Sam Button, Head of Growth, Roar Media
It is often said that people are the main drivers of successful digital transformation, ensuring you have the right talent, leading initiatives, with the correct agile culture to adopt & champion new technologies is paramount. Yet, this can only be achieved with the full support of HR with recruitment underpinning digital initiatives, personal development ensuring the preparedness of staff, and correct leadership in place to support adoption & efficiency. Internal communication is equally important, providing information throughout the transformation in terms of why, how & when; significantly reducing stresses caused by a lack of understanding, and simultaneously promoting a harmonious transition to any new technology.
Technology is currently seen as the cornerstone of many organisations and is intertwined within every department, decision & delivery. HR should be considered equally important and far-reaching within an organisation, with a company only able to move forward through the power of HR. Many elements are required to ensure an agile & ever-evolving company, this starts with recruitment, then support throughout through internal communication, employee wellbeing, personal development & employee engagement. HR is the lifeblood of a company as they cultivate the most important resource, people.
Recruitment
Strategies for recruitment vary depending on a number of factors, finding the optimal way to ensure a lasting line of perfect candidates can be an arduous task of trial and error but is something vital to master. In a connected world, recruitment becomes multifaceted with everchanging channels to entice and communicate with potential candidates. Companies need to stay ahead of the curve when assessing candidates & platforms to reach the best potential employees. Technology has advanced connectivity, allowing for conversations globally with candidates who would be enabled to join a distributed workforce provided all necessary training can be delivered virtually.
Furthermore, the process of onboarding staff, which is usually a tedious journey for both managers and new employees, can be significantly enhanced using technology. The interview process, reference checks, payroll, etc, can become self-serve with confirmations taking less than 24 hours.
In a competitive climate, everything should be done in order to ensure you have access to the top talent, whilst the initial process is important for convenience, the company must also be actively marketed as a great place to work.
Internal Communications
People don’t need to be passionate about their place of work to succeed & be great employees but it really does help. The benefits are far-reaching if you are able to cultivate an environment of hard-working people who are also having fun & fully invested in the direction of the company. This, of course, requires hard work and the dedication of HR to set a premise for all leaders & employees to follow. Given the rise in the digital workplace and the intranet being the first place for internal company news, it is important to keep employees engaged whilst working remotely. The challenge is making an interactive noticeboard of information relevant & interesting to employees and this is a great place to keep all apace of business transformations & company news.
Employee Wellbeing
Further key areas to the role of HR & very pertinent to the move to a distributed workforce, are employee wellbeing & mindfulness. Educating the workforce on the need for themselves to be mindful of their own wellbeing, surroundings & dealing with workload & stress; is something that should have been one of the top priorities for HR teams over the past 14 months. Booking virtual seminars is a great way to kick off a wellbeing strategy, then regular team meetings to discuss wellness & everyones personal lives can be a perfect way of team bonding. The move to home has not been easy for many and increased usage of technology has presented challenges to some employees, it is more important than ever that we are looking after all employees needs and assisting them to overcome any personal challenges.
Professional Development
In addition to supporting employees wellbeing, we must also ensure that all employees have the right skill sets to support their teams needs. Leadership is a key example of a skill all companies should support through training and development, as this leads to satisfaction for both the leaders trained and the team members under them. In addition to providing support for IT at the end user level, the only way implementations of new technologies can be successful are through your engineers & IT professionals who constantly need to update their knowledge to keep up with the vast amount of updates & emerging technologies. Cyber security is a huge example of an area you have to employ an expert within and the only way they can remain ahead is through training.
This developemnt has to be managed by HR, team leaders & employees themselves, having engagement from top to bottom is the only way training will be desired by the employees and be supported by upper management. Empowering employees to seek knowledge is a great thing and can only be beneficial to the organisation.
Future of Work
Furhtermore, if you want to champion the future of work and have a company ready to take on emerging technologies with agility & effectiveness, you need all employees to have the correct skills and mindset to adapt. This level of adaptability is only achieved through the steps above & the direction of the company for technology adoption should come from within. The future of work is intrinsically linked to HR and their ability to empower employees through development, internal communications & leadership.
Technology within HR
Every department can be enhanced with the correct technology & HR is no exception. Being able to process requests more accurately and efficiently, speeds up innovation & improves performance for the entire organisation. HR can drive the future of work through the digital workplace by championing internal communication with expert digital delivery to increase employee engagement.
HR can also benefit from technology systems to perform their tasks more effectively, once in place this software can be a huge benefit for management, automating tasks and being able to focus on employee wellbeing, professional development & churn reduction. Harnessing technology provides insights for future strategic decisions and supports optimised management of your orgnaisation, no matter what size. Investing in HR technology should be a must, as this will unlock time they can focus on enhancing the orgnaisation through their function with minimised administration time.
The Future of HR
HR is the lifeblood of a company, the future is through digital transformation & the only way we can succeed is through the function of HR. Emerging technologies have a huge part to play in HR transformaiton, with systems availabel to increase efficiency & provide insights into future strategic initiatives. It is clear that this is an exciting time to be involved within both HR & IT, a combination of the two will really drive your organisation to thrive in the future but you need to be very careful to get this right and focus on the correct areas of innovation & internal support to increase productivity & gain a competitive advantage.
Online Session on Unlocking Productive Potential featuring Arcadis, Umicore, Mondelēz International and supported by Personio.
Given the importance of HR within Digital Transformation, we are delighted to host an online event dedicated to the importance of HR transformation & function to support successful digital transformation. The event is free to attend & all those registered will receive access to the event online on Wednesday 23rd June, in addition to access on-demand.