As digital natives enter the workplace, competition for the best talent heats up and labour law evolves, human resources (HR) departments will turn to technology to automate more of their work and to become more data-driven in their decision-making.
This is according to Anja van Beek, vice president for people (HR) at Sage International Africa, Middle East, Asia and Australia, who notes though the human touch will always be important, HR will begin to use more tech tools.
According to CB Insights, investors, seeking the next big thing in breakthrough technology, plunged more than $2 billion into HR tech systems and platforms in 2016. This amazing investment growth - much of which went into new integrated human resource management system platforms for the mid-market - illustrates the level of disruption and change hitting the industry, says Deloitte.
Van Beek says many large organisations around the world have streamlined performance management or even done away with annual reviews. "Though I don't foresee most companies scrapping annual reviews, I expect that performance management will change to cater for a changing work world."
She also believes that in 2017, HR professionals will begin to use analytics to make better decisions and to shape superior employee experiences. "As HR professionals have more data (gathered through digital interfaces like employee self-service) about employees and the business at their fingertips than ever before; they will begin to use analytics to make better decisions."
Deloitte notes HR departments are now realising their future is dependent on their ability to harness people data and build predictive analytics models, says Deloitte. Today, many companies are spending millions of dollars to consolidate HR platforms simply to better understand their people data, he adds.
The worlds of payroll, HR and business management solutions are moving closer together as organisations adopt integrated solutions to gain better control over their workforce costs and create stronger engagement with employees, says Van Beek. One benefit lies in the fact that data and transactions don't need to be captured multiple times across different business applications, she adds.
Such systems give HR teams a complete view of their relationships with employees, from on-boarding to engagement, talent development and performance management, says Van Beek. This empowers HR to react to the needs of the workforce and the business in a more agile manner, she adds. The entire marketplace is shifting from tools that automate traditional HR practices to platforms and apps that make life at work better, says Deloitte.
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