Business leaders are increasing their investments in employee-centric IT & HR Technology tools. 90% of the business leaders and HR managers have acknowledged they plan to continue their investments in HR tools to meet modern challenges in their department. These tools have made a remarkable impact on employee productivity. But, is this a consistent result through out the industry? HR technology tools are widely used by the HR managers in various forms such as employee data management, attendance monitoring systems, HR information database, applicant tracking mechanisms to mention a very few. On the other hand, most of the industry experts reveal that tools like AI-based document processing, Machine Learning-driven chat support, video analytics and AR R have changed the way HR function is becoming a part of digital transformation across an organization. Such tools have been used most commonly during the pandemic, and experts acknowledged that usage of such tools have created a paradigm shift in managing work processes on a strategic note.
How are technology tools directly related to employee performance?
HR Technology Tools aim to achieve a complete automation of the workforce and that is what creates a positive organizational impact. Industry experts have agreed strongly, tools like HRIS promote effective management of databases, while chat support can help in improving direct communication frameworks. At the same time, research reports published by reputed advisory firms reveal that IT & HR technology tools can largely re-orient standardization of work processes, while reducing costs of operation. Simultaneously, industry experts reveal that better compliance is achieved through using such technology interventions. Thus, technology tools can help in managing HR challenges on a real life perspective.
What have been some of the most common HR & IT technology tools used in US organizations?
Before we delve further, let us take a brief outlook of the US, wherein HR & IT technology tools have evolved much and have closely affected employee performance. Media reviews have revealed that in the US, more than 12 million firms had spent a huge corpus in enabling technology tools. Business objectives have been defined closely as observed by the researchers, while there has been a rising demand for HR tech tools in the US market. But, what has such tools done in the organizations in the US? Let’s take a closer look, on the experience graphs of employees in organizations using IT & HR tech tools.
Has technology tools enabled a better ‘employee recognition’?
It has been seen that, most of the global organizations, including that of the US, had deployed a flexible framework like Kazoo, in order to encourage employee recognition. Kazoo has been adopted in organizations, with an unified culture looking at minimizing the employee turnover.
Research intensive companies like Gartner, had revealed that the rising demand of technology tools in the US have been triggered by the outbreak of the pandemic. A better reflection of employee data has been a major objective, and most of the US based organizations have been managing a remote workforce through technology tools generating positive impact. Employees interviewed by Gartner from the US, acknowledged that HR & IT tools deployment has created a flexible and tailor made approach in workforce management.
What has been the most common option of HR technology tools in the US?
Reputed management advisory services have pointed out, certain technology tools have been popular in the US, especially post the COVID-19 outbreak.
For instance, recruitment marketing platforms have been widely used to enable recruitment on a mass scale. If you ask us, what has been so advantageous about it, we’d say that such a technology tool has given a complete flexibility through consolidating recruitment activities on customized note.
Another HR technology tool, popularly being used in the US, is hourly worker hiring tool. Such a tool commonly helped the US organizations in managing employee schedules of working.
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Since the pandemic induced a flexible work pattern, hourly hiring technology could be used to manage costs by the US based business organizations. At the same time, the so-called ‘gig economy’, had induced hiring outsourced staff from the US. Hourly worker hiring tools thus, have created a huge demand for managing payrolls outside the business organizations.
Industry experts has revealed that, US is probably one of the pioneers in adopting software driven tools to manage people. For instance, onboarding solution software has been used commonly and the product has a high demand in industries having significant manpower turnover. Onboarding tools have necessarily improved the retention patterns in organizations especially considering business economies.
In the given context, David Cearley (David) a senior analyst from Gartner had mentioned, “In a remote and hybrid work setting, technology continues to have even more of a direct impact on the day-to-day work of employees and how they collaborate with each other,” He continued further by saying that, “Yet it is becoming increasingly important for HR leaders to plan for their technology investments with more caution than in years past, taking into account issues such as privacy and ethical concerns with the increased use of technology.”
Therefore, it is clear that technology intervention in the spheres of HR has clearly helped in easing human efforts. At the same time, payroll automation tools have gained a huge popularity through eliminating paperwork while complying to ‘pre-configured organizational norms’. HR experts when interviewed by the US media, disclosed shifting of ‘Organic Growth Curves’, and implementation of technology tool has been a major enabler.
For instance, digitally enabled HR compliance management tools have clearly set the target to measure performance deviations. On the contrary, deploying employee data to define business outcomes has been treated as an exclusive approach and this has varied from one organization to another. In fact, California Consumer Privacy Act have created fresh mandates on how to leverage data to enable ethical functions. Failing to meet the norms have enforced penalties in the US, and this have saved the employees concerned.
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Industry experts have revealed that, almost 35% of the American citizens had worked flexibly in a gig economy, and digitization was probably the one and only enabler to improve the experience of working with professionals.
Conclusion
Digitization in the US economy has transformed how the employees have worked during pandemic. A complete technology adoption has happened in the US especially considering remote working. In most of the organizations technology interventions have changed working patterns while improving employee experience in the process.
A large number of organizations have adopted ‘mobile working’ and traditional norms were frequently broken to revise the organizational silos. HR tech tools have increasingly gained popularity, to support work processes and employees have stayed connected while contributing meaningfully towards organizational growth.