Sounds like a really mundane and boring job. Embracing technology will allow HR to focus on their people and creating a thriving culture that attracts and retains the best talent in their industry.
Unfortunately, that impression of HR is extremely old-fashioned and a misguided stereotype. With the surplus of technology now readily available, there is an exponential increase in technology-based solutions in HR. Technology has completely transformed the way HR processes are being done today.
1. Payroll
Excel spreadsheets were what HR professionals had to use in the past, painstakingly computing the entire company’s payroll. They had to manually enter employees’ allowances, overtime hours, taxes and input the formula cell by cell. Naturally, the margin of error would be relatively high. Over time, fancy terms such as cloud, HRIS and SaaS came to the knowledge of HR professionals. With that, manual HR processes have gradually been automated. Payroll and taxes are automatically being calculated, HR professionals can even set a date for salary to be disbursed to employees. With various options such as payroll software or even outsourced payroll, technology has automated administrative HR work and enhanced productivity of numerous manual HR tasks.
2. Recruitment
Before the internet, recruiters had to rely heavily on print publications such as magazines or flyers to advertise job openings. With technology, it made recruitment much easier – jobs openings can be posted online for almost anyone, regardless of geographical location, to view and apply for the position. Additionally, with the increase usage of social media, recruiters have even made use of social media platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook, to actively search for prospective candidates. With technology, the talent pool has expanded, streamlining the process of searching for talents for organisations.
3. Employee Benefits
With technology, it allows HR to track employees’ leave applications and sick leaves easily. Additionally, the incorporation of technology with HR provides employees with the necessary self-service tools that they need – self-service employee profiles, viewing of their benefits entitlements, company intranet with regular news feed, career development portal etc. HR professionals can make use of technology to help build and shape the company culture, making employees feel more connected.
Ultimately, organisations need to rely heavily on HR to drive the use of technology forward. HR departments are key to adopting innovative technologies to enhance employee experience, hence driving HR and technology to go hand in hand.