Before the internet and email, connecting with job seekers meant phone, face time or a letter. In the 21st century, it’s routine for companies to post openings online, and require job seekers to apply through an online applicant tracking system. That frees up a great deal of time that HR would have spent dealing with paper resumes or personal calls.
However, HR practices don’t always take into account how well the system works for the candidates. Online forms have a standardized format that often makes it hard to tell a star performer from a slacker. A badly designed system with confusing instructions and slow response times can actually turn job seekers off to applying with a firm.
Ease of Communication
With email, text and messaging apps it’s easier than ever for HR staff to stay in touch with the rest of the company. If a manager wants to share a new schedule with a project team, one email with an attachment or a conversation on Slack can share the word with a dozen people at once. There’s a risk of relying too much on tech as a time-saver though. Information in a two-page email may be better off delivered to the group face to face. That way everyone can ask questions and hear the answers.
Data Analysis of Employee Performance
Analyzing employee performance used to depend on personal assessments and obvious standards: Did the employee finish the task on time? Does their boss trust them?
Technology makes it easier to gather and break down data on employees to get an overall picture. Which tasks do they perform best? Do they meet all the goals from last year’s performance appraisal? If they fell short, was it by 12 percent, 50 percent or 75 percent? Software programs can even take over much of the work in evaluating employees.
Too Much Data
As HR makes more use of data collection and analysis, employees might feel their privacy shrinking. If, say, a company has security cameras that monitor employees every second, it can be easier to find the facts behind a harassment charge or someone drinking on the job. However, being constantly monitored can alienate employees as well. Good HR practices involve not only knowing how much data can be gathered but also how much should be gathered.
Another risk is that the HR department can end up getting more data than it can manage. After a certain point, wading through data to pick out the relevant material becomes an impossible task. It’s also possible that HR will misread data or make assumptions that a face-to-face conversation could clear up.
Security Practices
Securing employee records used to mean locking a file cabinet. In the 21st century, best HR practices have to include security for the digital data. Some security is more an IT matter, such as a good firewall. HR needs to have good policies in place, though, governing who can access confidential data, both hard copy and in electronic form.
Scope of IT in HRM
- Administration: All the basic data identified with the workforce, like their name, address, email, contact no., capability, compensation benefits, encounter, date of passage in organizations, employment status (contract, perpetual, full-time, low maintenance, and so on), are incorporated in a database that can be recovered at any time.
- Human Resource Planning: With the help of innovation construct databases, voluminous information about the employees can be stored, which not just aides in distinguishing the involved and vacant positions, additionally it also helps determining if the individual is the best fit or not.
- Recruitment: The web has brought on the biggest change to the enrollment procedure in the previous decade, as it connects the companies and the job seekers.
- Compensation and Benefits: The e-pay bundles offer straightforward, simple, precise and assessable data on the compensation structure of the employees.
- Training and Development: E-learning is a progressive approach to enable the workforce to keep pace with a quickly evolving market. By connecting the evaluation process to the HR database, the e-learning framework can be used effectively.
Challenges:
- Acknowledgment: Because of IT usage, different issues like skills/knowledge for its utilization, job dangers and so on dependably ascend in its direction. Acknowledgment from the workforce is required for using it up to its fullest.
- Fetched: “Technology pulls cost”. An innovation-based HR framework is expensive, but once executed, it decreases the operational expenses. Substantial organizations may introduce HR gateways/bundles, while small- to mid-size organizations find it difficult to bear the cost.
- Back-ups and Security: Maintenance cost is high if we need to prevent hacking/open to all arrangement/illegal acts. A lot of thought is required on these lines.
- Increasing Isolation: Due to the arrangement of virtual networks through intranet or eHR gateways, the individual collaboration among the representatives has reduced. In the traditional frameworks, they collaborate with the representatives, and were integral to the organization. They are disengaged from each other now, and are connected for all intents and purposes through such entryways only.
Opportunities:
- Accessibility: Data is accessible to everyone, through web or intranet. Any employee can get any information effortlessly HR entryways permit the representatives to get to all the required data at a transgression click.
- Competitive Advantage: Giving customized applications through HRM portals implies that e-HRM can be a key technique in innovation.
- Rapid and Mistake free exchanges: Technological innovations have expanded the pace of administration in organizations. Mechanical frameworks eliminate human errors.
- Interactive Atmosphere: Technology enhances interactions among the representatives through the electronic gateways. Bigger organizations have more data needs, and they can take more points of interest from these data. With mid-size organizations, it enables data spread over various structures and locations.