Once upon a time in a downtown Chicago office, a team of employees worked, ate, attended company events, and even enjoyed Happy Hour together in the same physical spaces.
This is what daily work life was like for most office professionals in early 2020, BC (before COVID-19). Even with the dawn of a new year that will eventually bring vaccines to the masses, many companies will continue to have employees work from home (WFH), leveraging the technology investments made in the past year.
A pre-COVID-19 Gartner report1 predicted that nearly 1.87 billion employees i.e., 42.5% of the global workforce, will go remote by 2022. The dependency of people, processes and businesses on technology will only increase as we move forward. The WFH trend brings additional challenges for HR and Recruitment in the areas of Employee Engagement, Recruiting, and Performance Management. In this blog we will review these added challenges and how a custom and adaptive approach to transform these functions using existing digital technologies can go a long way in addressing them.
Lack of effective employee engagement
With remote working becoming the norm, employee engagement can drop considerably. Business communication and collaboration platforms such as Zoom, MS Teams, Skype, and Slack help maintain connectivity, but while they excel at enabling remote communication, they cannot replace conventional human interaction and engagement which builds strong relationships. After months of WFH during the pandemic, employees report feeling “Zoom fatigued” or “Zoomed out”. HR professionals looking to maintain a healthy level of engagement need to figure out ways to do so without overusing Zoom.
One approach to consider is to leverage the power of data analytics and AI to redeploy current employee content provided via portals as more interactive and personalized Mobile and Web Apps. This combination of technologies can create more engaging communications and even immersive experiences. Here are some use case examples –
Employee performance and monitoring
While some roles and positions thrive working from home, others struggle. Baselining performances across roles before shifting to remote working might help understand its real impact on any given role. The real challenge faced by business leaders and HR is how to leverage technology to maintain high levels of performance without being too intrusive. Here are some tools and methods that can be customized by role to help mitigate some of the performance issues often encountered in certain roles.
Enhanced project management tools can be extremely helpful in work from home environments. Boost employee productivity by integrating your existing project management tools (Jira, Nifty, ProWorkFlow, WorkflowMax, AceProject, Celoxis, Zoho Projects, Asana, Slack and others) and communication platforms (Zoom, Skype, MS Teams) with custom software. Here are some of the benefits custom project management tools can provide-
Speed bumps in recruitment and retention
Companies of all sizes and industries often invest heavily in their physical workplace settings to create a “wow factor” to help attract and retain top talent. Today however, the pandemic has leveled the playing field for businesses that were already virtual with minimal investments in physical workspaces. As candidate expectations for remote work grow, office workspace perks such as well-stocked pantries, day care facilities, and game rooms lose their ability to attract candidates.
Offsetting the loss of this recruiting advantage can be achieved with digital technology to nurture candidate relationships and make the application, interviewing, and onboarding process a positive and efficient experience. When well aligned with employee engagement efforts, recruitment systems can be constructed to provide a seamless transition from candidate to employee such that the hiring experience itself becomes the “wow factor”.
Adaptive Digital Transformation (ADT) in Human Resource Management
The current marketplace is filled with a plethora of business communication tool options. The challenge is to understand which is best to address your diverse business needs and unique business goals. More often than not, a custom digital solution that marries multiple technologies, cross-department processes, and components, will offer a more powerful and personalized solution.
Emtec Digital’s Adaptive Digital Transformation strategy aligns business goals with digital solutions for future-ready and sustainable custom solutions that cater to an organization’s unique needs. Our digital solutions offer an unbiased representation of organizational data with access to multiple data points across a variety of HR functions to achieve the best business results. It’s time to welcome new levels of gamification via adaptive digital transformation.
Want to create a digital roadmap for your HRM? Contact our experts, today!
References
- https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/human-resources/documents/trends/the-times-raconteur-future-of-hr-report-2018-hr-global.pdf
- https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/digital-transformation-in-hr.html