2020 Vision: Four factors that will shape HR tech in the next decade

Posted in HR Trends

The end of 2019 marks the end of the decade. A decade which brought a landslide of change to the HR space.

Employee engagement became the currency of HR, process-driven approaches crashed and burned, which in turn fuelled a seismic shift towards experience-driven solutions, and companies came to the abrupt realization that they the need to elevate their employee experience to match their customer experience.

The flow-on effect has led to 88% of chief HR officers saying they need to invest in three or more technologies over the next two years. Which means the majority of organizations are bracing themselves to ramp up their tech from 2020 and beyond.

So what will the next decade bring? We looked into our crystal ball…only kidding, we consulted with experts to discover four elements that will shape the future of HR.

Millennials

They make up half of the entire workforce and their voices are only going to continue to grow louder. Companies will no longer be able to (and shouldn’t!) ignore them and their expectations. Digital employee onboarding will no longer be a nice-to-have and will instead be a necessity in the modern workplace.

Millennials are accustomed to a high standard of digital products and they expect their work experiences to match their daily lives.

According to Gartner 26.5% of millennials have said technology was missing from their organization’s onboarding program, and with 68% of HR professionals planning to use technology in their onboarding processes, we can expect to see a rise in digital onboarding at the start of the new decade.

Process-driven onboarding is broken and no longer meets employee expectations. Experience-driven solutions will leverage technology that’s all about being connected, transparent, personalized, interactive and fast.

Artificial Intelligence

We couldn’t have a futuristic blog without tackling the hot topic of AI. While the past few years saw the idea of AI create job security fears among the masses, the reality won’t be quite so dark. This major disruptor is expected to change everything in the HR space from recruitment to talent acquisition and performance management. Most notably, it will improve employee experience.

“AI will be a strategic element to enhance employee’s experience. It will support the HR department to design personalized, data-based career paths mapped to each employee’s personality and learning style. Ultimately, I foresee the deployment of comprehensive, personalized, artificially intelligent employee portals in order to re-humanise HR and free up time for co-workers. In my opinion, one of the main questions of the coming years will be to know how to re-humanise the time released by AI. How to inject more human in the employee experience?” – Emmanuelle Blons, Organisational Change Management and HR Infosys AVP

In the upcoming decade we expect to see AI tech and analytics tools work with HR to learn more about their employees – from the best way to manage their time to uncovering the link between performance and employee behaviour and habits.

Immersive Learning

As AI eliminates the mundane tasks and frees employees up for bigger projects and higher learning, there will be a critical shift towards immersive learning.

It’s already starting to happen. Amazon recently announced their decision to retrain around 100,000 workers (roughly a third of its workforce) whose jobs will be replaced with automation technology.

So, how will it work?

Think: experiential training methodology that uses virtual reality. Training meets gamification. It will be common see new hires or upskilling employees trained via VR – simulating real-world scenarios in a safe, controlled and (best of all) engaging environment! The upside for businesses? This method of individualized training will be easily accessible and scalable across entire organizations, regardless of geographical location.

Mobile-First Approach

Let’s get a little interactive for a moment. We want you to think about the last device you used to watch a video. Was it your desktop? Laptop? TV? Mobile?

The most common answer is…mobile! Why? Because it’s always with us. You’re unlikely to be browsing through social media on a laptop during the morning commute, but chances are you’ve scrolled through Instagram or updated your Facebook status during transit.

We’re living in a mobile-first era and HR will be playing catch up.

“We live in a mobile world…HR practitioners, managers and employees need to be able to access their workforce data, whether they’re at a desktop or waiting at the airport.” – Linda Mougalian, the Division VP – Product marketing and strategy and ADP

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