The increasing use of technology by today’s workforce influences Companies to adopt flexible HR technology and tools. The need to integrate these systems with mobile phone and social media is becoming a necessity to enhance Employee engagement, says Ganesh Balaji, CEO & MD, Adrenalin eSystems Limited

What are the latest HR technology trends in India?

Considering the imperative to directly influence business decisions, HR technology is evolving to become more active, rather than passive reporting systems. Trend analysis of people churn, tools to effectively capture employee satisfaction which can influence business performance are becoming important.
Also networking being essential and limited social networking within the organization becoming the norm, this could easily pave the way for wider social media acceptance. Companies have realized the proliferation of technology in regular day-to-day activities of employees and are gearing up to deliver employee services on employees’ medium of choice – be it mobile phones or the social media. Integration is becoming key - moving away from isolated systems that just handled payroll and administrative activities, HR technology today looks at becoming main stream by feeding directly into the core system of the company, be it through Enterprise Planning System or Decision Support System.
However regulatory compliance is something HR cannot do away with and hence technologies today are also gearing to deliver these outputs in a much more integrated and efficient way.

What is the future of talent management using technology to integrate traditional HR platforms with mobile phones, social media and more?

Managing talent is an evergreen problem for HR. Coupled with advancement in technology HR is looking at adoption of these new tools and technologies to provide them a helping hand here. Social media is becoming an accepted platform for (a) promoting requirements, and (b) validation of candidates. It is also becoming a source for gathering references and validating credentials of candidates’ performance.
In my opinion, integration of these technologies will go a long way in distilling right talent and also help in opening the right opportunities for the candidates. While currently companies start with having a ‘presence’ in social media, in the years to come it will move to ‘adoption’ of social media in their quest for talent search. It can also become a good source to track your ex-employees and woo them back when needed.
The use of mobile phones for HR technology is being talked about more, than used. This could be due to the non-proliferation of adequate cost-effective data plans across every level in the organization. However this trend is to change with the growing awareness and wider availability of 3G, when we will witness delivery of proactive HR analytics in the hands of the employee for the betterment of business.

How is the HR function transforming to adapt to these needs? Is HR driving these changes, or is it vice versa?

HR is welcoming these changes. I am not sure whether HR has the necessary power to drive these changes even though the younger population is more technology savvy. However, it is very clear that the HR function is transforming for the better as the team has the ability to understand the technology and comprehend its utilization for business benefit. Gone are the days, when you need to sell technology to HR, it is just sufficient if you are able to sell ‘business value’ to HR and technology is automatically accepted.

How will the world-at-work look few years from today? Are the current HR systems ready for this change?

Agility in workplace and in work-mode is becoming the trend. Technology need to support it. The business needs have been dynamic.Today employees needs to align to the business needs more efficiently and effectively. This may call for re-adjustment of working methods or skills required. There is an increasing need for a unified data since workforce is operating in remote areas and dispersed across different geographies and time zones. The trend that one can see in future HRIS systems would be that it offers seamless integration of data across enterprise, ability to integrate with other enterprise applications, ability to address mobile workforce and provide the agility that employees require. For example, flexi-hours is a concept born due to understanding the social/personal needs of the employee, however systems to support these are rarely in operation. Virtual offices and systems to support these modes of working will become mandatory.
While it is easy for an employee to tweet what he is doing or just did, he finds it difficult to fill his time-sheet for the organization. The question to ask is “are corporate systems today simple enough for the employee to transact when compared to other technology tools he is used to”. But this will change - corporate systems will derive knowledge from social systems and work behavior of the typical workforce, and begin to adapt to this change or will give way to such solutions. The ultimate goal of any HR system will be to provide reliable work data to the organization and help in increasing the productive time of the employee towards meeting the organizational objective.