Being Future Ready in HR Through Digitization

Pre-Covid, during pandemic phase and the recovery phase, as people become accustomed to the dynamism of working environment, it is imperative for the Organizations to be vigilant to change management. Bringing everyone through the journey of recovery fruitfully will require thoughtful planning of how to remodel corporate culture befitting new, evolved working model. The strategy through which Organizations fetch employees back will be a determining factor for an efficient Organization structure, corporate culture and employee trust. There are three supposition to this recovery phase: (i) If business insist that people return to the office, they risk losing talent; (ii) If they let employees ‘work from home’, they may have to struggle with maintaining a culture prior to pandemic that was established onsite; If they adopt a hybrid model, they may have to re-engineer the entire working framework (that includes change in structure, strategy, skills, staff and most importantly systems). Either way, Organizations need to deal with the pandemic’s toll on ‘work culture’ carefully. As the perils of pandemic accompanied and uncertainty continues to advance, Organizations will carefully need to maintain flexibility & foresight in how they reshape the future of work. In any case, the undisputed fact is that technology & machine learning will have an exemplary role in any of the aforementioned premise of work model & therefore many Organizations will be necessitated to invest in technology solutions that support employee interactions with one another as well as with customers. Such investment in digital transformation will support higher levels of remote working such as productivity analytics & collaboration suites that bridge the gap between people who regularly work in the office and those who work remotely. Many organizations re-routed their digital journey towards SaaS products for more flexibility & cost efficiency. A survey by PwC states that 72% of HR leaders have incorporated their core HR applications with the cloud or are in the process of it.

Pre-Covid, during pandemic phase and the recovery phase, as people become accustomed to the dynamism of working environment, it is imperative for the Organizations to be vigilant to change management. Bringing everyone through the journey of recovery fruitfully will require thoughtful planning of how to remodel corporate culture befitting new, evolved working model.

The strategy through which Organizations fetch employees back will be a determining factor for an efficient Organization structure, corporate culture and employee trust. There are three supposition to this recovery phase: (i) If business insist that people return to the office, they risk losing talent; (ii) If they let employees ‘work from home’, they may have to struggle with maintaining a culture prior to pandemic that was established onsite; If they adopt a hybrid model, they may have to re-engineer the entire working framework (that includes change in structure, strategy, skills, staff and most importantly systems). Either way, Organizations need to deal with the pandemic’s toll on ‘work culture’ carefully. As the perils of pandemic accompanied and uncertainty continues to advance, Organizations will carefully need to maintain flexibility & foresight in how they reshape the future of work.

In any case, the undisputed fact is that technology & machine learning will have an exemplary role in any of the aforementioned premise of work model & therefore many Organizations will be necessitated to invest in technology solutions that support employee interactions with one another as well as with customers.

Such investment in digital transformation will support higher levels of remote working such as productivity analytics & collaboration suites that bridge the gap between people who regularly work in the office and those who work remotely. Many organizations re-routed their digital journey towards SaaS products for more flexibility & cost efficiency. A survey by PwC states that 72% of HR leaders have incorporated their core HR applications with the cloud or are in the process of it.

68% of the HR Leaders stated that “Building Critical Skills and Competencies for the Organization” as their topmost priority. Traditional ways of predicting skill needs aren’t providing a competitive advantage. Employees need more skills for every job, and many of those skills to deliver business performance. Employers need to plan for a skill based workforce.

According to Gartner HR Trends & Priorities Report:

46% of the HR leaders believe organizational design and change management will be critical to top business priorities. In order to build a proactive rather than responsive organization, many of these companies design roles and structures based on outcomes to increase agility and flexibility and formalize adaptable processes. Also, provide employees with varied, adaptive and flexible roles so that they acquire cross-functional knowledge and training.

44% of the HR leaders concluded that current and future bench strength should counter the high volatile situations. Whereby, there is a need for a shift from a supply driven to demand driven planning. Align the Talent supply to organizational strategy, not just for existing roles and vacancies as well as formulize high-potential and succession processes that meet future, not just current, Talent roles and requirements.

31% of CHROs are diverting their Employee experience. ‘Employee Experience’ has become the buzzword in board meetings, transcending boundaries of HR duties, and adding a meaningful dimension to the smooth functioning and optimum organizational growth. Right from equipping them with necessary tools for end-to-end solutions like gadgets, high-speed internet and new technology to sprucing internal communication & allied working arrangements to keep employees at their prolific best. Alongside, building a shared experience of fun, excitement and social interaction for heightened employee involvement has become a prominent priority for organizations.

PeopleStrong, established in 2005 is a leading HR solutions and technology company from India. Delivering cutting edge technology enabled HR solutions in the space of recruitment, employee life cycle management, payroll and compliance management and analytics, the company is enriching experience of over 350+ customers and over 1 Million users users for over a decade and a half now. PeopleStrong delivers its technology and services in one offering, using its on-demand technology product ‘PeopleStrong Alt’, which has distilled tens of thousands of hours of ‘natural R&D‘ — a decade long experience of servicing the HR functions of top MNC and Indian companies. Powered by big data, PeopleStrong Alt covers the entire spectrum of HR like recruitment, employee life cycle management, change management and HR analytics, among others. It is a cloud-based, modular, easy to use product, which is scalable for firms of any size or complexity and helps PeopleStrong enable its wide range of users, be it employees, managers, HR teams or CXOs, to experience work in a completely different way.

Here are 5 Strategies that will help People practitioners navigate & rise through
the tumultuous Hybrid work model.

1. Acceleration of Digital transformation And Strategy

To begin with digital transformation is not about technology. Digital transformation is a comprehensive process that includes change management, Organization structure improvement, skill enhancement, cost saving & people management & this bearing end result as enhancing business performance & employee efficiency.

The consequence of pandemic has led many Organizations to save cost on rent and bills, employees are saving up on commuting costs and travel time. There have been many ways in which ‘remote working’ has allowed organizations to save up on costs. However, in order to sustain remote working model, there needs to be an unambiguous demarcation of work from its location and that is only possible if all the amenities and characteristics of an office are replicated digitally. Hence, in order to sustain this paradigm shift, many Organizations have increased their focus on digital transformation by adopting business automation and leveraging tools like and collaborative platforms.

Through digital transformation and adoption, businesses can innovate, capitalize on people skills, cut down expenses, and foster a work culture of highly engaged employees.

2. Bringing People Performance Closer to Business Performance

Most businesses and organizations set goals in order to achieve the right objectives and fulfill the needs of its stakeholders. Those goals start at the top and trickle down to every team within the organization, each performing unique functions to advance the business. There are many different ways to set and measure goals. One popular way to measure an individual, team or company’s progress towards a goal is by using key performance indicators, or KPIs, which set a standard of success for a specific business objective.

A Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively an individual, team and a company is achieving key business objectives. KPIs also help businesses understand whether they’re spending utilizing their time, and budget and talent on the right strategies, tasks and tools in order to achieve its goals. In order to understand real time Performance scores & leverage analytics as well as ensure a digital assistance & coaching imparted to each of the employee, explore PeopleStrong’s “Alt Performance”.

3. Prioritizing employee experience

The new hybrid work model presents an opportunity to address the shortcomings of employee experience in the past, which have ranged from biases toward certain types of employees and working styles to inconsistent access to information and tools. Organizations should leverage the technology and employee experience to connect, equip, engage and empower employees whether they are in office or remote as well as to capitalize on the strengths of each element of the hybrid model. Digital Technology (for example, PeopleStrong’s ‘Jinie’) has flattened hierarchies, with everyone connected and having immediate access to information and feedback. Thus enabling more productivity with minimal of supervision.

4. Paradigm shift from ‘sourcing’ to a Digitized Talent Acquisition

In our continual race to attract top talent, finding the right candidate depends on a recruiter’s ability to intelligently shortlist lengthy and time-consuming recruitment tasks. Thankfully, AI has enabled recruiters to get rid of tedious and non-quantifiable manual processes by bringing in virtual assistance. Recruiters are now able to automate these tasks using AI and ML based PeopleStrong’s ‘Alt Recruit’ that helps expedite the screening process for organizations by interacting with candidates, collecting relevant information, scheduling the interviews and even conducting an initial level of screening before setting up a full-fledged interview. The platform also helps integrate multichannel sourcing to access talent pools spread across databases, social/professional networks, job portals, etc. as well as ensures seamless onboarding experience at operational level and Future-proofing organizational structure and hierarchy through strategic workforce planning and talent pipelining at strategic level.

5. Up-Skilling & Re-Skilling

The future of work will require two types of changes across the workforce :- (i) up-skilling, in which staff acquires new skills to manage in their current roles, and (ii) re-skilling, in which staff need the capabilities to take on different or entirely new roles. In order to avoid layoffs, enhance skill set and expand knowledge base, Organizations need to determine whether they can up skill employees already in similar roles. If given a choice, most employees will want to adapt and learn the new technology. And by carefully identifying the employees capable of re-skilling or have potential to learn new skills and matching them to open positions, companies can develop a skills plan tailored to their exact needs. PeopleStrong’s ‘Alt Learning’ that aims at Training people, measuring results & driving growth in the Hybrid work model. The platform makes learning easily accessible as well as integrated as a part of work. This comes in the form of shorter sessions spread across multiple days supporting learning continuity and retention. Another focal point of the ‘Alt Learning” is the Learner engagement & retention by incorporating gamification in L&D modules as well as offering a varied options of learning medium through live, interactive sessions coupled with pre-recorded ones, in-classroom training integrated with remote ones, live lectures, quizzes, group assignments, on-demand videos, presentations, etc.

About the Author

Miranda Asima

Miranda Asima is Business Development Manager – Indonesia. Through her prior experience at hotel industry, building management and SaaS industry, Miranda has gained experience in Sales, Account Management and Operational across a diverse set of industries, thus affording her an eclectic knowledge base to support our clients in Indonesia.