Leighanne Levensaler
Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, and Managing Director and Co-Head, Workday Ventures
Workday
What’s the single most dramatic shift you see happening in the HR tech space today?
As the new world of work evolves, I am seeing the next era of HR technology shifting away from managing workers to actually enabling employees. Individuals are requesting more career experiences, are eager to expand their skill sets, and want opportunities to learn and grow. With the competition for talent so high, it is essential that companies put people at the center of everything they do in order to retain their top performers. By meeting employees where they are–and enabling them to go where they want to go–organizations will be the enabling enterprises that are best positioned for success.
How is HR technology changing the way people work?
The answers to our biggest HR problems lie in understanding our workforce. Through the insights gained from HR technology, we know where the employee is at and how they feel about their experience.
This is game changing–now managers have people insights at their fingertips that enable them to offer the right opportunities at the right time to the right employees, and individuals can receive recommendations around career development, learning and workplace tasks that are more targeted to their needs.
HR leaders are no longer flying blind–with HR technology, they have the necessary insights to make key people decisions, keep their workforce engaged and ultimately retain top talent.
How can HR leaders best make the business case for HR technology investment?
I have found that if a company can’t evolve its technology to keep up with the way it is evolving its HR practices, it will fall behind. In today’s world, organizations need an HR platform in place that is agile and capable of adapting to changing workforce demands such as personalization, shifting skill requirements, hiring and retention in a tight talent market, and different generational needs in the workforce. Companies that can experiment, deploy new strategies quickly, and plan with agility–with the support of automation and machine learning–will differentiate themselves from the competition and stay ahead in the market.
