5 HR Tools for Enterprises

The employee-enterprise relationship is continuously evolving in the millennial era. Stemming from the new-age employees’ expectations from the organisation as well as their ability to well articulate their career needs, the change in relationship is advancing at a pace demanding informed cognisance. Couple this with recent examples of mistrust of organisational loyalty in the aftermath of cost-cutting measures, headcount downsising or even the larger issues of culture fit and alignment to values, the Human Resource teams of large and small Enterprises have their jobs cut out for them. So, what exactly are HR tools? They are nothing but a wide range of technological solutions that help organisations manage their day to day HR activities effectively.

A workplace, which is installed with the right set of HR tools, enables a seamless accomplishment of all the HR roles thereby allowing the organization to function smoothly. These tools transform the aimed outputs into quantifiable measures and help achieve significant business impact. For example, the amount of human time required to gather repeat HR data from various source points become an easier task to achieve if the tools installed in the system are technologically advanced. This will result in reduced manual efforts since the tasks are automated leaving very little room for errors.

This is particularly of value in today’s volatile market, which is increasing the speed of offering competitive innovative solutions to win over the customer so much that organisations are seeing the merits of investing in high impact HR tools that free up precious thinking hours for employees who can utilise their energies to further business goals while relegating repeat tasks requiring manual intervention to the effective tools for value add.

Here are 5 HR tools every enterprise should take advantage of

Applicant Tracking Systems – They are nothing but software applications that assist HR functions to recruit and hire. Amongst other functions, these systems collect and sort thousands of resumes making the job of a recruiter less strenuous yet effective in turn around. It is a solid baseline tool for streamlining the administrative tasks that come with hiring and ensures all information stays in a centralized database. 98% of Fortune 500 Companies and a growing number of small and medium businesses filter resumes through Applicant Tracking Systems. If you as an Employee thought the first hurdle to nail that dream job was getting past the recruiter’s judgment, you got it wrong. You need to beat the algorithms set by the ATS to move to the next level. For an enterprise, the tools are of significant help as the parameters set within the software guides the recruitment process by shortlisting the right candidate pool.

Recruitment Chatbots – It is a pet peeve amongst prospective candidates that they never heard back from the company after the initial few rounds of interview. From an organisation point of view, it is time-consuming to reply to every application, especially when making high volume hires in short deadlines. Enter the Chatbot for Recruitment, It is a software application that is a conversational agent designed to mimic human conversational abilities during the recruitment process.

With the influx of virtual personal assistants like Alexa, Google and Siri, the recruitment space was not one to be left far behind. Recruitment Chatbots use artificial intelligence to help recruiters with administrative tasks such as collect candidate information, answer FAQs about the job and the application process, and so on.

Background Screening – An aspect of recruitment that is gaining prominence in the millennial age, employee checks and background screening allow Enterprises to hire with peace of mind, reduce risks to other employees and customers while improving retention rates. Background screening linked to HR software makes sense as the data collected will be pertinent to hiring decisions and compliance. Accessing employee profiles through background screening can save time while ensuring all bases are covered. The technology and digitisation in background screening have advanced such that the need for labor-intensive background screening of the past where runners would physically go to schools, past employers to collect candidate records is now completely negated.

Realtime Performance Management – Employee performance reviews have for many years remained a tedious, complex task. Today with the millennial generation comprising a majority of Enterprise workforce, traditional methods of performance management are getting outright rejected. Cloud-based performance management tools capture data in real-time direction allowing for the reduction in employee disengagement and nurtures the concept of continuous feedback. Modern software allows Managers to provide and request real-time one-to-one feedback, provide social praise, boost employee morale and recognition.

Learning Management Systems – E-learning is a common concept at workplaces today. Enterprises across sectors use Learning Management Systems to improve organisational efficiency. Systematising and presenting training content, creating assignments to solidify and test knowledge, evaluate candidate progression further linked to employee growth are functions that HR teams best leverage when using this tool.

By Vivek Khanna, MD, India Region, First Advantage