Technophobes have long feared that technology would take away jobs. The truth is, however, technology is not actually taking away jobs, but rather giving businesses the ability to do more with the same number of workers. In fact, tech investments can actually help increase revenue, which gives businesses the ability to hire more employees rather than having to lay them off. HR technology can be leveraged by growing businesses in particular to develop and strengthen their practices, often at very little cost. This year, 45% of large companies and 51% of mid-sized companies say they plan on increasing their spending on HR tech, according to Sierra-Cedar. Here are 4 reasons why you should too.
Design an Effective Hiring Process
Finding and recruiting new staff is one of the most laborious and time-consuming tasks that an HR rep has to do – particularly if they are not doing it effectively. If they are not finding and hiring the right people the first time around, they just have to keep doing it again and again until they get it right. Finding the right people can be a challenge, however, because in truth traditional screening methods give you very little information about a candidate to go on before making such an important decision.
Resumes and even interviews only give a snapshot look at someone’s full potential, when you really need a 360-degree view. Personal biases will also always play a strong role in the hiring and recruiting process, no matter how hard we try to identify and eradicate them. Machine learning and AI, however, can help overcome any number of these issues. AI can screen candidates based on both temperament and skill set to find candidates that have both the skills and the right traits to fit in with your corporate culture.
Save Money by Automating Repetitive Tasks
In 1975, just over 10 million students enrolled in college, in spite of low tuition costs and a low cost of living. In 2018, in spite of skyrocketing tuition costs and an average debt load of $40,000 for graduating students, more than 20 million students enrolled in college. By 2025, Millennials will make up more than 75% of the labor force and more than 50% of them say they would take a pay cut to find work that matches their values. A full 90% want to use their skills for good.
Unfortunately, while 56% of millennials believe that an individual should stay at a single company for more than 20 years and 90% of respondents in a recent Bridge survey said they are looking to grow their careers within their current companies, a Nintex study showed that 53% said they don’t expect to stay at their companies beyond five years, thanks to broken processes. What does all this mean? It means no one wants to spend upwards of $40,000 on an education just to spend every day doing work a monkey can do. Not only does automating processes save time and money, it frees your employees up from mindless tasks to focus on projects that matter.
Offer Digital Employee Training
What employees don’t want to do is a never-ending series of mindless tasks that a monkey could do. What they do want to do is be constantly learning, growing and developing. In fact, a 2015 Deloitte Millennial survey found that out of 7,800 future leaders from 29 different countries, only 28% said they felt their current organization was making full use of their skills.
While most Millennials grew up with technology in some form, only 36% of Millennials and 29% of Gen Z believe they have the skills and knowledge they’ll need to thrive in the burgeoning world of Industry 4.0. While respondents were certainly interested in continuing to build their technicals skills, their greater concerns were in regard to a lack of training in building interpersonal skills, developing more confidence and engaging in ethical behavior—all of which they consider essentials for business success.
Increase Employee Productivity and Satisfaction
Not only can technology help you to better educate and train your employees to prepare them for advancement, but it can also help you better manage their progress. There may be nothing more frustrating for an employee than expending the time and energy to learn a new skill set only to have it sit unused and unacknowledged.
Modern HR tools are able to help managers effectively analyze and predict staff needs accurately and track progress far more effectively to help significantly improve productivity and increase job satisfaction overall. Technology can help managers better identify quietly consistent star performers that might otherwise slip under the radar as well as allow employees themselves to single out their peers for praise.
Contrary to the fears of many technophobes, technology is not actually poised to take away jobs. What it is poised to do is to take on the kinds of tasks that humans find frustrating, repetitive, boring or even dangerous. This can free up humans to do what they are best at: interact, design, create and innovate. But only if businesses use technology effectively to help them better manage their resources. While hiring may be one of the most important and time consuming tasks HR departments may perform, if you don’t actually manage your human resources well, hiring (over and over) is all you will ever be doing.
The HR Tech Weekly® 
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