4 Big Workforce Changes That Will Be Driven by Technology

HR professionals everywhere have been eager in recent years to find innovative new ways that technology can improve what they do in human capital management.

Whether it’s managing the daily grind of payroll and benefits or devising more comprehensive workforce plans, there are no doubt plenty of ways that more mobile and cloud-based platforms can make a difference.

Of course, it shouldn’t just be HR offices benefiting from the rise of modern technology.

A fundamental change in doing business

Really, anyone in an office should be able to find some utility in it. The cloud makes it easier for everyone in a corporate setting to store data, share it, access it and collaborate with it. There’s no one who can’t use that to find enormous gains in productivity.

According to a Bersin by Deloitte analysis, this is leading to a fundamental change in the way everyone does business. The added efficiency brought by transformative technology begins with HR, which now has an easier and faster way of overseeing work, but the benefits also trickle down to everyone, notes Josh Bersin, principal at Bersin by Deloitte Consulting.

“The HR technology market, which is now more than $15 billion in software alone, is exploding with growth and innovation,” Bersin said. “One of the most disruptive changes is the trend toward automating HR practices and integrating systems, making them so easy to use that people think of them as part of their daily life. These systems give leaders the real-time information they need to adapt to changing business and labor conditions.”

4 changes to watch for

Bersin believes that big, big changes lie ahead. Here are a few things we should all expect to happen in the coming years:

Mobile will be “everything” — Mobile devices are constantly improving – new models, new shapes and sizes, new levels of speed and efficiency. Eventually, these devices will take over, and we’ll be left with a style of doing work that’s all mobile, all the time. We may soon say goodbye to those big, bulky desktop computers.
Work will be analytics-based — Perhaps today, much of what we do around the office is based on wisdom, experience, intuition and a little bit of gut feeling. In the future, very little of that will be necessary – the rapid pile-up of data will lead us to a place where every decision is based on analytics.
Radically different recruiting — Hiring new employees is one of the toughest challenges a company faces. How do you sort through that giant stack of resumes and find one applicant who’s the best fit for the job? It’s always going to be difficult, but we’ll soon find a reality in which better screening and candidate analytics make the process a little more logical.
A new approach to performance management — Managers and HR leaders can soon use technology to gather data on their current employees, too, meaning they can evaluate their performance and begin to tackle big-picture questions of workforce efficiency. Soon, they’ll have a much clearer picture of everything going on within their four walls.

This originally appeared on Ceridian’s HCM blog.