Though great efforts have been made to bring more attention to employee engagement, wellbeing at work and the positive productivity effects associated with a happy workforce, studies continue to suggest that as many as 85% of global employees don’t feel appropriately engaged within their roles.
Of course, HR professionals are well positioned to find strategic and effective ways to address these issues and contribute to a more positive work environment, though when tasked with overseeing large and possibly fragmented hybrid teams, it can be difficult to provide employees with dedicated care.
Difficult, but by no means impossible. Thanks to continuing improvements in HR technology, data analysis and the development of integrated workplace management tools, HR teams are presented with more usable information than ever before to help facilitate a positive workforce. To learn more about these developments, here are 5 HR tech trends to improve employee engagement.
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Career pathing and personal development
Not too long ago, much of the discourse surrounding employee engagement was centered around the great resignation, with many organizations finding it difficult to retain employees who felt their careers were becoming stagnant. One way HR teams can address this concern is to provide staff with clearly defined paths of personal development, improving engagement through realistic career progression.
Reports suggest that 68% of workers would remain with the same employer throughout their careers if the business made an effort to upskill them, illustrating the importance of offering high performing workers a route to expand their skill sets. To ensure that each valued employee receives dedicated guidance to create achievable career goals, career pathing HR tools can be an essential investment.
With the benefit of powerful data analytics, HR teams can assist employees in mapping out their ideal career path over time, with software programs able to present a range of possible avenues alongside the specific skills that each role will require. This data can then be used to plot a highly detailed route of personal development featuring attainable goals to ensure that staff remain positive and engaged.
Cloud-based HR tools
Cloud-based business management systems have, of course, been around for years. Though in recent times, the adoption and integration of these tools has been seen to increase almost exponentially. It’s estimated that 94% of modern organizations now use some form of cloud services to perform essential operations, with 67% of all business infrastructure now entirely cloud-based.
By migrating HR systems to be hosted on cloud-based servers, teams are not only able to combine data insights collected from multiple tools and software programs to better facilitate informed decision making, but are also able to access real-time performance data when managing remote workforces.
In essence, the operation of cloud-based HR systems has enabled teams to vastly improve employee experiences by providing staff with onboarding materials, training programs and self-service portals to access essential software without needing to waste valuable time filling out manual requests. Modern networks can even be used to improve on-site security through integrations with commercial security cameras and access control systems, ensuring that staff feel safe and secure whilst in the workplace.
Real-time employee recognition
When it comes to improving employee engagement, few methods are more successful than providing teams with detailed and actionable feedback, as without tangible goals for staff to work towards feelings of stress and anxiety can quickly lead to disengagement. Studies support this idea, indicating that 69% of employees would work harder if they felt their efforts were being recognized through detailed feedback.
If an employee begins to feel that their work is unimportant to the wider team, it’s likely that the quality of their work will start to decrease, meaning HR professionals must find a way to appropriately address these concerns by using real-time programs and applications to highlight each individual’s strengths.
Modern HR tools can be integrated alongside essential work software to notify managers in real-time of completed projects and milestones, from here, HR teams can provide instant feedback and praise to high performing employees to ensure that all team members know that they’re valued and appreciated.
Data-enhanced decision making
HR analytics software has completely revolutionized how many modern businesses function by presenting teams with detailed data used to better inform daily operations. By combining business performance data with people data, teams can isolate inefficiencies attributed to certain processes or specific departments and use this information to optimize the workforce for maximum productivity.
This collection of high-quality data can even be used to predict how proposed changes and upcoming projects may affect productivity and staff morale. For example, new tasks can be compared to previous projects of a similar nature to highlight areas where teams may have struggled in the past, these insights can then be used to better allocate jobs across the team to alleviate workload pressures and stress.
By implementing high-level data insights into HR management systems, teams can make work less stressful for employees to help facilitate a more positive work environment, which in turn can measurably improve a range of important metrics such as employee engagement and productivity.
Virtual reality HR tools
One of the more cutting-edge developments in modern HR is the use of virtual and augmented reality technologies to create immersive training programs for both on-site and remote workers. By creating virtual environments for employees to engage with, HR staff can simulate real-world scenarios to be used when upskilling staff to perform complicated roles without worrying about wasting physical resources.
Virtual reality environments can also be used when onboarding new staff in hybrid or remote roles, helping to immerse new hires into the company’s culture and allowing candidates to get a realistic feel of how the workplace functions without requiring teams to schedule several physical meetings.
Not only can a well-implemented virtual reality training system potentially reduce some upskilling and onboarding costs, but research shows that employees engaged in VR courses could be trained up to four times faster than with traditional programs, helping to revitalize staff via career development.
Summary
Modern HR departments are more technologically advanced than ever before, with data analysis, management, scheduling and training systems helping teams to better understand employees’ needs and address some of the issues that can lead to disengagement and lowered productivity. By creating integrated HR tools that can be accessed from anywhere, at any time, teams can provide employees with real-time personalized support, as well as instigate proactive policies to create a more positive workplace.
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