HR is undergoing fundamental seismic shifts at a light bolt speed. The journey to Digitization over the past years was mainly in the areas of Social, Cloud, Mobility and Analytics.  This addressed the need for speed, accessibility and experience, giving birth to the next wave of digitization and to us exploring advanced use of Cognification, AR/VR, and Gamification.

The industry is heading towards “As a Service economy” which is really about augmenting human performance.  

In the future, therefore, HR practices will be deeply influenced by the rise of computer based intelligence. If Digitization took a decade to create an impact, Cognification is just going to take half the time to spread its tentacles. Cognitive computing technologies are now able to perform many tasks that were once considered solely the domain of humans. Speech recognition, visual perception, sensor technology, and artificial intelligence are all converging to produce machines that talk, see, read, listen, and even learn by watching videos. The most advanced HR and business leaders are already reimagining their employee experience and transforming this experience with cognitive technology. Cognitive technologies have the capability to approach and resolve questions the same way humans do — by understanding, reasoning and learning to build a deep and broad knowledge base that is always up to date. Cognification also ensures that we approach intelligence in a multidimensional manner where we are able to integrate IQ, EQ, spatial dimension, deductive reasoning and long term memory, which will co-create an impactful system that is devoid of noise and distractions — resulting in an unbiased unique experience to the employee at any point of time –every time.

Blockchain Technology is being applied to verify the accuracy of data flow at every transactional check point. Imagine having all your employment related details associated with your electronic signature in one block – security access, insurance, payroll, expenses, work performance, employment history, psychometrics etc. The employment contracting process would effectively be redundant. Blockchain has been established as an integral part of the Digital Transformation that  HR is undergoing and hence is bundled with Artificial Intelligence to bring about a change in outlook. Progressive organizations have already embraced Gamification, Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence to create unique and meaningful employee experiences. Gamification is helping the employees learn better, understand policies and mandates including inculcating a sense to dress better.

Virtual reality can enhance the experience of a prospective employee by giving them an insight into organization and its culture so that the prospects can experience the employee life cycle even before recruitment. VR has also found its way to replace the class room training by making it multi–dimensional. The whole approach has shifted from Trainer and Classroom to employee and experiencing the learning, overriding the constraints of time, place and pace.  Tech Mahindra has launched DOVE (Digitization of Valuable experiences), an application that helps employees joining, through a smooth transition. It has a virtual map of the campus, information of the manager, workspace details, etc. DOVE is available to the associates once they accept the offer letter to the joining day. DOVE is increasing connect between the organization and the associate with a click and minimum human interface.  

Robotics and AI are redefining various processes at the workplace across geographies; riding the wave, Tech Mahindra has developed a chatbot called UVO. Chatbots now are changing the way HR answers queries. UVO helps automate the query management thereby reducing the turn-around time. UVO eliminates the long wait and provides the employees with a response within second and reducing the timelines from 2- 72 hrs. As you read this, UVO is “learning” to analyze the sentiments based on the conversations that are happening through chats and provide an insight into employee and organization mood. It is not just categorizing the conversations into positive or negative by classifying the statements, it is learning to read it in context of organization, recognizing the sarcasm, the wit and employee emotion. These insights will soon replace the engagement survey conducted annually or biannually providing a real time insight into the mood of the organization. AI is everywhere, i.e. it alerts for variance in predictive analysis and is even taking care of employee well-being by alerting health check-ups and suggesting wellness programs.

We are still in first hour of discovering how cognification can help develop our Human Capital The Future is here and the BEST is yet to come.