A lot of employers feel confident about the growth of their business and high employee morale, but they often face two significant challenges; finding the right people and motivating them. These two challenges always keep HR departments across different industries busy. The HR department is slowly becoming less about administrative tasks and more about adding strategic value to the organisation.

In a matter of years from now, technology is destined to disrupt the existing scenario. As most of the core functions of HR get automated, Professionals will be able to showcase their skills and become talent strategists and retention experts who build and nurture the culture of the organisation thereby impacting the lives positively.

Nowadays, organisations are quite competitive to land top talent and retaining it. Building an “Employment brand” has become essential to attract the right kind of people to your Company. A recent #HarvardBusinessReview article reads that an average employee will change jobs no less than 12 times throughout their career. This not only puts pressure on HR to find talent but also to continuously engage, retain, and develop it.

It is therefore vital that HR professionals adopt a holistic approach to the entire employee lifecycle from the early stages of attraction and onboarding through career development, training and learning.

As most of the primary HR tasks transition into automation, HR professionals need to shift their focus on engaging and developing people. Rigid and Legacy HR systems which include manual processes will no longer inhibit HR from nurturing relationships and impacting lives of people.

Retaining and developing the existing talent is as important as finding the top talent in today’s world. This dynamic is intensified by millennials who tend to job hop until they find the perfect fit for them. As leaders of HR, one must build the HR team, which is focused on investing in performance management and continuous learning to propagate a culture of learning and frequent performance check-in throughout the organisation.

We live in a world of constraints. Unlike large organisations, such as Google, Apple among many more, HR professionals in the SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) may not be equipped enough to invest in AI/ML-enabled “big data” – Although, don’t be disappointed! As an HR in the SME, one can focus on “small data.”

Small data is information which can instantly be interpreted and applied to consumption by an individual without extensive processing. It is informative, easily accessible, and provides critical insights that can drive business decisions. For instance, monitoring employee turnover enables one to identify significant trends, root causes, & then find the solution. Other small data illustrations include time taken to hire, cost per hire, acceptance rates, employee satisfaction, among many more. Moreover, one can also use a combination of both small data and big data while making decisions.

Performance review

This is one of the topics that attract not just the HR leaders but also the business stakeholders. In the last few years, the Employer-Employee agreement has gone through a lot of transformation. Gone are the days when the employees would stick with a single organisation from hire to retire. Job hopping is the new trend.

In today’s world, if employees don’t get frequent opportunities to learn and grow and if they don’t get timely feedback, chances are they’ll hop much sooner. This new trend is forcing many employers to redesign the review process. As an employer, the need of the hour suggests moving towards more frequent and less formal feedback sessions and check-ins to achieve even more momentum.

Invest in the right technology

As an HR, how much time one spends answering the same questions to employees? How many hours does one spend on running payroll? On spreadsheets and paper filing? On benefits enrolment?

Most people get into the field of HR to make an impact, but many get stuck in administration work instead. One reason for that is sticking to the traditional HR technology that was built to do one thing: Ensure compliance, it was mainly a legal reporting tool, built with the government in mind, and not the HR user but the good news is, all that is changing very fast.

Today, the right HR technology partner can automate the administrative work that may be keeping HR work limited.

As a conclusion, most HR teams in the next three years will be focused on 3 top priorities:

  • Learning and development
  • Employee retention
  • Employee morale

In the next few years, HR, with their vast skill sets and unique perspective on business operations, is positioned to add more strategic value on critical issues ranging from recruiting and onboarding to capacity building.

HR leaders should gear up for the challenge and become more strategic and should critically focus on people development as there’s never been a better time to make an impact!

About the Author

Sahil Sharma
VP & Global Head- Human Capital
RateGain