The modern workforce is dramatically different than it was just five years ago. Employee needs are different. Compliance requirements are different. Business demands are different. Everything is different.
As a result, a very different viewpoint about the future of HR success is emerging, particularly among high-growth organizations whose success depends on the speed and efficiency in which they operate, coordinate and leverage their workforce.
This new viewpoint is not about HR tools, fancy “people first” slogans or simply cutting-and-pasting old HR software to the cloud. These all miss the point. Today’s modern business and HR leaders need to operate with an entirely different set of rules. For these leaders, it’s about shifting their mindset and focus toward an HR modernization strategy.
An HR modernization strategy boils down to four key principles:
- Run at the new speed of business: It’s no longer about the big eating the small, but rather the fast beating the slow. Today’s modern business needs instant access to information, intelligent automation and streamlined processes.
- See your workforce with new eyes: Today’s modern workforce is more dynamic than ever. Full time, part-time, seasonal, contract workers and remote employees. The ability to get an accurate, real-time view of your workforce is critical.
- Always know when things have changed: The speed at which business operates today demands agility and the ability to make near real-time adjustments when things change.
- HR becomes the heartbeat of the organization: For most organizations, their workforce is their single biggest asset. Therefore, their employees and HR data ultimately touches everything they do.
Modernizing your HR around these four principles empower leaders and companies to ask new questions -- and finally answer the old ones:
- Is our data accurate and up to date?
- How do we get HR and finance on the same page?
- How do we connect all of this stuff together?
- How do we help employees help themselves more?
The problem is that most companies are being held back by outdated technology built for a different era. Many companies pour money into switching software systems or moving to the cloud, thinking they will magically resolve their issues, only to discover it’s the same old problems. They’re right back where they started.
The new game is about leveraging intelligent automation, HR science and modern processes to operate at a whole new level. In this new game, employee data in no longer siloed between HR, payroll, and benefits, but merged together in a single source of truth. Manual paperwork and guesswork is eliminated and automated with real-time precision and accuracy. Data is no longer input, tracked and measured across independent points-in-time, but concurrently and fluidly over any time period – past, present or future. Security is no longer an after-thought, and instead, built-in across the entire HR ecosystem.
A few organizations have already figured this out. In the next blog post, we’ll write about how two high-velocity organizations modernized to take their organizations to the next level and gain a competitive edge.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to modernize HR within your own rapidly growing organizations, we’d be happy to help. Request a complimentary HR modernization assessment.
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