What is HR Digitalisation?

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Human Resource (HR) digitalisation is the most significant change affecting organisations and has since gained exponential adoption over the years; HR must execute new methods and procedures to keep up with rapid modernisation of the workforce.

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The benefits of systematic process is creating newer operational HR processes to help improve communication, collaboration, and access to data analytics.

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Studies show that, digitalisation practices such as "Monjin" video interviewing improves hiring accuracy as much as 86% due to the usage of automation in determining the candidate specialisation, technical skills, years of experience. This result in streamlining process which leads towards better efficiency and productivity which save on time and cost to your business.Moreover, research from Oxford University, found that 90% of HR administrative roles are likely to be automated by 2035. Already in Malaysia, talent in the country say that they are affected by AI, with 61% participants from a Hays survey confirming they have experienced an impact of automation, either partially or significantly.

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What are the challenges faced in Digitalisation ?

A report from the NST, stated that 98.5% of Malaysian SME lagged behind with the implementation of digital HR solutions. Which could be due to various reasons from financial constraints to management red tapes. In a survey conducted by Vase.Ai and Digi showed, that the main barriers to go digital were :

• Ineffective and unsystematic data (32%)
• Platform processes high costs (44%)
• Conundrum about digitalisation will make their job redundant (15%)
• System Inefficiency in consolidating tasks (17%)

Whether organisation accept digitalisation or not, the world is continuing towards it`s digital shift, companies who do not digitalise run the risk of losing relevance in an increasingly internet-heavy sphere. The silver lining here is that, the survey showed Malaysian employees are looking for ways to proceed with upskilling, learning the efficiency with digital tools and digital improvement of data accuracy.

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What are the challenges faced in Digitalisation ?

A report from the NST, stated that 98.5% of Malaysian SME lagged behind with the implementation of digital HR solutions. Which could be due to various reasons from financial constraints to management red tapes. In a survey conducted by Vase.Ai and Digi showed, that the main barriers to go digital were :

• Ineffective and unsystematic data (32%)
• Platform processes high costs (44%)
• Conundrum about digitalisation will make their job redundant (15%)
• System Inefficiency in consolidating tasks (17%)

Whether organisation accept digitalisation or not, the world is continuing towards it`s digital shift, companies who do not digitalise run the risk of losing relevance in an increasingly internet-heavy sphere. The silver lining here is that, the survey showed Malaysian employees are looking for ways to proceed with upskilling, learning the efficiency with digital tools and digital improvement of data accuracy.

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What are the ways to go digitisation?

1. Going paperless

With the daily use of emails & Microsoft Office, it’s still not a surprise that many HR processes have not gone paperless in their daily operations. This involves vast stacks of forms for benefit claims, leave applications, and other miscellaneous items that require a considerable effort in tracking and organisation, let alone the time is taken to process it.

Paperwork that requires inter-departmental approval would see one sheet of paper travel across building floors to get necessary signatures. Bear in mind that HR departments in huge companies handle hundreds, if not thousands of paperwork every day. Not to mention, some companies hire data-entry clerks just to key in information from paper documents into excel sheets.

2. Employee self-service app

Everything is made easy with mobile apps these days. The use of smart applications has simplified HR processes for employees and changes how employees interact with the organisation. Mobile apps help employees obtain information at their fingertips without going to HR for transactional information. This is “Employee Self-Service” at its best.

Deloitte had trailed a system that tracks the time consultants spent with their clients, billable hours and compares them to their colleagues. With the data, the system provides smart suggestions for improving ineffective working styles. Another application analyses the user’s voice and detects distress so that the employee can take action to improve his or her wellbeing.

3. Automation in motion

Automation eliminates hours of manual work. Typically tedious tasks such as processing hundreds of medical claims can be automated. As an example, the HealthMetrics platform connects corporates to healthcare providers, enabling cashless treatments for employees, digital MCs, and consolidated billing via the platform. Due to its innovative approach, which solves an existing problem, corporates quickly adapt its solution. Besides this, manual work is prone to human error.

4. Recruiting through social media

Recruitment has transformed with the emergence of social media. For example, LinkedIn transformed how people exhibit their profile & recruiters to understand one’s background better. Not only that, in more social platforms such as Facebook, it helps you to evaluate one’s personality.

Talentnow mentioned that 80% of employers said social recruiting helped them find passive candidates, while 70% of recruiters said they had successfully hired social media. The report also states that 89% of the companies plan to recruit candidates through social media, indicating that the trend will continue to grow.

5. VR For Training

Learning is always better through practical, real-life experiences or via practice. With the emergence of virtual reality (VR), companies can simulate real-life examples during training.

For example, Walmart utilises VR technology to prepare employees in dealing with Black Friday sale frenzies. Simulations using past experiences and data will showcase how a crowd reacts to products on sale, gauging customer traffic in the store as well as how to respond to confrontations and crowd management. With this, new employees get first-hand accounts of what it is like dealing with the real-life scenarios, before going out in the field.

6. Gamification at work

Application of game dynamics in typically non-game contexts will help companies develop better employee engagement. For example, companies can reward employees when they achieve their KPIs, recognise their efforts when dealing with sticky situations, or even just by being a great co-worker!

Companies can also implement real-time leader boards to create friendly competition between co-workers. This encourages employees to interact with each other and boost their performance. For example, Astro rewards employees when they take fewer sick leaves with points that can be used for buying gadgets or travel expenses.

7. People Analytics

It is essential that the company’s understanding of the employees matches the actual scenario. Often time, companies tend to make assumptions or rely on industry benchmarks, but is it accurate? Besides that, with millennials joining the workforce, companies will need to adapt to the changing demographics.

How do you track employees’ behaviour, which is seemingly qualitative than quantitative? Let’s take HealthMetrics, an employee medical benefits management platform, provides real-time data analytics of employees’ health-seeking & automatically reports pertinent information such as the most common treatments sought.

Let’s say a manufacturing company with many medical claims involving respiratory issues may indicate that the employees may be exposed to airborne particles. Therefore, companies can craft simple & specific wellness programs such as providing adequate face masks to reduce such medical conditions.

8. Borderless training

Conducting training for recruits located in different countries all over the world can be a real nightmare. A cloud-based training system can solve that problem, where the only requirement is an internet connection. Gone are the days where employees must be physically present to participate in training. Text, video & audio materials can be made available with a click of a button. Coupled with VR technology, employees can even go on practical training that can be done and repeated at any time.

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9. Digital Platforms

What do companies such as Uber, Airbnb & Amazon have in common? They are digital platforms that connect two or more groups of people that either seek or offer a product/service. This creates a more distributed approach where people now get access to many options with just a click.

Companies try to emulate the platform approach by appointing panel clinics to seek treatment at healthcare providers approved by the company in the HR context. The issues that arise from this are that HRs will need to manage the administration & relationship with these panel clinics, including the billing management.

Typically the number of panel clinics can be become limited due to the difficulty in managing multiple providers. By using HealthMetrics platform, we connect corporates & employees to healthcare providers, where information is synced on both sides in real-time, and manual processes are automated.

10. Digital Culture

Lastly, digital platforms in different HR processes have bred a new set of cultures relevant to the growing millennial populations. With baby boomers and Gen X retiring, company staff will mostly consist of millennials. A survey showed that in 2016, a total of 75.4 million millennials were recorded in the workforce, surpassing 74.9 million baby boomers (aged 51 – 69) in the United States.

This group of young and passionate adults grew up with technology and understood how to use technology to their benefit. Besides that, this type of digital culture appeals to them, which inherently ties in with all the other nine digitalisation practices discussed earlier.

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Conclusion

The adoption of digital solutions for HR processes are very much crucial towards organisation as they provide many benefits to lower redundant/repetitive task, lower the risk making error and provide room for critical task for HR to focus on. It’s a common misconception that digitalisation is challenging to adopt, but these ten practices can be a low barrier of entry.

If your organisation is looking towards a complete and hassle-free digital solution, Healthmetrics essential plan is free and allows organisation to get started with employee analytical data, access to cashless treatment and seamless invoice consolidation through the portal.

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