HR fraternity taking advantage of pandemic for digitalization

COVID-19 disrupted the world on a microscopic level, compelling businesses to redefine playbooks for navigating crisis. Taking lessons from multiple COVID waves, organisations are prioritizing communication, trust and transparency to restore productivity and establish a seamless employee experience.

Long periods of silo working, heavy reliance on manual operations, financial instability, etc. are weighing down the human resource function. But with a holistic human resource strategy, organisations can bounce back stronger than ever.

With proactive vaccination drives, businesses are considering reopening offices with proper safety measures. Various regional and central governments have even released protocols to reopen with a hybrid model. This poses a dire need for enterprises to begin putting in place strategies for transitioning to what will become our next situational phase of work.

State of the art digitized HR solutions has surfaced as a critical business requirement for the global Human Resource Management systems transformations in these trying times. Transforming end to end HR operations is being positively viewed by businesses to cut operational costs, channel resources into more productive operations and enhance the overall business efficiency. Large enterprises adopting an in-house payroll ecosystem end up spending approx. 20 per cent or more on operational expenditures, as against organizations leveraging digitization for HR processes.

Hence, businesses need a transformational shift to sustain the Human Resource function and overcome the impact of the global pandemic.

Decline of the traditional Human Resource Function -

The traditional HR practices might go for a toss as the new dynamic human resource will be the lifeblood of every business. Businesses need to manage talent with utmost care and diligence. Major challenges in the post-covid world revolve around the people aspect of the global pandemic, manual operations, loss of time and productivity.

Since the pandemic has imposed financial stress on businesses, it makes good economic sense to digitize and transform HR operations and reduce the effort, time, and money involved in managing in-house HR & payroll operations.

An HCM provider offers a strategic solution that assists with consistent, accurate and timely HR services without disrupting the flow and structure of an organization. The automation of the HR & Payroll elements in Human Capital Management (HCM) relieves the employer from routine tasks like work hours tracking, leave and attendance tracking, tax declarations and deductions and more.

Increasing demand for Digitized HR Services

The post-pandemic world expects a speedy economic recovery; hence businesses are bound to face intense market competition. This compels businesses to be more agile, centralized, and innovation-driven, compelling many enterprises to incline towards digital services. This will streamline their pivotal operations including recruitment, attendance, and leave management.

A state-of-art ERP based HR solution furnishes end to end employee services including TDS and other payroll compliances, complementing the strategic benefits of an ERP platform. The solution also enhances the seamless generation of Management Information System (MIS) and comprehensive employee reports.

Business transformation powered with disruptive technologies including AI, Automation

The advancements made in industrial revolution 4.0 manifests in the human resource spectrum as well. From being a conventional on-premise operation to a full cloud-driven system, technology is revolutionizing the HR landscape in full throttle. The new-age technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Chatbots are making HR processes swift, automated and precise.

Many HR solution providers have initiated the deployment of scalable platforms driven by automation. This has equipped businesses with the ability to perform tedious tasks like data-keeping, expense management and complex payroll calculations less human-driven.

Unprecedented enterprise data security

Data is the lifeblood of any digital ecosystem. And when it comes to human resources, data security becomes even more critical. Any potential breach of employee data impacts the entire ecosystem as well as the reputation of an enterprise. Hence, stringent data security mechanisms top the list of factors supporting a seamless employee experience.

Renowned HCM solution providers offer highly secured platforms for harbouring payroll-related details of employees and organizations. It’s incumbent upon the solution provider to deploy multiple layers of data security to safeguard client or employee data from any breach. A credible payroll vendor also provides competent disaster recovery strategies to ensure that there are no disruptions in business activities in case of a natural or man-made calamity.

ClickHCM(https://www.clickhcm.com/), a leading HCM provider automates 85% of HR mundane processes and allows the HR team to spend their precious time on taking important decisions and supporting the people of the organization. The solution incorporates multiple layers of data security and takes one week to deploy and empower the HR teams without compromising on security. ClickHCM is one of the flagship products developed by Soniks Consulting, Hyderabad with a vision to become leader in HR/HCM space.

Looking forward

While embracing digitisation has become the new role of an HR professional, every company requires their unique workflow of HR services. In the post-pandemic reality, employees have to adapt to a hybrid form of work while the HR department leads with a streamlined and automated approach. Recruiting the right people, training them to perfection, maintaining their attendance and payroll via working from home, and managing the entire staff remotely takes precedence in today’s pandemic-struck HR function.

Collectively, these technological advancements will go a long way to reinforce employees’ trust, speed up the function and improve their impressions based on how the HR professionals react or respond in the face of crisis and uncertainty.

The author of this article is Ram Malay, CEO Soniks Consulting.