Taking companies on their technology journey is definitely a complicated process. Business leaders are in charge of enabling their companies to sustain a tumultuous business environment where tech-based disruptions are slowly but surely chipping away from traditional means of operations. As business transformation becomes a mainstay, CEOs have in turn begun reorganizing their priorities to better prepare their companies. 

According to a study by Gartner, this shift has been both in the direction of evolving talent management within companies and the successful adoption of technology across its process. The study states that talent management tops the list of CEOs of top organizational competencies needed in the current business environment to excel, with the next three focusing on developing “tech-oriented” competencies within the company.  But to truly materialize this sentiment into actionable interventions and make the best of latest talent management technology to build “tech-oriented” mind-set within the company, two key stakeholders have to play a close role: the CHRO and CIO. 

The benefits of a close partnership

A vital aspect of solving talent issues in today’s changing markets to ensure the effective use of HR tech to better solve problems of recruitment, engagement, and retention of skilled professionals. But to meet the growing demand of business leaders to have a future-ready workforce calls for a closer working relationship between two core verticals within companies. With access to troves of employee data and rich experience in traditional talent management, including acquisition, training, retention and compliance skill, CHROs today are well equipped to solve current talent problems. But to truly add value to their talent management and make their companies digitally sustainable, they have to leverage while the CIO brings an in-depth understanding of enabling technology and digital transformation opportunities.

Role in developing employee experience

Employee experience has become central to talent management practices to the extent that it plays a critical role in their success. With engagement levels across the globe already being low and significant portions of the working for population today being restless and disengaged, employee experience has a key role to play moving ahead. 

But employee experience today has to be driven by the collaborative efforts of both CIOs and CHROs. While one is in charge of building the technology architecture that would run the company, the other is responsible to make sure such architecture has the right people behind it. Through the effective collaboration of the two, companies can today truly build employee-centric business processes and ensure employee experience is central to an increasingly tech-driven work culture. Studies have shown that this will become more important as we move ahead, given how technology will play a larger role in businesses. By 2020, the greatest source of competitive advantage for 30% of organizations will come from the workforce’s ability to creatively exploit digital technologies.

The following steps have to be crucial while looking at effective collaboration between the two erstwhile separate vertical functions to make process more employee centric.

• Systematic collaboration: While CHROs can identify and document areas where within their employee’s interaction with their company that can be improved, CIOs can translate that into structural changes by tweaking the use of their technological resources. 
• Ensure technology integration: Although most new hiring is done in accordance to skill sets that prove to understand of the latest tech, CIOs can ensure seamless integration of their companies’ tech architecture and better direct CHROs to chart their learning and engagement initiatives to be more impactful. 
• Focus on building an intuitive digital architecture: Creating a technology architecture that meets the company’s demand is necessary but to truly leverage such technologies, their application has to be intuitive and less cumbersome than their older version. It’s just not to implement a digital system that solves problems, it should do so in a way that makes sense to employees. 
• Use employee data constructively: CHROs can ensure the data generated through their employee processes leads to better policy changes while CIO can enable a smoother implementation of such changes and ensure objective and error-free data collections. 

HR, a critical focus area

When it comes to talent management, CIOs and CHROs have a crucial role to play. In addition to improving the general day to day experience of employees, the two stakeholders also have a key role to play in improving the functioning of modern-day HR.  According to a recent report from PwC that surveyed 12,000 executive, managers and staff, 90 percent of the executives said that their company focuses on employees’ needs when introducing new technology, but only half of their employees agreed i.e. over 53 percent agreed. That’s a huge gap that, when left alone, will have negative consequences.

To address such gaps, HR processes require leveraging HR tech in a meaningful manner. From making the recruitment process easier and less cumbersome to ensuring employees learning needs are met. Although CIOs have had expertise driving consumer experience while CHROs have met talent demands successfully till now, meeting future talent considerations and focusing on employee experience, needs both to collaborate efficiently.