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From hiring, to change of status (firing, retiring, promotions, and transfers), payroll, training, and strategic planning, human resources technological change has been a boom to the human resources (HR) field. Of course, HR does not operate alone, so their operations need to both inform and support long-term planning by the organization. Organizations need to be future-focused as well, using technology to leverage opportunities and overcome challenges.

Human Resource Technology Challenges and Opportunities

Organizations often encounter challenges that require a combination of planning, good management, and the right technology if they are to be overcome. Technology can help you tackle some common challenges and leverage certain opportunities, including in these areas:

• Doing unbiased performance reviews – Most businesses conduct performance reviews based on quantitative metrics, if at all possible. The right technology helps both managers and employees monitor their performance. Ideally, performance reviews should be based on unbiased analysis and measurable performance metrics.

• Reducing turnover and sick days – Good software can reduce turnover and absenteeism. In short, the right HR software tools help you allocate work and evaluate workloads, so employees don’t feel overburdened or underutilized.

• Finding and eliminating skill gaps – If you read about HR and artificial intelligence, you may read about the potential for using this technology to find what skills are missing in the organization and then close them.

• Managing remote workers – Screening and hiring remote workers will continue to be a widespread challenge, as will maintaining a sense of cohesiveness among a distributed workforce. This is already an ongoing challenge for some companies and with freelancers so common, the management challenges will not go away. 

High performance in all three areas is within reach with the right approach to buying and using technology.

Technology Solutions

Other than thinking strategically about technology, HR heads and executives can look into several technology solutions:

• API integration – As HR departments grow, or their role changes, they have more software applications to use and manage. Getting different software to communicate can be a challenge, and new challenges come up as the company adopts new software. A food service business might use one tool for most HR functions and another as a timeclock. Maybe the previous timeclock was easy to connect via a few mouse clicks. This new software is more powerful and useful in various ways, but it needs a third-party API and some programming skills to connect those systems securely.

• Custom software design – Business software might only do 90% of what the HR department needs, but that 10% is super important for talent management or recruiting. You can either find a way to work around that issue or get custom software that plugs the gap.

• Custom training solutions – HR managers can struggle to identify skill gaps in the company. Medium and large companies often create custom training portals with a learning management system running a catalog of online courses. This is also an opportunity for creating learning paths and learning collections custom-built for your organization’s talent needs.

Human resources organizations can take greater advantage of information technology to solve problems and act on new opportunities, but proper planning and technology expertise is key. 

Consider Partnering with Enterprise Technology Pros

DevDigital has completed over 2,500 software projects for clients in a wide range of industries. If your HR software needs some work to best serve the business, our software development team has the skills and experience it takes. Please contact us today to talk about your project.