Many professionals accept that they can do a lot of meaningful work provided they have insights on future trends and the possible causes of problems. The last decade has seen a transformation with many organizations moving towards different forms of analytics and quantitative decision making. Most decisions are taken with historical data as the basis for future trends and they seem right at the time of their occurrence.

However, the reality of implementation and oversight that follows based on this analysis are often left to the means of unstructured review processes lacking real-time data. This does not necessarily help in ensuring that the long-term objectives and goals of an organization are being systematically and scientifically met.

From an HR professional’s point of view, with the current evolving changes in employee relations and the increased needs of employee engagement, managements within many organizations are looking to HR to provide the necessary strategic leadership to evolve and enforce the required policies that enable employee engagement.

Organizations generate a lot of data on a daily basis and most of this data is left in the realms of the unstructured data world (paper and excel files), adding little or no meaningful value to an organization’s strategy and evolving business dynamics. It leaves HR with a huge administration task of processing data and progressing decision making in the organization.

The advent of cloud computing has enabled greater mobility of workforce and hence the demands for data management have increased exponentially in organizations. Cloud also brings with it the advantage of reaching out to the employee’s fingertips. This transforms the way data is created and progressed through an organization’s decision making processes. Cloud computing makes it easier and more flexible to allow greater processing of real-time data in an organization. Some examples of such real time benefits are:

Recruitment

Large parts of candidate assessments and evaluations are done subjectively in organizations without rigorous benchmarking of candidates. Even in those organizations that adopt good practices of scientific assessment, the challenge of the never ending flow of paperwork and unstructured data means many metrics that they wish to analyze and act on, go unreported.

Cloud solutions today can help organizations create more structured yet flexible methods of evaluation that ensure that all candidates are evaluated and graded in real time according to the defined company standards. The onus for HR to do the data entry and number crunching before decision making, also disappears with online candidate portals and integrated assessment dashboards for evaluators. This real-time information allows decision makers in an organization to take better informed decisions and ensure a fair and consistent policy of administration.

Performance Management

In traditional industries, assessments have been an annual affair with mostly the management deciding a universal pay revision as an indicative measure of one size fits all review. Until a decade ago, maybe this would not have affected the employee’s opinion on recognition and reward.

The last decade has transformed the workforce into a highly networked one. Its outreach within the organization and outside has increased beyond the direct control of an organization. Hence, identifying and managing the workforce on an independent and regular basis becomes essential to managing employee opinions and the culture of the organization.

Using technology effectively, we can today deploy solutions that enable continuous and transparent work allocation and review processes that are owned by the employee. Bringing good HR practices such as professional development plans online provides employees with the necessary tools to be the owners of their own performance reviews. Technology helps us in repeating the same cycle regularly (monthly, quarterly and so on) to generate real-time performance measurements consistently and effortlessly over a long duration and provides a sense of security and reliability in measuring the company’s goals and objectives.

There are many intangible benefits that technology provides an organization. The most significant amongst these is that it enables HR to see the wood from the trees by giving them the required space and insight to guide the management in taking the best and the most effective decisions for the future growth of their organization.