The technology landscape is currently undergoing a revolutionary change across the world. The course is accelerating amid the pandemic. As a result, the technologies which helped facilitate remote working have elevated from optional to essential for survival. Over the period of the past few months, workplaces have witnessed a massive change. The biggest of all is the resetting of HR technology to Work Tech, which infers that the transformation process will be everything from disruptive to revolutionary.
When inspected in-depth, one can view how these changes have been happening for a while now. However, since last year when several trends started coming crashing together in work tech, the evolution has become more prominent. As a result of this, colossal shifts are taking place even in the HR department to advance technology designs to meet the changing needs of employees.
Why change HR tech to Work Tech?
One could consider this a paradigm shift in organizations in general, and for HR departments in particular. The role of HR has evolved from being a support function to a more strategic function now. It is not restricted to just capturing employee records, but their primary responsibility now is talent management, and ensuring the employees have everything they need in order to work at their full potential.
Since last year when several trends started coming crashing together in work tech, the evolution has become more prominent. As a result of this, colossal shifts are taking place even in the HR department to advance technology designs to meet the changing needs of employees.
In order to do this, they need the help of technology. HR tech has transformed to work tech in the sense that it is acting as an enabler to allow HRs to play a more strategic role in ensuring an organisation’s success.
Also read: WFH was Harsh on Fintech, But the Sector Adapted and Boomed: Sapna Sukumar, Cashfree Payments
What does this evolution mean from employees’ perspective?
The progressive changes will result in employees being able to manage all their work on very few tools rather than spending their time juggling among various different tools which don’t talk to each other. Whether they need help in completing payroll forms, a training exercise they are aspiring to obtain, need to see or update their OKRs or timesheets, request a 1:1 meeting or need or provide performance feedback – everything will be available on a single tool.
A lot of companies are already taking notes and implementing tools that take care of many aspects of work instead of multiple point solutions which only solve one aspect of work or HR.
Their primary goal is to make human resources an enabler of work rather than a distraction. This should enable employees to access and perform everything they need to work, from wherever they are. Such tools are easier to use, and these will help the teamwork better and more efficiently, thereby creating a dramatic change in the way HR departments are perceived in most companies.
Previously the collection of work had to be continuously moved and migrated from one tool to another and all new hires and exits had to be individually updated across all these various tools. This further disrupted the flow of processes in the work systems and took a long time. With the mentality shift to work tech, employees can do all their tasks in one place, and the HR part would get done automatically. All they have to do is find the right panel, click the suitable options, and they are done.
Whether they need help in completing payroll forms, a training exercise they are aspiring to obtain, need to see or update their OKRs or timesheets, request a 1:1 meeting or need or provide performance feedback – everything will be available on a single tool.
Also read: 5 Ways To Boost Employee Experience With HR Analytics!
Is this change good?
Employee experience is the binding force in the workplace that is ultimately driving this shift of HR Tech to Work tech, and combining two billion dollars industries into one. The capacity to build technology that makes the entire work relatively easier for employees, and not just the HR, is the sole motive of this paradigm shift. This is a natural extension of HR tech since the responsibility of making people more productive traditionally fell on the shoulders of the HR departments anyway.
These changes become vital for the growth of the workplace as we become more and more reliant on technology for our work, collaboration and communication.
Conclusion
The digital workplace trend is prompting the dramatic shift of HR tech to Work Tech. Through collaboration and communication platforms online, many new benefits are being provided through technology, with ease in the average workplace. The providers of such technologies need to focus heavily on iterative designs and agile teaming in order to solve the multitude of different problems that will come up.
If not done right, these changes can be more disruptive and detrimental than beneficial. Hence, the proper focus should be on understanding how people are working and how that is changing, in order to provide the technology that acts as an enabler and a catalyst for such change rather than something which tries to hold them back.
