Digital technology is continuing to evolve at breakneck speed, and it permeates nearly every aspect of our working lives. In the coming years, digital will empower people to take significantly more responsibility for talent management and HR activities. As digital enables talent management to become less of a centralised HR activity and more of an activity that is embedded in the fabric of everyday business, it will fundamentally change HR as we know it.
This report by Accenture argues that analytics (the use of data to produce business relevant insights that lead to action) has been heralded as the new step change for HR. Yet few HR organisations have a robust analytic capability. Collecting data on employees can be expensive and time consuming; new technologies can make this easier by enabling HR professionals to offer different employees a ten minute or less online "pulse survey" every day to provide a real time view of engagement that is not possible with traditional annual surveys.
Moreover, companies have found it difficult to gather clean, consistent and integrated data. But new technology will help companies to surmount these challenges. Business data and HR data can be combined with data on a company's contingent workforce and unified in a single database, allowing a single system to give a complete view of how workers create value for the business. This report suggests that the "dream of a data driven HR function" may finally become a reality (but only if HR professionals can keep pace with technological changes).
Click here to view the full report.
Do you work in HR? Do you agree that these trends will reshape the future of human resources? Share your views in the comments section below.
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