Remaining one of the biggest debates in the world, the future of Human Recourses continues to take huge twists and turns. Companies aim to introduce various approaches to higher productivity and engagement, which would lead to converting these businesses into leading organizations within today’s economy. However, if HR managers want to maintain their role in helping businesses, they simply have to keep in pace with technology changes.

Technology is going through rapid changes that affect businesses in numerous ways, starting from organizational adjustments to remote job opportunities, which makes it crucial for Human Recourses managers to adapt rapidly and without hesitation. Millennials now make up for more than half of the workforce and predictions say that this will increase to 75% by the year of 2020. This only confirms the idea that HRs should build on the advancements in technology if they wants to meet future business requirements and expectations.

In order to introduce the future changes of HR technology, we first have to establish the four ways in which professionals use this technology today:

• Telecommuting

Telecommuting is known to save money, increase workers’ productivity and improve their satisfaction with the job position. Working remotely does present certain challenges, but these challenges are now being addressed by incorporating online videoconferencing via Skype or other social collaboration tools such as Slack.

• Recruiting via Social Media

A report by the U.S. Census Bureau and Pew Research says that more than one in three American workers are now millennials. This is a very important factor in the present and future of HR, since the majority of the workforce uses LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as their main sources for jobs. Therefore, Human Recourses Management is now making big steps in terms of social media recruiting, using the most popular channels.

• Native Apps

According to Pew, 64 percent of all Americans now own a smartphone, which makes native apps highly developed in terms of HR. This technology now allows people to easily access documents that are important, work offline, take notes directly, store and organize files and receive push notifications. At this point, technology behemoths such as Amazon, Google, IBM and Apple are becoming a driving force in the future of computing.

• Off-the-Shelf Software

HR has initially started with this type of software for the main reason that it is cheap and rapid. This is still the trend, but it starts changing rapidly as companies start building custom software. The key disadvantage of the latter is the high cost, but HR managers start considering this cost as crucial for business development.

So, what else is ahead? How will HR Technology change in the next decade?

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is now present in HR technology, but is expected to take a new turn in the future. Consumer applications are experiencing problems in making strides in the market, but virtual and augmented realities are expected to change this. Employers will be able to use virtual reality for anything they need, starting from corporate learning and training to off-site assignments.

Machine Learning

You have surely heard of machine learning since this type of automated data analysis is commonly used in Human Recourses approaches. Even though machine learning is already advanced at this point, it is expected to improve even more, especially in terms of complex analysis.

This change is starting to develop and is now present in many applications. PhenomPeople.com is such an application known for targeting employee engagement and facilitating predictive analytics in the recruitment process.

The Internet of Things

Companies will continue to use cloud computing and follow the trend of integrating the Internet of Things platforms. At some point, studies showed that the IoT is at risk and suffers from fragmentation, which may cause serious inefficiencies for data access, but this trend is expected to continue throughout the next decade.

Cloud solutions nowadays work efficiently on increasing the productivity in the workplace and allow for availability of information. If this keeps advancing at such a pace, the Internet of Things is probably going to push the expertise of HR into middle ranks of management. As a result, this would free up the departments of HR from training the middle tier leadership. As line managers will take over some of the important functions of HR, the role of this technology would be finally able to shift to business execution.

Wearables

Wearables are becoming more and more used in the HR industry and are expected to affect the Human Resources department greatly by 2019. Their current use is mostly targeted towards tracking workplace wellness, but this is expected to take a new wave in which stress management will become a norm for companies worldwide.

Additionally, wearable devices are expected to enhance productivity and employee management in other areas, too.

Custom Software

As we previously said, companies slowly start to turn to a more expensive option in terms of software. Instead of off-the-shelf software that came with the benefits of being cheap and easy to use, growing companies today allocate budgets to custom software.

Off-the-shelf software is a great choice for small companies, but can present an issue for big ones due to the lack of customization. The latest trend of building custom software instead of off-the-shelf software unlocks several benefits for people who want to get an advantage over competitors and plan to build a large business.

The future of HR is closely related to the developments in technology. The changes in HR technology offer room for this industry to adapt and redesign the employee experience and the workplace altogether. If changes keep moving at this pace, those who learn how to embrace them can expect grand changes in terms of productivity.