Human resources bring about many necessary changes and challenges in organizations when it involves people and processes. When HR is moved into the digital realm, it brings along a wide range of benefits that help to define the roles and responsibilities of HR executives and teams today. From talent acquisition to people management and from compensation to the delivery of benefits, digital approaches move with the pulse of the business.
A recent report on HR practices and capabilities by Accenture states, “HR may start acting like a marketing organization, by analyzing employee data to mine it for insights; creating customized talent offerings; and marketing, branding and educating employees about talent and HR processes. HR professionals will also likely take on more of a coaching role, helping to design cultures, incentives and educational programs to support employees as they engage in IT-enabled talent processes.”
For many HR and business leaders, modern HR processes offer a complete picture of the employer-employee lifecycle, and also helps to bring together knowledge and work practices within enterprises that were formerly divided. Mobile-based applications and digital signatures make the process more reliable and transparent, which means better onboarding and performance management.
Wendy Moran, Director of Talent Acquisition at Gold’s Gym, states, “Investors want to know that a company looking to raise capital or spend money has the full human capital management strategies and capabilities to execute the company’s vision.”
“Mobile is now an expectation of employees, managers, and candidates…Many see mobile access as a must-have,” says Deb Card, a partner at Information Services Group.
How can your people and culture managers help in your company’s digital transformation efforts?
Digital HR solutions from cloud services to e-signature technology could begin to have some immediate impact on productivity and corporate growth. To build a solid foundation, HR managers must know the advantages of making the switch. Modern HR is also about self-service, allowing current and potential employees to manage their work lives through online services, increasing productivity while also boosting morale.
“If you’re not moving toward the cloud, you get held hostage in the technology of the moment,” says Larry Pernosky, Chief Human Resources Officer at Amedisys.
“If you haven’t started, get digital now. Make sure your candidate platforms are mobile. This is a must to stay competitive among talent,” states Gunjan Aggarwal, Vice President of HR, Head Talent Acquisition, Diversity Recruiting and M&A at Ericsson.
Digital HR Helps Overall People Management in Three Ways:
- It pushes companies to be more data-driven. Foundational, advanced, and transactional analytics offer the ability to act on data-driven information, better target employee needs, and understand the current workforce in real-time.
- It streamlines the selection and hiring process. Cutting down the time required to get approvals for candidates means more time spent identifying new talent and training current talent.
- It improves the quality of work life. After hiring is complete, HR can focus on ensuring active engagement and participation in a culture that is free from negativity.
Now that we have a better understanding of how digital transformation helps HR professionals, let’s take a look at how creating a culture of digital transformation can help people and culture managers perform their job more effectively.
People and culture managers have a major task to compete once a company decides to begin their digital transformation journey. Without rethinking the managerial culture of your organization as you embark on your digital transformation journey will result in failure and an unsuccessful transformation. People management is essential to the success of your digital transformation efforts. So much so, that many companies have assigned employees as the head of people and culture in their company.
Building a digital transformation culture is much easier than many believe it to be and it’s essential to ensure the success of your efforts. Here are some ways you can ensure the success of your efforts by bringing a culture of digital transformation to your company.
1. Empower Employees
People and culture managers in your organization play a key role in your transformation efforts. It’s essential that whoever you put as the head of people and culture at your organization during your transformation encourages and supports employees.
The most effective way to achieve this is to identify learning opportunities based on business goals, as well as support and encourage employee self-training initiatives. While training and learning opportunities used to be conducted at specific times or dates, the most effective culture to implement at your organization is one in which employees and managers alike are continually training and learning.
2. Create Individual Goals
Implementing a company-wide digital transformation is difficult because it can be near impossible to get everyone on the same page. This is where people and culture managers shine brightly. People and culture managers play an important part in the digital transformation process and an essential way they can help employees get on board with your transformation efforts is to get every employee to create individual goals for their own transformation efforts.
When each employee takes your transformation seriously enough to create their own goals to reach, your efforts will be much more successful. Creating individual goals is so important that, according to 360Learning, “Often, digital transformation efforts fail because the organization is taken as a whole; transforming every day, micro-practices of individual employees tends to be much more effective, especially when there is a team dynamic involved.”
3. Promote Best Practices
Once your company has adopted a culture of continual learning and training, your people and culture managers then need to determine which practices best support the business and promote those practices throughout the organization.
An essential role of people and culture managers during your digital transformation is to facilitate information between all employees, especially senior staff members and younger employees. People and culture managers also have a responsibility to implement new work methods that keep up with your transformation efforts.
4. Encourage Collaboration
Perhaps the most effective way to ensure that all employees are embracing your digital transformation efforts is to encourage collaboration between all employees. Collaboration not only allows ideas to flow more freely but increases productivity as well. A great way for the head of people and culture at your organization to encourage collaboration is to engage teams in activities outside of team building. When employees see each other as friends instead of superiors, they’ll be more willing to work with each other and collaborate on important business goals like digital transformation.
Collaboration is so essential to the success of your transformation efforts that Francisco D’Souza, CEO at Cognizant states, “The interdisciplinary requirement of digital continues to grow. The possibilities created by combining data science, design and human science underscore the importance both of working cross-functionally and of driving customer-centricity into the everyday operations of the business. Many organizations have yet to unlock that potential.”
5. Offer Flexible Training for All
While empowering employees, encouraging collaboration, creating individual goals, and promoting best practices are great ways for people and culture managers to achieve their digital transformation goals, it’s important to remember that you need to also offer digital training at all levels of the organization.
Try offering online training programs to allow your busy workforce to learn new practices in their own time. When you make new digital practices easier for employees to learn, you further empower them instead of disempowering them with one-size fits all approaches that take up valuable time and provide lack-luster results.
For your digital transformation efforts to be successful, it’s essential for your people and culture to transform as your business does. As your organization undergoes its digital transformation journey, make sure the people and culture managers at your company understand the best ways to keep employees and the company on the same page of your transformation efforts.
