Despite appearances, many human resources departments are not nearly as digital as they may seem. While it’s true that they is getting in on the digital revolution, when you look behind the HR curtain, you find that these professionals are only partially using digital tools. As a consequence, they are realizing limited benefits.
This begs the question: Can you really say you’ve digitized your HR organization if you’re not using the technology effectively?
Take the case of a large hospital in Florida. At first glance, they seemed to have it all. Their forward-thinking HR department adopted a digital platform to administer and communicate benefits information to their employees, which seems like a success as far as digitization goes.
After the platform was implemented, however, the HR department took for granted that simply notifying employees of the platform’s existence as a valuable resource would motivate the employees to use it. It was another example of the “if you build it, they will come” belief.
But wait a minute, I can hear this HR department saying, “we mass e-mailed our staff with benefits updates and encouraged them to review their benefits profiles.” Unfortunately, with the average office worker receiving 121 e-mails per day and spending an average of 15 to 20 seconds per e-mail, it’s easy to understand the limitations of broadcasting information versus using technology to actually engage with employees. Few of the hospital’s staff actually logged in to their accounts or reviewed their benefits. The hospital learned the hard way that just having a digital communications platform isn’t the same as using that platform.
Let’s not be too hard on the well-intentioned hospital. Their story isn’t unique. HR departments across all industries are stretched thin, especially at the enterprise level. HR professionals are called upon to juggle a myriad of different issues and responsibilities, including everything from imparting policies around data security to handling complaints of inappropriate workplace behavior, all on top of employee benefits administration. As a result, these understaffed and overwhelmed HR departments decide to go digital, looking to use technology to help fill in the gaps.
With so much to do and so little time, HR professionals are implementing enterprise communications platforms or benefits portals, and they think this technology will automatically make it easier and less time consuming to communicate with employees about new benefits. But the reality is different. While employees consistently say benefits are very important to them, and technology allows HR departments to offer and administer a growing variety of benefits without additional work, workers don’t actively engage if the technology is not effectively used by the HR professionals.
The same powerful technology resources that can enable HR departments to become more strategic to the business than ever often languishes and eventually stagnates to the detriment of both the employer and employee.
HR departments need to pivot in how they use the powerful digital technologies they’re adopting. Taking the time to implement digital tools is important and goes a long way in better serve employees, but equally important is taking the time to effectively learn to use the tools to actually engage with employees. By leveraging technology, HR departments can achieve significant results in employee happiness, especially if their digital tools can help streamline benefits administration to allow HR teams to scale efficiently.
Having a digital platform to integrate communication, enrollment and even billing and other administrative tasks gives HR departments the ability to continuously refresh benefits offerings and in turn gain crucial insights from their employees. Ultimately, this makes HR a powerful and strategic tool for the business.
Human resource execs are embracing applicant tracking, training management, performance management and other software applications.
Remember that large hospital in Florida that tried throwing technology at their problems? After they discovered that few employees were paying attention to their e-mails, HR realized they had created another problem — wasted time by yelling into the void. They needed to identify how they could use their technology to support their efforts rather than lean on it as a crutch. They discovered that the best way to communicate with their employee base was by taking to social media channels. By implementing a social media strategy as an enhancement to the digital platform, they saw a significant increase in employee interaction. Once this plan was set in place, active employee engagement no longer required additional time and attention from the HR staff.
The digitization of HR may seem like old news, but competent use of digital tools within HR is still off on the horizon. Perhaps slowly but surely, more HR organizations will find that technology investments fully pay-off when they’re accompanied by the right mix of communication channels and tools. And with that accomplished, HR professionals can leverage the technology to offer employees more, without taking on more work themselves, creating a closer bond with the employee.
Technology might actually put the relationship back into HR.
