The last three years have seen enormous disruption, uncertainty, and a fundamental upheaval of the way we conduct work. For organisations to survive and thrive in this environment, they need to dramatically accelerate the technological transformation of their HR policies and processes.
Some of the challenges facing organisations right now include:
- Significant talent shortages brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- A lack of data to drive evidence-based decision making.
- Managing and facilitating an increasingly remote workforce.
- Laborious and onerous administration due to inefficient processes.
- Compliance failings around underpayments and other legislative risks.
The ongoing pandemic has certainly forced many companies to evaluate how they conduct operations – but these challenges are nothing new. Smart companies have already been implementing and developing solutions through technology, automation and process evolution.
In this blog, we look at this essential trend sweeping the business world, as well as providing best practice examples on how your business can harness HR transformation.
What is HR transformation?
Put simply, HR transformation uses technology to automate processes and make data-driven decisions. According to EY, HR teams are spending around 86% of their time bogged down with admin work, rather than focusing on tasks that directly benefit the organisation.
It’s essential for not just making the HR process more efficient, but for facilitating and improving on the way the organisation’s work gets done. Because of this, HR transformation doesn’t just revolutionise HR processes, it has the potential to shape the entire company.
Because this field is so broad, it might be worth seeing examples of how other companies are doing it:
- Using applicant tracking systems to automate processes around posting jobs, screening candidates and evaluating interviews.
- Exploring how social media can be a vital tool for finding candidates.
- Developing chatbots to triage worker queries during the onboarding process.
- Creating an online learning platform for employee training.
How CXC are transforming HR for our clients
Technology to support total talent management
We’re seeing a growing interest in organisations adopting a total talent management program – that is, a centralised sourcing solution for both contingent and permanent workers.
One of the biggest inhibitors of driving this strategy are companies using different systems for these workers, such as human resource information systems (HRIS) for permanent workers and vendor management systems (VMS) for contractors. This leads to different experiences among the workforce and a lack of shared data.
To support our clients with their total talent goals, many organisations are now using their HRIS or recruitment systems to hire permanent and contingent workers. They then use our proprietary system, MyExchange, to fill the gaps around contractor onboarding, management and payment. This gives them full workforce data and transparency, while also having common systems for HR and approvals for their entire workforce.
Talent pooling
In efforts to reduce costs, improve quality of hire and stem the ongoing talent drain, many organisations are turning to previously engaged workers and building talent pools of known talent as a core component of their contingent sourcing strategy. In doing so, organisations can save significantly on external recruitment and the internal effort involved in the recruitment process.
Hiring known talent comes with significant benefits, such as increased quality of hire, reduced turnover associated with unproven workers, and, ultimately, reduced costs. Companies engage these kinds of workers through a number of different channels:
- Contractors completing an assignment – A company manages a rolling talent pool, where new requirements are cross-referenced against suitable contractors in the talent pool.
- Referrals – Organisations ask their internal employees to recommend candidates to their business from their networks.
- Online talent marketplaces – The talent team review suitable contractors who have completed engagements of a similar nature at other enterprise clients. Candidates are sometimes rated based on previous performance and experience.
We assist our clients with engaging with known talent through Workforce Exchange (WEX), our talent pooling platform. WEX introduces contractors who have just finished their assignments with clients that have a talent need. More info can be found here.
Remote working
According to a recent government report, two thirds of Australians are currently working from home at least some of the time, despite continued relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions.
We’re seeing a similar trend among our contractor workforce, with a 77% increase in contractors working remotely. As of 2021, over half of our contractors have completed a working from home declaration. Although this is down from a historic high in 2021 of 67.5% , it’s still much higher than 2019’s level of 19.2%.
Despite this continued level of remote working, many organisations haven’t set up their business or processes for a sustainable level of flexible work.
To assist our clients, we ensure contractors are set up for working remotely, have system access and work permits, and provide them with wellbeing initiatives through webinars, blogs and our employee assistance program. We also record what assets contractors receive, and arrange for a courier to pick up their equipment when their contract is finished.
If you’re interested in discussing how you can start your HR technology and transformation journey, and would like to find out more about how we can work together, please contact us.
