Human resource management is a necessity for all businesses, but many leave HR as an afterthought. Creating an HR department, especially as a startup, can be expensive and feel unnecessary, which is why HR tech is a dark horse in business tech. It has the potential to revolutionize business by cutting high costs, but it rarely gets much attention. Here are some of the more disruptive trends and technologies in HR that many people think will change the game.
Artificial Intelligence (Obviously)
You’d be hard-pressed to find a sector that AI isn’t going to revolutionize in the next decade. As managing HR is typically a very human-heavy endeavor, HR AI will reduce all the digital paperwork that an HR department needs to go through in the modern-day. AI technologies will help to speed up processes and reduce the manpower that any department needs. AI will unlikely fully replace HR, however, as solving issues around the workplace requires very human intelligence.
Vantage Point VR Training
Vantage Point is a cool example of how technology can improve the effectiveness of a very specific element of HR. Vantage Point is developing VR technology to be used in sexual harassment training, which is a training traditionally done by people or computers (with computer-based training). VR helps to immerse those receiving the training in simulations that will enhance abilities to understand and replicate prevention techniques and boost bystander intervention. They raised $1.3 million in 2018 to help develop this tech.
Zenefits Solutions
Zenefits offers many HR solutions, but they have a revolutionary way of managing employee benefits. They offer an ACA compliant platform that can be accessed with a mobile app, allowing employees to access benefits wherever and whenever they want to without having to make phone calls or emails to HR. Their system means there’s no more paperwork and supports commuter benefits, medical, dental and vision benefits, 401k, FSA and HSA accounts, and supplemental benefits. This is part of a trend of intelligent self-service tools, which reduce employee’s dependencies on HR teams for everyday tasks, allowing them to manage and complete their assignments at their own pace. Automated self-service tools help to increase productivity in the workplace.
Visual Storytelling
Visual storytelling is a trend that’s building momentum but has been ignored for many years. It’s possibly linked to our move as a culture from text-based content consumption to video-based content consumption. HR teams who are struggling to find the talent they require will look to video attachments and visual cues to help guide them to the talent they need. This works already – if a job posting has a video attachment, they have significantly increased viewership and over a third, more completed applications. It is unclear whether this benefit will last, however, as if every company sees the upside of visual storytelling for their hiring process, videos won’t be a distinguishing factor. However, it suggests that branding, beautifully designed pages, and those external visual cues may play a cumulatively more significant part in online job applications throughout the next decade.
