INNOVATION
50
Digital in HR: people first Technology will transform HR, but people need to be at its heart. Sharmla Chetty, Hans Kuipers & Yann Letourneux look to the future
Transforming recruitment
With firms competing for the best talent, recruitment is an area of potential strategic advantage, yet HR often struggles to deliver excellence. The day is long gone when HR could simply post a job advert and wait for applications to flood in. HR has to actively hunt out the best candidates and attract them to the organization. Doing so is time-intensive – which is where AI can help. Automated search processes can free up HR professionals to spend more time where it counts. Plus, technology enables companies Dialogue Q3 2019
Automated search processes can free up HR professionals to spend time where it counts
to tap into far bigger candidate pools. When automated systems can scan thousands of profiles in moments, screening processes need not be constrained by the hours in the day. They can also help reveal hidden talent among internal candidates and can support diversity, bypassing the proven biases of traditional candidate screening processes. One ground-breaking system is HireVue. Candidates record short video answers to a set of questions. The first stage of screening is done by the software, assessing not only the words used by candidates, but their tone of voice and audible signals of stress. Such technology is unlikely to replace job interviews, but it can help ensure that only the very best candidates make it to the interview. Yet for all the sophistication of digital recruitment software, its application still rests on the very human work needed from HR to define the skills and capabilities required in any given role. That demands real understanding of the business, and it requires focus: some companies claim to need up to 15,000 skills, when a more realistic number is usually 200-400. Software alone cannot make those decisions, so HR’s work is crucial, laying the foundations that underpin digital processes.
Onboarding
Another key advantage of digital is in onboarding
The Marketing Society
HR professionals: welcome to the early stages of a profound transformation. The digital revolution is starting to reshape the HR profession in fundamental ways. Technology is already able to deliver some of HR’s core responsibilities better, faster, and with greater reach than humans. Yet people cannot be designed out of HR. In fact, the opposite is true. Digital allows HR to refocus on its central purpose – people. That focus must be at the heart of the plethora of changes that digital is beginning to unleash across HR. Smart use of HR analytics can underpin improved strategic workforce planning, with better projections enabling earlier action. More targeted employee branding can improve the attraction of talent. Chatbots and virtual assistants can support training and development, as well as helping employees with questions about company policies or benefits, while development needs can be identified through better HR analytics and the pro-active management of the competency matrix. AI can also support engagement and retention, predicting if an employee is about to leave the company, enabling timely counter-measures. No business can yet claim to have exploited the full range of these potential benefits, but there are examples that point the way ahead – especially in recruitment and onboarding.