How HR tech can help level up your workforce

Employee development is crucial to organisational success. In this post-pandemic world, it’s now more important than ever for businesses to invest in the professional development of their staff in order to remain competitive in a global marketplace, increase engagement and productivity, reduce turnover and boost the bottom line. HR software plays a vital role in this, enabling HR teams to automate the process, track progress, and engage the workforce.

“The ability to manage employee development with a platform saves time and effort,” comments Philippa Barnes, director at ReThink HR Ltd. “You want to be seen as an innovative organisation that promotes professional development by investing in the tools to make it as easy as possible for the workforce to upskill.”

Here are five ways that HR technology can enable your organisation to move up the employee development scale.

Provides skills analytics and identifies gaps

As soon as you start thinking about employee development, you start thinking about the skills of your workforce. HR software can detect current skill levels within the business, as well as help to identify any potential skills gaps.

“HR software can allow businesses to track the skills they currently have within the business, but also the skills they need to have in the future,” explains Helen Armstrong, CEO and founder of Silver Cloud HR. “By using software, you can run a business-wide gap analysis to help leaders understand what development needs to happen to get the business where it needs to be; software will automate much of that process.”

Tracks progress and measures results

Keeping track of every employee’s professional development can be a very onerous task without software. Yet by investing in the right HR tech, you will be able to easily track progress against CPD activity, evaluate skills investments and measure results.

“Software will allow a business leader to track development progress against business goals, and link this data to other business data sets, such as performance, productivity or revenue,” says Helen Armstrong.

“Offering development on a tech platform can also allow the easy collation on stats around engagement, time spent, dropout rates, completion scores and much more, with a few clicks on the built-in insights tool that most platforms offer,” adds Philippa Barnes. “It can also be really helpful if qualifications expire and need to be renewed in good time, as compliance levels and expiry dates can be set and reported on, prompting re-enrolments where required with automated reminders.”

Recruit new and exciting talent

Hiring the best talent is an essential for every organisation, no matter what service they offer or product they sell. Every organisation wants to find the right fit for the role, and HR technology can help to achieve this through the use of simple and effective recruitment and onboarding software.

Create and post job applications in a simple, streamlined process to help not only find and attract the right talent, but to hire them more quickly too. Use configurable reports to track recruitment trends to also help make better, more informed decisions with your hires and craft a well-rounded process that levels up your entire workforce.

Not only does recruitment software help organisations to hire more effectively, but it also helps to onboard new employees in a smooth fashion. User profiles can be setup with quickly and with ease for new employees allowing them to are login and an access all their necessary training and any other relevant information. Ultimately, helping them to hit the ground running from the get-go. 

Empowers your employees

Using HR tech that prioritises employee experience and relationships enables them to take responsibility and ownership of their own professional development, which can really boost engagement and productivity as it allows people to log in and see what is required of them and how their progress can benefit the business.

“Employees today want to understand how they fit into the bigger picture and what they specifically need to do to meet the business goals as well their own career goals,” remarks Helen Armstrong. “A team-specific spreadsheet of employee development goals is no longer sufficient in today’s world. HR tech also allows employees to access relevant self-service training in their own time. Plus, software can learn what is needed for certain job roles and push relevant content to the employee, meaning HR can trust the software to do this for them.”

For instance, with tools such as our mobile HR app, employees are able to manage their own personal information, payslips, and leave entitlement. By empowering employees, companies will be encouraging a positive atmosphere while streamlining operations.

Enables organisations to become more agile

HR software can help you to become more flexible in what learning and development you provide to employees, to ensure you keep up with demand and anticipate any changes quickly and easily.

“Utilising HR technology allows you to be more agile in what development you can offer, to who and when,” says Philippa Barnes. “There’s no need for printed materials which can be wasted if not used before they need updating; managing resources electronically means that you can update more quickly and frequently if needed.”

Provides cost savings

Investing in employee development software can help businesses save money in the long run, as the value, insight and time saving it offers will often outweigh any initial expenditure.

“Not only will learning and development become more automated, meaning HR can focus on other, more useful tasks, but skills and areas of development can be mapped across the whole business very easily,” comments Helen Armstrong. “This will allow HR teams to see trends and areas to prioritise, and pool together employees from across the business to learn together. This also helps cross-functional working at the same time. If this is done manually, HR could easily duplicate work across different teams without realising.”

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