Choosing HR tech: 4 must-haves that drive ROI

Volatile markets, raw-material shortages, rising prices and crises of all sorts breathing down our necks … The current business environment is faced with unprecedented challenges. As a result, the timing might feel off to start doubling down on human resources technology right now. You have bigger fish to fry – maybe even running a tight ship just to stay afloat. Right?

At the same time, the war for talent is still raging ferociously. Supercharging your recruitment efforts, upgrading your applicant flow, getting your payroll & reward systems in check, cultivating learning & development opportunities … Those are vital steps not only to attract new employees, but also to keep the talent you already have.

In fact, streamlining business processes and grasping opportunities to gain efficiency, quality and productivity should be on top of your priority list, now more than ever. This also – or especially – rings true for your HR cycle. After all, what’s your most valuable asset? It’s still your workforce.

1. From end-to-end to means-to-an-end

Once upon a time, automating business processes was an extravaganza for big-shot companies only. The costs for the required software and hardware were sky high, not to mention the time and effort involved in its implementation. Especially for ERP or HCM systems that managed just about every business process in the book.

Then, along came the cloud and with it cloud applications, significantly reducing costs, adoption time and usability – lowering the threshold for other companies to jump on the bandwagon of business automation. Were and still are right behind them: savvy start-ups and smaller tech vendors offering a plethora of solutions that manage benefits, learning, performance tracking, applicant assessment and much more.

Most of them only handle a small piece of the HR puzzle, so you’re probably adding all sorts of applications to your tech stack to fill in the gaps. 

When choosing new HR technology, prioritise perfecting payroll & reward, core HR and workforce management processes. In doing so, pay attention to the capabilities to manage the current and future composition of your workforce. With full-time and part-time employees, freelance and remote workers, the workforce has never been as diverse as it is today.

Next to that, investing in talent management add-ons or apps will prove its worth in sustainably developing your employees’ skills and responding to the fast-changing knowhow needed to thrive in the modern digital society. Leveraging learning & development to upskill or reskill your most prized assets – your talented and loyal employees – boosts retention, confidence and job satisfaction.

While HR professionals once controlled the entire HR cycle, new applications are moving more and more of the responsibility towards the workers themselves. With employee self-service tasks – such as requesting leave, scheduling and attending trainings, or submitting expenses – data accuracy and efficiency increases, while removing much of the administrative burden from your HR staff’s plate.

Next to these highly useful new functionalities, there’s also a strong surge of fancy employee-focused applications boasting disruptive tech such as AI, robotics and blockchain. The talent intelligence area in particular is white-hot at the moment. You may already have heard of apps defining the future skills your company will need through AI, or bots looking for job candidates on LinkedIn.

Although the promised ground-breaking features certainly sound appealing, these types of advanced tech are mostly still in their early development stages, especially when it comes to HR. So, be sure there’s a clear added value for your company, before jumping on any of these hyped-up trends. If you, your HR manager and staff aren’t the most tech-savvy people on the block, you might risk overloading them with technical complexities and confusion, rather than freeing up some precious time.

Several events are putting a strain on Europe’s geopolitical context: whether it’s the war in Ukraine, the aftermath of COVID or the ongoing energy crisis. In their attempts to face these taxing situations, governments are imposing new regulations on the fly, such as subsidy programmes and unemployment schemes. All of these can potentially affect your HR processes.

This means that your HR systems – especially the ones regarding payroll and VAT declarations – should be easily adaptable to meet changing legislation. Not only for your prime business location, but for all countries where your company is active.