Technology in HR

Citation

Nolan, S. (2010), "Technology in HR", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 9 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2010.37209faa.001

Technology in HR

Article Type: Editorial From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 9, Issue 6

This issue of Strategic HR Review addresses the theme of technology in HR – an area where HR can gain significant efficiencies and competitive edge for the organization through planned and careful implementation. Topics covered by authors range from the application of social networking to technology as a data gathering and analysis tool to outsourcing, and the far reaching impacts that technology can have on all aspects of HR – engagement, recruitment, rewards, retention and so on – are demonstrated through case study features and best practice guides.

Sally Winston’s case study feature, “Using technology to connect with people on employee engagement”, demonstrates how technology can make what may once have seemed an impossible task both possible and successful. When the UK Civil Service decided to replace disparate engagement research projects across its individual government departments with one single engagement survey, this meant reaching in to more than 100 varied organizations employing over half a million people operating on a variety of IT platforms and, in some cases, without access to IT. It also meant presenting the results in such a way that would make the data compelling and useful to over 9,000 managers of varying IT capability. A variety of flexible technological solutions were applied, including an online tool for managing the data, to overcome these challenges, as well as meeting the key objective of reducing costs. Successful outcomes are emerging from this project, including growing volumes of users and cost savings, but also new ways of sharing information and knowledge and a valuable insight to employee engagement.

In “Getting social with recruitment”, Richard Doherty discusses social recruitment – the use of social networking for recruitment purposes – as an efficient and effective means of targeting candidates. Using his experience of assisting organizations in integrating social networking into their recruitment strategies and processes, he highlights the opportunities – reduced administrative burden, ability to target passive candidates and access to accurate and up-to-date information – as well as the risks – too much reliance on social networking or the risk of discriminating as a result of access to so much information. With a measured approach, social recruitment can bring great benefits, and he looks at how one global retailer has integrated a range of social networking tools into its existing recruitment process to demonstrate the options available to HR.

“Open for business: bringing digital engagement and strategy to life”, by Andy Holt and Paul Diggins, looks at how T-Mobile UK has used technology to help communicate its strategy to employees and gain buy-in and improve understanding at a time of great change. The internal communications strategy used is the result of careful thought and planning, to ensure the methods used would meet the communication needs and preferences of employees. Combining the latest in communications technology for delivery and to facilitate interactivity and discussion, with innovation and humor in content presentation, was a winning formula and the company is seeing strong results in terms of employee engagement with the communications tools and understanding of the company’s strategy.

The case study feature, “Technology transforms retailer’s recruitment”, by Lisa Procter, charts a high street retailer’s move from a manual recruitment process to a technology-based approach. The move has transformed the business in terms of efficiencies, which include freeing up managers’ time, dramatically increasing the speed of the recruitment process and giving the company the tools to handle the all important seasonal recruitment requirements. Importantly, it has also greatly improved the candidate experience, as the recruitment team is no longer struggling under the weight of a huge number of manual applications now that an online process is now in place. The application of technology started in one area of the business – sales advisor recruitment – and due to its great success is now being rolled out to management and central office recruitment and extended in its functionality.

Our final article turns to the topic of outsourcing and how it can best be used from a HR perspective. Peter Brown’s best practice guide, “The power of HR outsourcing”, looks at outsourcing within an employee lifecycle framework and identifies where value can be added at each stage, for both the employee and the organization. From recruitment through to development and compensation, and also in HR admin, he discusses how organizations have achieved cost savings and improved efficiencies. Such outcomes support his view that outsourcing can play a crucial role in creating a high performance workforce that gives an organization a competitive advantage. He argues that third party suppliers have the specialist knowledge and scale that often allows them to do things better, for less – in many cases, the result of standardizing IT platforms and having access to the latest technology – and in this way helping HR meet the challenge of supporting growth strategy while reducing the cost base.

Sara NolanE-mail: shr@emeraldinsight.com