“Every industry and every organization will have to transform itself in the next few years. What is coming at us is bigger than the original internet and you need to understand it, get on board with it and figure out how to transform your business.” – Tim O’Reilly, Founder, and CEO, O’Reilly Media

These words are turning into reality more and more every day. Technology is going to be at the center of all businesses – the center of their internal (employee-facing) as well as external (customer-facing) processes. And in this article, we are going to explore the digital transformation of one of the internal processes – Human Resources.

Let’s start by understanding what digital transformation in HR actually means.

Digital Transformation in HR

Digital transformation in HR can be explained as the transformation of the ways the entire HR department functions. All the manual processes are being replaced by digitally-powered HR software that enables organizations to become data-centric in all the areas of HR, from payroll to performance management, to rewards, and recognition.

It’s important to note that the success of digital transformation in HR heavily relies on the choice of HR software and its functioning. The role of HR software for small businesses is even more important since they are at a developing stage and more and more people are still entering into an ecosystem. This is why the base of the ecosystem, in this case, the HR software, needs to be solid and accommodating of every use case.

The goal of digital transformation in HR or even digital transformation, in general, is to automate processes, reduce repetitive tasks of your employees, create a holistic experience for them, and free up their time so they can focus on important tasks like strategizing.

Moreover, implementing data-driven processes would mean precise and effective decision-making with a lesser margin for errors.

Now that we have a sense of digital transformation in HR and its role, let’s explore the key steps in the digital transformation process.

2 Key Steps in HR Digital Transformation  

The outcome of the HR digital transformation process entirely depends on the direction, goals, and priorities you set.

Pro Tip: While setting the goals, make sure you are accommodating the needs and problems areas of your employees as well and not just the HR department. Because the end goal of this transformation process and even the HR department is to create a good experience for your employees.

Your goals would be dependent on the problem you are trying to solve and its complexity – the more complex problem you are trying to solve, the more detailed you should be about your goals.

Based on your goals and their impact on your organization, you should prioritize the processes you are trying to transform. It’s easy to get lost in the easy tasks, so make sure you are taking the impact of the transformation process into consideration before setting your priorities.

Pro Tip: Deciding goals and priorities is important but what’s more important is to communicate them clearly with all the major stakeholders.

Once you have your goals and priorities set, the next step would be to pick the right provider – provider in terms of a software provider.

The choice of provider would depend on the availability of internal resources, the timeline, and the provider’s history. The provider’s history is the most important factor since that would determine the success of the entire implementation process.

You should choose a provider who would help you not only with the implementation of the software but would also help you throughout the entire process of integrating into your current ecosystem.

Also, it is always better to have a custom solution designed around your problem statements rather than trying to solve them with pre-defined solutions. This is why we are going to look at a few things you should prioritize while creating your custom HR digital solution.

  1. Natural language interaction: Your solution is going to get more and more complex as your team and the HR department grow. Having a solution that enables natural language interaction via chatbot, messenger, voice assistant, etc. would help you onboard as many people as you want – effortlessly – without wasting resources and time.
  2. Agile management: As we mentioned earlier, there will always be improvements to make, more features and processes to add, and more areas of HR to digitalize. So, make sure you and your provider follow agile methodology to make the entire digital transformation process smoother and quicker.
  3. Real-time analytics: This might come at a later stage but you should definitely look into integrating real-time analytics within your digital HR to stay on top of everything happening in your organization. It would make the HR leader’s job easier and more data-driven while solving any of the employees’ issues and concerns.

“Think of digital transformation less as a technology project to be finished than as a state of perpetual agility, always ready to evolve for whatever customers want next, and you’ll be pointed down the right path.” – Amit Zavery, VP and Head of Platform, Google Cloud