The world of HR is changing rapidly and one of the key drivers is the evolution of technology. New tech is allowing HR teams to revolutionise their approach to the employee lifecycle, from recruitment tools through to performance management.

But these shiny tools, from AI to software bring as many challenges as solutions.

We’ll explore the opportunities new HR technologies are bringing to the table and how to avoid falling into the pitfalls of a robotic employee experience or costly mistakes.

Enhancing Recruitment Processes with Advanced Tools

The recruitment landscape is evolving quickly. AI tools and more are helping employers and job seekers alike, but these come with a heavy caveat.

Useful tech tools for recruitment

Here’s an example of some of the emerging tech in recruitment.

Workable is helping companies to manage candidates, moving them through the system effectively and streamlining the hiring process. ModernLoop identifies as a Hiring Experience Platform that uses automated scheduling and enhances the experience of job seeking candidates. Applied claims promote an ethical recruitment process whilst helping to predict the best hire. There are also many online communication tools which companies can use during the hiring process.

Benefits of recruitment tech in brief

At their best these technologies not only enhance efficiency but also help to build a more inclusive hiring environment and helps people tackle recruitment trends. Here’s some of the other benefits

• Speed – Accelerating the hiring process by reducing time-consuming admin
• Reducing Admin – Decreasing the time needed to hire
• Removes Bias in some cases – Helping with Anonymous CVs and applications which can remove elements of bias and promote diversity in the workplace.
• Marketing – Supports companies by spreading brand awareness and employee branding through a multi-channel approach.
• Candidate experience – Used wisely this can create a much more interactive and streamlined experience for candidates.

Challenges of using technology in the hiring process

• Reduces the human element – Many job seekers and companies turn to experienced recruiters for a more personal experience in search & selection, by having a real person in their corner. In addition, automated processes make it harder for candidates to get a good feel for the company they’re planning on joining. Some candidates who aren’t suitable may end up further along in the process, than if there was human intervention. This ends up wasting the candidates time and potentially damaging the company’s reputation.
• Recruitment bias – People are using tech more frequently to screen candidates. For example, software that scans CVs. Unfortunately, applicant tracking systems and talent management software can lead to bias due to the algorithms these systems use. Certain demographics are being more severely affected than others creating hiring discrimination, in subtle age cues for example. This is contributing to inequality in the job market.
• Choosing the right tech – Choosing the right tech and putting safeguards in place is time-consuming and is unlikely to replace the expertise of a talent acquisition partner or human insights.
• Date concerns – In addition, every system requires data processes making it imperative that candidate’s information is well protected.

Optimising Onboarding Experiences

The onboarding experience is usually the first in-house experience a new recruit has of your company. This makes a smooth and engaging process crucial. This can significantly impact your overall employee satisfaction and motivation and can even set the tone for the new recruit’s future productivity.

Innovative onboarding platforms can transform how companies manage onboarding. 

Tools for onboarding experiences

Bamboo HR provides an employee database and reporting with onboarding tools built in. Hi Bob is popular for HRIS needs with useful tools such as weekly check-ins to see how your new hires are feeling. As well as providing regular insights across the whole company. 

Pros of onboarding software

• Automating admin tasks – Reducing the workload required.
• Cohesive experience – A better experience for new hires, helping new employees acclimatise to their roles and the company culture more effectively.
• Personalised onboarding experiences – When this is facilitated by these onboarding platforms, this can make new employees feel valued and more integrated from their first day.
• Compliance – This helps ensure everyone has the same experience where uniformity and compliance is key. You can automate document submissions and training schedules. What’s more this helps you keep in line with your own HR policies.
• Data – You can use tech to collect data from new hires and even use skills blending to capture new mentoring opportunities for existing teammates. You’ll also capture insights that long-serving employees may not have thought of. For example, did the new hire feel the website gave off a feeling of high-quality ethical branding? Colleagues who have worked at the company for a while are likely to have a biased view of this compared to newer hires.

Challenges of onboarding software

• Human contact – New hires often feel lonely and want to get to know their new teammates. Modern onboarding processes often involve a lot of time sitting alone staring at a screen which can increase the feeling of isolation. It’s good to intersperse the use of technology and create genuine opportunities for recruits to connect and learn with their new peers and managers.
• Company culture – It’s easier to integrate people into the company culture through social copying than dictating rules at them from a screen. They can’t learn best practice and etiquette from a machine in the way they would from their peers, so be wary of using tech alone for this.
• Reviewing Data – It’s important not just to capture insights from onboarding practices but for a human to review these too, otherwise you’ll miss crucial opportunities to improve. You can however use AI tools to summarise the findings for easy digestibility. 

Engagement Insights with AI Survey Tools

Employee engagement is paramount for business success. New AI-powered survey tools are revolutionising how companies are gathering and analysing engagement data.

Lattice’s Engagement Insights for instance, conducts comprehensive surveys and connects performance metrics allowing you to consider impactful action for the future.

In other words, data is king. CompareCamp offers a rich wealth of resources and tool comparisons to support your search for extra tools.

These engagement tools can not only help you to understand employee views, acting as a temperature test for how content your employees are, but also identifies tangible areas needing improvement. By leveraging these insights, organisations can implement targeted strategies to enhance employee engagement, ultimately leading to increased productivity and reduced employee turnover. 

Creating more Inclusive Workplaces with a focus on DEIB

It’s not enough to ‘try’ to be inclusive. Inclusive workplaces actively foster innovation, they make the most of cognitive diversity and drive productivity and employee satisfaction. In other words, they’re integral to running a successful business.

Tech tools such as Diversio are helping companies to achieve this. Diversio uses a DEI platform and training to speed up decision making and identify diversity gaps. In other words, establishing AI-powered recommendations for your business to action.

Learning and Development Opportunities

Continuous Learning and Development (L&D) is essential for business growth and the personal growth of your team.

Companies are utilising blended learning to get the best of both worlds from virtual learning and face-to-face coaching. Blended learning is very useful when you’re training teams across multiple sites or time zones. It can also allow your people to learn at the best time for them. Some may learn best in the morning, others in the evening for example. This can be used to cater for different learning styles too.

Other companies are getting creative with tools such as HeyGen to create AI-powered videos and transforming scripts using engaging avatars. 

Additionally, platforms such as Udemy for Business and LinkedIn Learning offer a vast array of courses that employees can access anytime. Employees can also take advantage of a wealth of free courses from SEMrush’s crash courses to free development sessions hosted by L&D specialists. Your HR and L&D teams can help signpost to these.

By investing wisely in L&D tech, organisations can enhance employee competencies and stay competitive in the rapidly changing business environment, whatever your sector or company size.

Streamlining Employee Queries and simplifying HR admin using Tech Solutions

Businesses need to use employee query software with extra caution. However, what’s clear is that handling employee queries can be a big drain on HR resources. Using AI tools for this can help both HR productivity and employee satisfaction when used correctly.

Handling employee queries efficiently is crucial for maintaining productivity and employee satisfaction. Ultimate.ai is one tool which scales employee support using AI-powered bots. As with many of these tools it’s imperative that employees don’t feel detached, and people get human responses when these are needed. It’s easy for employees to become apathetic. These tools can however be particularly useful in larger businesses where regular 1-2-1 HR support isn’t always achievable and can hugely reduce the workload of your HR staff.

Other tools include Clara Labs which can help you schedule meetings without the usual back and forth. Whereas Benify provides support as an employee benefits and awards platform.

As HR often has crossover with payroll it’s also worth considering the effect of payroll software too. For example Modulr has proven effective for many payroll bureau companies and in-house teams alike.

People Analytics – The game-changing tool for your HR team

Your strategic decisions should have people analytics at their cornerstone.

Your HR team can identify key trends, forecast turnover risks and create targeted interventions to improve employee satisfaction and productivity. All from leveraging people data. This can even support with talent management and succession planning too.

Praisidio claims to provide robust and instantaneous insights into your people and how these, in turn, are impacting your business.

Boosting Performance and Productivity Tracking

At the heart of HR is employee effectiveness and performance management has always been paramount.

Of course, performance is often down to more than just targets it’s about efficiency too and Clockwise is helping optimise team calendars to ensure productive workflows.

Many are using Zapier to automate workflows vastly reducing manual tasks.

Other departments are using AI tools such as QuillBot and ChatGPT; when used with the right safeguards in place these can be hugely powerful in reducing manual tasks.

There’s also plenty of collaboration software you can use too!

How to explore emerging technologies

The HR landscape is constantly evolving so make sure you invest time to stay at the forefront of this. There are many ways to get creative from using Virtual Reality for training exercises or team building to integrating new tools as they come onto the market. You’ll also want to regularly review your HR budget.

Many companies make the mistake of bringing in software into their organisation without hiring the current expertise and considering the implications fully so it’s important to explore properly before going ahead. And do remember that AI was also made by humans and isn’t perfect.

The integration of the right HR tech into a human-centric people strategy can create a best of both world’s scenario that contributes to future organisational success.