Advancements in the field of HR tech have been pivotal in shaping how talent management processes have evolved. HR professionals across the globe can today tinker with established practices, modifying them to meet their company’s varied talent demands. This has been greatly enabled by HR tech evolution that today has catered to a growing demand within HR professionals to have better means of interacting with their employee base and improve their productivity.

Such a rise in HR tech has been spurred partially due to rising business interest in talent practices. The unpredictability of external business environment combined with a renewed ‘war on talent’ has made companies more cognizant of its talent management practices. Business leaders across the board have stated how relevant having the right people in their company has become to ensure their companies can weather the changes, both internal and external and help businesses remain profitable. Here we look at three major areas where HR tech shifts are to take place`

Hiring to become more holistic and data-driven

The recruitment function in recent times has grown to become a vital aspect of how HR professionals seek to address their company’s talent needs. Getting the right hires has become imperative with the cost of a wrong hire today being significantly high. This has meant HR professionals have increasingly looked towards the better application of HR tech to improve the accuracy of their hires. With factors such as candidate experience, employer brand, and strategic sourcing all becoming relevant today, HR tech solutions today have made companies greatly competitive in attracting and hiring the right talent. 

While large scale hiring across sectors like retail and IT can be automated today to fit exiting profiles, even specialized skill-based hiring today leverage HR tech in form of using augmented analytics to search and source for the right talent. AI-based recruitment today is actively helping recruiters tackle many of their unconscious biases thus enabling HR professionals to create a more diverse workforce. Many sourcing tools today help recruiters tap into the growing gig economy to find contractual employment solutions to their talent needs. 

The rise of ‘people’ augmented analytics 

Ever since predictive analytics become successful in employing big data analysis to predict consumer behaviors, companies have begun experimenting with other verticals which might benefit from a similar application of analytics. As it turns out, it was the HR function that would soon be thrown into the limelight to ensure the company can hire and retain important talent. Today, such applications have grown from rudimentary analysis of employee data to a system which feeds HR initiatives and makes them more data-driven. With an advantage within most HR functions being their ability to generate and collect employee data, it often becomes a fertile playing field to use predictive analytics and use them to make better employee decisions.  

Moving ahead, the addition on AI and machine learning across the predictive analytics domain is sure to allow for better and more holistic insights into driving talent innovation and allow HR professionals to make better decisions on how to deploy their workforce towards addressing company needs more effectively. This has applications across HR functions today. From making performance management more effective in ensuring employee engagement initiatives are effective in driving productivity, all benefit from predictive analytics. Predicting learning and training needs can also prove crucial in helping companies deal with future changes. Its future application is sure to make HR practices more efficient and help gather important results that can prove crucial when it comes to being proactive in dealing with talent problems.  

Reinventing wellbeing 

A key part of talent innovation today has gone into enabling a more healthy and productive workforce. Over the years the focus has shifted from just treating employees as just as a means to an end to focusing on holistic well-being for their employees  

With advancements into organizational psychology influencing HR practices, wellbeing has evolved to include practices of mindfulness and taking care of mental health in addition to physical. Today the rise of corporate wellbeing is captured with its rising size of the market, around $48 Bn in size. It ranges from diet and fitness; mindfulness and mental health. With rising cases of employee burnout, companies would soon have to begin using HR tech to shift the focus from simply mitigating employee healthcare costs to an overall wellness approach that proactively helps employees deal with burnout and take care of themselves in the long run. Moving ahead, HR tech would enable HR professionals to be more strategic and restructure well-being to help their employees remain healthy in a more holistic nature. 

But the rise in the usage of automation, predictive analytics, AI, and digital platforms, along with strengthening HR initiatives, today also open the doors for wasteful implementation. To know how to use HR tech fruitfully and effectively, it's important to know how it can stand to change to existing HR interventions.