HR Tech Trends and Why Should HR Manager Care About It

Imagine having a powerful HR technology solution at your fingertips, one that streamlines your HR operations, eliminates paper clutter, and frees up your time to focus on what really matters: building a strong, engaged workforce. Whether you're a large corporation with thousands of employees or a small business just starting out, HR tech is essential for conquering the challenges of modern HR. With its ability to improve recruitment, enhance employee experience, increase retention, and boost productivity, HR tech is your secret weapon for driving your company to success.

What is HR Tech?

HR technology, or HR tech, is the cutting-edge software and hardware that empowers HR teams to automate key functions, streamline time-consuming tasks, and improve the overall employee experience. As a powerful support system for HR professionals, HR tech enables cost reduction, ensures compliance, and helps to keep your workforce engaged and motivated.

Some of the core HR functions that can benefit from the implementation of HR tech include:

• Payroll: Automating payroll processes to ensure accurate and timely payments to employees.
• Travel and Expenses: Streamlining the process of tracking and reimbursing employee travel costs.
• Talent Acquisition & Management: Simplifying the process of finding and hiring the best talent.
• Performance Management: Creating a more efficient system for evaluating and managing employee performance.
• Benefits & Compensation Management: Managing and tracking employee benefits and compensation.
• Learning and Development (L&D): Providing employees with training and development opportunities.

In addition to these core functions, HR tech can also aid in filing systems, organization, data storage, analysis, and even communication. Investing in the right HR technology can be the key to retaining top talent and helping your HR team to focus on the most critical tasks at hand.

Why Should HR Manager Care About HR Tech?

HR technology is a game-changer for HR professionals, freeing them from the burden of mundane and repetitive tasks. With the help of cutting-edge HR tech, they can now focus on crafting strategy, aligning their human resource management practices with the company's mission, values and business goals. This will be a major step to help the organization to achieve its aspirations and targets. The time that is freed up by automating routine processes allows HR professionals to devote more energy to the critical task of building strong relationships with employees and nurturing a culture of engagement and excellence. By optimizing their workflows with HR tech, HR professionals can make an even greater impact on the success of their company.

Examples of How HR Tech is Used

The post-COVID era has accelerated the pace of innovation in HR technology, as companies adapt to new ways of working and employees transition to remote environments. This has opened up new opportunities for HR professionals to streamline their processes, monitor employee performance, and ensure the well-being of their remote workforce.

As the demand for more efficient recruitment solutions grow, HR professionals have the chance to rely on new technologies to improve their recruitment process, such as using online interviews and video calls. This not only saves time and cost but also will help to reach wider range of talented candidates.

The world of work has changed and HR technology is at the forefront of supporting these changes. It's an exciting time for HR professionals as they have access to a wide variety of tools and solutions that can help them meet the challenges of the 2.0 working world. The technology is available and ready to help organizations to improve their HR functions, making the overall process more efficient, productive and effective.

1. Payroll

Payroll is the backbone of HR, a critical function that requires precision, accuracy, and efficiency. It's also a task that needs to be performed consistently and without fail, every month. Fortunately, modern HR tech tools make it easy to support payroll processes, streamline workflows, and automate repetitive tasks.

A top-notch payroll software should be able to outline policies, input variables, verify calculated salaries, and maintain secure records of employee information. It should be able to cover all aspects from hourly rates, payment policy, deductions, final rate and all other notable details of the employees(Name, paid, unpaid, tax, date etc).

One such examples of HR tech software is Workato, which enables automation of payroll categories and monitoring of outgoings. Paylocity offers flexibility for employees to access a portion of their earned wages whenever they need it. For larger organizations, Oracle’s Cloud ERP & HCM offers a unified platform for finance and HR, allowing for streamlined processes, eliminating redundancy, and reducing errors. No matter what size of company you have, the right payroll software can help you to meet the demands of your HR function and keep your employees paid and happy.

2. Talent Acquisition & Management

As an HR professional, Talent Acquisition and Management is a vital part of your daily responsibilities. With the right tools and technologies, you can streamline your processes and find the best candidates to help your company succeed. A talent acquisition partner such as Talentport can make the process of hiring new employees easy and efficient.

When it comes to talent acquisition software, it's essential to look for features that fit the needs of your company, such as easy-to-use interface, and cost-effective pricing, along with availability of support for any troubleshooting. ZipRecruiter offers smart hiring features like screening questions and dedicated customer service, while Zoho Recruit has a wide range of automation, analytic, and communication features to help parse resumes and import applicant data. Additionally, you can also perform background checks, pre-screening assessments and check candidate and recruiter reports.

When it comes to Talent Management, a good software should be able to track employee skills and performance and help HR professionals ensure constant employee engagement. Lattice allows employees and companies to set expectations and create development targets, while Insperity offers a 24/7 employee self-service system and personalized guidance to drive high-performance employees to be engaged even more.

By making use of these advanced HR software solutions, an HR professional can take the weight off their shoulders and focus on the more critical aspects of their job, such as retaining top talent and motivating employees. And it could be the key to drive the company's performance to the next level.

3. Travel & Expenses

For HR professionals, one of the most time-consuming tasks can be organizing and recording expenses. It's a process that can take away from more important responsibilities. But now, with the advent of HR tech, the process of recording and approving expenses has become a breeze.

Introducing Spendesk, the ultimate software that automates the process of recording receipts, creating budgets, and providing real-time visibility into spending and approvals. It's an amazing tool that can help HR professionals focus on more important things.

Airbase takes this a step further by allowing a two-way flow of information between your general ledger, security, HRIS, and communication software, and eliminates the need for CSV files, and manual work. Everything is done online and automated, which saves a lot of time.

Soldo is another software that can help HR professionals manage travel expenses. With Soldo, companies can issue prepaid cards to their employees, which allows them to cover their travel costs without having to pay upfront. This way, companies can also provide spending limits when necessary. This can not only ease the burden of employees but also the HR professionals who have to process these reimbursements and payments.

4. Learning and Development

In today's fast-paced business environment, HR technology in Learning and Development (L&D) is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. It's become increasingly important for companies to invest in the development of their current employees, rather than constantly searching for new talent, especially for roles that are in high demand.

Degreed is an excellent platform that offers a wide range of resources to support L&D efforts. From measuring critical skills and visualizing employee strengths and gaps in real-time, to providing online courses and scheduling time with colleagues to learn new skills together, Degreed provides the tools that companies need to upskill their employees.

If you're looking for a more comprehensive solution, Cornerstone's Learning Management System is worth considering. It offers the ability to track employee data and performance, which can help identify areas of improvement and provide personalized training programs to fill any skill gaps. This tool not only helps in employee development but also enhance the overall performance of the organization.

5. Performance Management

The annual performance review is one of the most challenging processes for both HR professionals and employees, often causing stress and discomfort for all involved. But with the help of HR tech, performance management has become much more manageable and even improves overall business performance by increasing productivity.

Performance management software provides transparency, recognition, and feedback, replacing the traditional methods of employee evaluations and reviews. This allows employees to easily understand their performance and how they contribute to the company's growth and helps increase employee engagement.

Trakstar is an excellent example of performance management software, providing easy-to-use evaluation processes with customizable rating scales, competences, and 360-degree feedback for a complete understanding of everyone's performance.

On the other hand, Reviewsnap provides insightful reporting for data-driven decisions by providing real-time graphical and raw data statistics, identifying company, department, and individual strengths and weaknesses. With the ability to create an unlimited number of custom reports and graphs, Reviewsnap offers a clear understanding of performance-related data at any level within your organization. With these tools, HR professionals can now easily manage and evaluate the performance of their employees, making the whole process less stressful, more accurate and efficient.

What are HR Tech Trends You Should Notice?

In the ever-evolving world of technology, new advancements and trends are constantly emerging and gaining popularity. From self-service platforms to remote work options, HR technology is changing the way businesses operate. Let's dive into the current and most widespread trends that are shaping the industry today.

Technology for Self-service

Gone are the days of shuffling through piles of paper, searching for that one important document. Today, employees expect fast and easy access to their documents, such as pay stubs, tax forms, and healthcare records. By providing a user-friendly self-service platform, employees can easily access and manage their documents, saving time and energy for both themselves and HR professionals. With self-service HR platform employees can independently handle the administrative tasks, freeing up HR time to focus on more strategic priorities and further develop the employee experience.

Options for Working From Home

The rise of remote work has been accelerated by technology, enabling individuals to work from anywhere and maintain a better work-life balance. Platforms like Zoom, various types of HRIS, and collaboration tools like Slack have made it possible for employees to work from home or take a day or more off, without missing a beat. The flexibility that remote work offers is proving to be attractive for both employees and employers as it allows for increased productivity, improved employee satisfaction and reduced cost. Companies that use tools like these can now easily manage and communicate with their remote team members, fostering collaboration and a sense of community.

Work-life Balance

As the importance of mental and physical well-being continues to grow, more professionals are prioritizing their own well-being. Remote work can be a double-edged sword, providing a better work-life balance but also introducing new challenges. Thanks to HR technology, HR professionals, managers, and team members can easily connect, build relationships, and tackle any mental health problems that may arise from stress at work or working from home. With the use of employee engagement, employee mental health and well-being solutions like employee assistance programs, mental health surveys and pulse surveys, HR professionals can now help identify and mitigate potential issues, promoting a positive and healthy working environment.

Improving Recruitment Experiences

Recruitment is undergoing a digital revolution, thanks to HR technology. From resumes to interviews, everything is now digitized, giving recruitment managers an array of tools to create a seamless candidate experience. HR professionals are now placing a greater emphasis on the candidate experience, using technology to improve communication and engagement with candidates. Platforms like PathMotion and others, allow for a more efficient process, providing companies with a wider reach, and giving the candidate an effortless and positive experience.

The recruiting landscape is highly competitive and companies are struggling to fill positions and retain valuable employees, that's where technology comes in providing HR with new resources, solutions, and tools to help them reach further and find the right talent for their organization. This not only benefits the company but also the employees as they have more opportunities.

Long-Term Learning and Training

As remote work continues to be a popular trend, employee training is moving online, allowing it to benefit from the latest HR tech advancements such as gamification, AI, and AR/VR. Online employee training is becoming more vital as it allows for a more personalized, self-paced, and flexible learning experience that caters to individual learning styles.

HR technology also provides an abundance of opportunities for personalised career pathing by enabling the creation of individualized career development scenarios, identifying skill gaps, and evaluating work skills. Companies like PathSavvy and Talent Guard offers comprehensive solutions for HR professionals to use for this purpose and can be implemented seamlessly with an employee’s unique career goals in mind, creating a more effective and efficient training and career development experience for the employees

How Can HR Tech Improve Company Culture?

In today's work environment, HR technology is a vital component to creating a positive and productive company culture. It empowers managers and HR professionals to direct both onsite and remote teams effectively and provides a framework for remote workers to develop a sense of community. Additionally, HR technology automates many administrative tasks, allowing HR teams to focus on enhancing the employee experience, increasing engagement, and cultivating a healthy company culture.

Company culture is defined as the set of values, beliefs, and attitudes that guide the actions and decisions of an organization. It is an intangible aspect of a company, yet it plays a crucial role in shaping its identity and overall performance. Although it may seem intangible, it is possible to alter and shape company culture through an effective People strategy, leadership buy-in, and the right technology tools.

As Kimberley Tyler-Smith, MBA, Vice President of Strategy and Growth at Resume Worded, stated "HR can absolutely leverage tools and technology to achieve genuine cultural change in the workplace." By aligning your aspirations for company culture with a defined People program and utilizing the right technology, genuine culture change can be achieved and sustained within your organization.

Why Should HR Tech be Considered as A Modern HR Strategy?

HR technology has revolutionized the way we approach human resources management. With tools that streamline processes and automate repetitive tasks, HR professionals can now focus on what they do best: building strategy and fostering a positive work culture. One key example of this is the Talentport platform, which makes it easy for recruiters to find and hire highly skilled candidates quickly, without wasting time on tedious administrative tasks. By leveraging the latest HR technology, companies can find the best talent and keep their workforce engaged, motivated, and aligned with their mission, values, and goals

Final Thoughts

With the advent of cutting-edge technology, HR professionals are now able to streamline their processes, automate repetitive tasks and focus on the bigger picture - all while ensuring that the human resources within the company are being managed in the most effective way possible. No longer burdened by time-consuming and tedious responsibilities, HR professionals can turn their attention to developing strategies that align with the company's mission, values and goals. By harnessing the power of HR tech, they can foster a culture that supports employee growth, engagement, and overall well-being, leading to a more productive and fulfilled workforce.

By partnering with Talentport, HR managers can hire the best remote tech talent and stay ahead of the curve in this fast-paced, ever-changing industry. So why wait? Hire today and start transforming your HR operations with the power of technology and remote talent.

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