The world has undergone a seismic shift in the last two years. The pandemic and its fallout have challenged long-held assumptions about life, work, and relationships. The challenges, however, are not over. New threats loom on the horizon, from the spectre of a global recession to ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and disruptions to the global supply chain.

Employee expectations, from their employers, have also undergone profound changes. The perceived role of employers has shifted from mostly transactional to that of a Psychological Safety net for individuals. Tight employment markets have made recruitment and retention more complex than ever before. And now, with a turn in the economic tide, HR departments are facing new wage pressures and the daunting task of managing layoffs during a time of high inflation.

HR must be more strategic than ever in navigating these challenges, prioritizing the well-being of employees, while also ensuring the organization remains sustainable and competitive.The dilemmas that surround HR reflect a broader air of uncertainty surrounding our workplaces today. But if HR is overwhelmed, perhaps it is time for it to do less. Getting back to basics can be an opportunity to refocus and streamline. It can help us spend time on things that are directly aligned with the business. The time for HR to leverage Technology tools in getting back to the basics of Recruitment, Employee Engagement, and Development of key Talent is upon us.

Technology tools are enabling us to empower people and organizations to achieve more by enabling teams to collaborate from anywhere, delivering intelligent security and protecting privacy. A connected world with distributed workforce is changing the way we work. Virtual devices are enabling workplace interactions and communication to happen from anywhere, at any time, in a boundary-less business model. We need to continue leveraging the right technology, both to enhance Productivity and also People experience across the employee lifecycle touch points.

Productivity & Engagement:

Technology plays a key role in aligning individual and business goals and making goals dynamically accessible to all. When Corporate goals are aligned with individual goals, with the scoreboard moving every week, employees can automatically see greater purpose to their work, leading to better engagement, ownership and hence productivity. In addition to setting clear objectives, accountability and autonomy for deliverables, the Managers and Leaders need to guide, inspire, and enable their teams, help them overcome bureaucratic challenges, help teams to leverage the best opportunities, arm them with the right expertise, and give them the requisite technology tools to deliver fast. Once teams and individuals understand what results they are responsible to deliver, Leaders can focus on monitoring the outcome-based measurements, which can enable a distributed workforce to deliver higher quality of work.

Learning & Development:

Studies show a strong link between employee retention and opportunities for Learning and Development. Employees are as likely to leave their jobs for greater development opportunities as for higher pay. Technology plays a key role in connecting learning culture to business strategy and provides employees a clear career path. Engagement levels rise with such interventions and employees are likely to stay longer with the company. To increase the efficiency of the learning programs and to ensure the correct outcomes, we should focus on the 3- M’s: 

1. Meaning: Curating Learning Content that engages the Learner; Content that is relevant and is aligned to business objectives.  
2. Method: Investing in the right Technology that can build hyper personalized learning paths for an individual learner without compromising on the volume & scalability of the learning interventions.
3. Measure: Measuring the success of what we deliver as learning content by the difference it makes to business outcomes.

Total Rewards & Recruitment:

This is also a period where organizations have an opportunity to redesign their Total Rewards offerings to continue their attractiveness for current and prospective workforce. Organizations need to take this opportunity for re-optimization and re-architecture of roles, finding better ‘culture-fit’ candidates and providing opportunities to internal talent through enhanced roles and responsibilities, while still focusing on their employer brand attractiveness. 

The future of recruitment will continue to be a war fought for good talent. As the demand for the best skills keeps increasing day after day, companies of the future will be forced to take drastic measures to be competitive in the market. The recruitment process will have to keep evolving and newer recruitment functions with strong core fundamentals and technology combinations will have to be adopted. Computerization of database processes, competency framework, AI-powered skill evaluation are some such examples that corporates should see as opportunities.

The good news is that companies have now started to have robust analytics around their workforce and potential hires. This data help in building meaningful insights, establishing a better recruitment process and candidate conversion ratio. The journey, in most organizations, however, is far from over. Organizations will have to work out exactly what skills are required for a specific role and define it clearly in the job description to encourage the right people to connect with it and apply. We also need to consider what training can be provided on the job – the ability to develop talent in-house and widen the potential recruitment pool.

HR needs to connect the heart and mind of the employees and prospective employees with the organization purpose while bringing in a sense of urgency and responsiveness. Its imperative to create a guided coalition, develop a shared vision and sense of purpose, communicate the strategy and institutionalize the new approach. Focusing on these core HR processes, and re- imagining them through the lens of available technology, will go a long way in ensuring creation of robust process’ that are able to stand the test of times.