When it comes to HR technology, there have been many promises made but only some fulfilled. According to a recent expert panel of HR leaders, there is plenty of room for improvement and refinement.
Technology still has plenty of untapped potential to spare, even with the HR advances and success stories in the past decade, according to a recent article in Forbes. To better understand those trends, it asked its HR leadership panel what they believe can make the most impact, then chose a dozen perspectives from among the responses.
One HR leader, Candice McGlen of The Rinker Group, told Forbes that people analytics continues to rank among the top areas that can help HR do a better job. “Technology is making it easier for HR organizations to integrate workforce data into their decision-making processes,” she said. “Having better insights to guide succession planning, career mobility, retention strategies, talent-acquisition strategies, and learning and development programs will increase the effectiveness of human resources.”
Angela Nguyen, an HR leader at the Ad Exchange Group, cited hiring and career planning as areas that can continue to benefit from the power of HR technology. The advantage in using technology, she said, “is in taking out more of the guesswork when hiring new people with the assistance of personality and performance tests, and cross-referencing those responses with data gathered from existing employees, which can then be used to better predict which types of personalities and strengths perform better in which roles.”
In the area of learning and development, council member Charmaine Smith Winters of Samsung Austin Semiconductor, cited leadership training as an area ripe for more HR-technology adoption. Some employers, she said, are now using smartphone apps to deliver leadership-development training, along with “instant” coaching sessions.
“The technology in these systems also leans on artificial intelligence that reads the coaching session, and recommends other training courses that the leader may be interested in taking,” she said.
Other areas highlighted by the panel include: people, process and technology; strategic planning; balancing artificial intelligence and human intelligence; uncovering values and performance in context; mobile apps for benefits management and HR tasks, creating better strategies and human experiences; increasing employee touch points; and improving accuracy and objectivity.
