Does Your HR Tech Stack Need To Change After The Covid-19 Lockdowns Lift?

By Paroma Sen On Jun 10, 2020

Covid-19 has turned the global workforce upside down, it has also led to a fair share of labor problems. With the US unemployment rates climbing and layoffs or mass furloughs becoming the norm over the past few weeks, the entire role of HR and its responsibilities have also taken a drastic shift.

While shelter-in-place orders are now slowly being lifted with economies and businesses setting their back to work policies, it’s time to address the big question- will HR’s HR Tech Stack need to change, as lockdowns lift?

While businesses look ahead and redefine their hiring processes and business policies, keeping in mind that the threat from Covid-19 is still prevalent, here are a few things to consider, to help you decide what changes to your HR Tech stack will work best.

Are you Expecting a Rise in Applications?

Candidates who suffered job losses, or those who faced issues with sudden changes in migration laws the last few weeks, all because of the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak are still on the lookout for jobs. In most of these cases, candidates shared how most of the companies they applied to either gave the same standard ‘’hiring is on freeze’’ response.

As economies open up and businesses reboot, HR teams and business heads who are set with the task of establishing fundamentals and standards for business upkeep need to identify whether they are going to restart their hiring processes and whether they expect a large number of applicants during this reopening phase.

This will help define whether or not investing in a new employee screening solution that includes a comprehensive health background screening process as well as a new staffing solution or cloud-based hiring solution is to take priority or no.

For teams who are just going to focus on initiating new hiring conversations with applicants that are already on file, investing in a new hiring solution may not be the immediate need of the hour.

Going a step further, given that several companies may now choose to have a certain percentage of their employees continue to work from home for a longer duration to maintain health standards and employee safety while also ensuring adequate social distancing needs, a remote recruitment process and tool will need to be implemented in the near future, in general, remote strategies for most functions will now have to be implemented.

Before making a decision, assess your current recruitment automation capabilities. Can you optimize it to meet changing needs? Does it offer the other features you may need for additional support in the near future? Will it help identify and engage the right candidates if application volumes increase?

Are you Considering Virtual Hiring as a process?

While business slowly get back to the work-from-office model, without certainty on which teams and departments will continue to work from home and which from office, this might demand that HR and business heads put in place a flexible hiring process that includes a virtual hiring set-up.

In this case, the need for a remote-friendly HR tool to help sift through candidate applications and also one that helps implement easy remote screening standards, interviewing and scheduling features will be important.

A cloud-based tool that allows key stakeholders to access the system from wherever they are in order to understand the hiring stage of potential shortlisted candidates while also allowing them to easily setup remote interview opportunities will make the process feasible.

In order to put in a place a strong foundation for an apt virtual hiring process, ensuring that screening tests can be done while being remote will become crucial.

Choosing add-on tools that can integrate easily with an existing HR tech stack might make the whole process easier, keeping important data and candidate information for multiple roles handy in one place will allow current and future hiring managers to have what they need to ensure a consistently smooth hiring process.

Will you Change your Candidate Evaluation Process?

Gone are the days when candidates were shortlisted on the basis of certain degrees or past experience in a particular role. Some of the most successful professionals have toyed with different careers and professions over a period of time.

Tools that help you establish assessments based on the role and vacancy but not necessarily based on a candidates prior experience in a certain role will help shortlist and hire the right talent. At a time when certain sectors like tourism, travel, brick and mortar and more have been badly hit because of the Covid-19 impacted lockdowns, there will be an increase in candidates from various backgrounds and experiences choosing to apply to roles and sectors they might not have considered before. In these cases, testing candidates for other skills like their cognitive ability and personality might be more fruitful as a process. This change will influence what testing tools you may need to invest in.

As companies enforce work-from-office models amid the Covid-19 threat, the adoption of tech stacks for various departments might undergo a change. HR will need to re-assess what employee engagement processes they want to put in place and how they hope to redefine their overall hiring strategies before taking a decision on their HR tech stack for the rest of the year.

Business and HR leaders have to basically prepare for this new Covid-19 era where on the one hand business continuity is crucial while on the other, employee health and safety is also just as important.

Creating the right balance that can help support both should be the fundamental for companies and HR teams for the next few months.