One of the main areas of discussion at this year’s HR Tech Europe conference, held on October 24 and 25 in Amsterdam was the Top 10 key HR Investment Areas for 2013 – 2014. Marc Coleman, founder of the Pan European HR Network and contributor to HR Tech Europe discusses these 10 key focus areas.
European HR Investment Areas
- Talent Management
Given the old and sometimes tired adage of ‘people are our most important asset’ this is never likely to change for obvious reasons. This is still seen as the biggest pain point for so many businesses, big and small alike as it influences everything - innovation, sales, marketing, culture, leadership etc. It has been noted that talent management and recruitment projects have similar numbers to change and transformation projects for success and failure. Besides, it only takes a new CEO/Head of HR to come in and completely change the talent strategy from efforts started 12 months earlier.
Streets ahead of all other votes, talent management stands out from the crowd. This was narrowed down from 40 investment areas in 2012, including succession planning, recruitment, retention and talent communities, pools and networks. - Analytics
HR reporting, analytics, metrics, measurement, predictive, social analytics, there’s no surprise that this lands at number two on the list. The opportunity is real and industry experts see this area exploding as analytics/better HR reporting tools make the number two spot on buyers hit lists for 2013.
Coupled with the fact that people are people it seems a good bet that decision science and predictive capability where decisions based on data, analytics and scientific experimentation have a leading role to play in the Future of HR.
Its seems likely that the next two years will see real innovation kick off in this space and actually making HR quite an exciting place to work, not considering the social analytics space or the global energy flow in the HR Tech Start-up space. Europe being Europe, it will be interesting to see what will happen when the new digital employee data privacy laws come to fruition in January 2014 if companies can actually legally exercise the opportunity that is currently being buzzed as Big Data for HR. - SaaS HR
It’s estimated that 90% of Fortune 1000 companies plan to replace their human resources management software in the next four years. Many are replacing these legacy on-premises systems with cloud-based HR systems. On top of hardware savings, enterprises using SaaS (software as a service) HR say they spend less on support.
HR is one of the business functions where adoption of SaaS software is highest, and the trend has accelerated this year because of cost, and this seems to hover somewhere around 40-50%.
When it comes to the cloud, “true SaaS will dominate — software that has been architected specifically for this model, that is multi-tenant and highly configurable,” says Naomi Bloom, Managing Partner of Bloom & Wallace. - Performance Management
Performance reviews are not to everyone’s tastes and it seems very likely now that Social Performance Management will edge out the annual review.
Most formal frontline performance evaluations assess staff on job competencies and adherence to behavioural standards, but stop short of assessing performance against outcome measures meaningful to organizational success, and not much has changed. - Strategic Workforce Planning
In The State of Human Capital report, McKinsey identified Strategic Workforce Planning as one of the top three priorities for now and the future for HR functions. However, they acknowledge that progress in this space has been limited due to the following challenges:
• A lack of capability of HR professionals
• A support function mindset
• An inability to relate the ROI or business impact of their function>
In terms of the solutions, McKinsey identify three things HR functions need to do to be successful:
• Engage with the organisations business leaders strategically
• Take risks in pursuit of innovation
• Redouble every effort to manage HR efficiency
The art of Strategic Workforce Planning and the HR capability needed is still in its infancy despite the label existing for quite some time. Not surprisingly the most difficult part about developing a plan is just getting started. All plans share common components that include technology, organizational strategy, knowledge management strategy and retirement/attrition projection.
- Future of Workplace Learning
Classroom is dead, E-learning is dead, so what now? Even as formal formats fail the informal online learning boom accelerates, with more people turning to Google, YouTube and Twitter for their on-the-job and social learning. Even learning itself looks like an antiquated alternative to referencing.
So what can we learn from what people want? What role is there for us in the free world of informal learning as systems of capture are dismantled around us? Are we just the corporate correlates of Morris dancing?
We will take a look at some of the digital solutions that are helping staff perform, develop and connect including use of video, social technology, performance support, mobile learning and gamification. By 2014, 47-50% of European workforce will have been born after 1980. It’s time to face up to it and adapt to more change. - Mobile
Mobile HR and recruiting solutions are connecting and empowering talent inside and outside the business. The reality was realised at iRecruit in Amsterdam this year that many Dutch students cannot apply for jobs using their mobiles devices as most major businesses still have not created career sites and recruitment content built around mobile environments.
Mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets are proving to be an effective means to achieve improved worker productivity, real-time decision making, cost savings, and workforce satisfaction.
Employers increasingly see value in having employees learn, share, connect, and access their payroll, expenses, time and attendance and other HR data via mobile devices. Front-line managers enjoy enterprise mobility with access to smart HR reporting tools that provide real-time data on workforce performance and potential, also allowing them to manage their teams in approving projects, hiring, salaries and rewards all at the press of a button.
At number 7 on our list, while current deployment levels are still relatively low, there is traction in the European Market right now to deploy mobile applications (including payroll and time and attendance). Organizations that are making investments in mobile HR capabilities view robust security as an indispensable element in their mobile solution buying equation. - Rewards
Rapid technological changes, coupled with a growing workforce that spans four generations means rewarding, communicating with and motivating employees is more complex than ever before, especially in matrix organisations.
More and more large companies are offering employees a total rewards package, which includes compensation and a range of market-relevant benefits and professional growth opportunities that recognize individual contributions and performance. The trend is towards an offer that includes helping employees balance a successful career with a healthy lifestyle involving family, friends, community, fun and saving the planet.
Companies have to do this because more than ever young people are turning away from big business with dreams of working in more exciting start-up environments. In bridging the Eurozone talent gap job creation has been driven by start-ups, though they employ just three percent of the private sector workforce, start-ups contribute nearly 20% of net job creation and small business 60% of the market, so the big firms have their work cut out for them especially when the top half of Europe heals from recession. - Onboarding
Onboarding has become a top 10 investment priority in 2013. As technology advances, a more geographically dispersed employee population emerges, and strong competition to attract and retain the best people increases. The drive to help improve the candidate experience has much to do with defining the onboarding process, creating an onboarding roadmap, and helping to look at different ways of driving engagement at what is the most critical point in the employee lifecycle.
The importance becomes evident when you look at some of the numbers out there:
• +30% of European Employees in their current job for less than 6 months are already looking for a new job
• Almost 1/3 of executives who join organizations as an external hire miss expectations in the first 2 years.
• Many companies are now suffering 8-15% annual attrition rates in Europe, and a turnover of upwards of 40% of their entire talent base within 4 years.
• Some areas are much worse – shared service centres in Central & Eastern Europe for example, where employers promise the world and the once excited and ambitious youth flowing out from the best Universities are burnt out and disillusioned two to three years later from their first work experience - Collaborative Tools
In the era of the social enterprise, collaborative activities can make a big difference not only in HR efficiency but in employee satisfaction.
Lee Bryant, one of Social Enterprise Though Leaders at this year’s HR Tech Europe explained in his synopsis: “Becoming a social business is not simply about using a new class of tools. It is about using internal and external networks and relationships to best effect, maximising productivity and developing an agile, resilient culture to improve all aspects of the organisation’s operations.
Encouraging the adoption of new tools is part of the story, but it is not enough. Relationships, culture, leadership, trust, knowledge sharing and collaborative methods are all just as important and these are areas where HR professionals should have a key role to play. However, on the whole, HR is often part of the cultural problem in organisations, not always part of the solution. Instead of leaving this all to IT or marketing functions, HR should be taking the lead in organisational transformation.”
Source: HR Tech Europe