Great strides have been made in the area of human resourcing. From what was once thought of as personnel paperwork, the field has matured to encompass the breadth of employee interaction, wellbeing and organisational culture. There is an increased understanding that people are the most important asset a business has, and that how they are treated, listened to, developed and enabled has a direct impact on the health, and revenue, of an organisation.
Yet buzzwords highlight pain points in employee experience. The ‘great resignation’ and ‘quiet quitting’ trend as the ‘war on talent’ increases demand. Business imperatives, such as Environmental, Social and Government (ESG) are putting pressure on organisations to elevate their people experience, both to attract and retain talent, and to be socially responsible. Yet, even with such turbulence, 48 percent of employers have no intention of updating their employee value proposition (EVP).
The importance of people
In an uncertain market, and post a turbulent few years of pandemic, it's not entirely surprising that what people value in a workplace has changed. Whether a resignation or a reshuffle, PwC found that 38 percent of Australian workers planned to leave their place of employment this year. Such a number should be of concern in any context, but in amongst a scarcity of talent and unstable economic conditions, it takes on added gravity.
For those that can’t afford to outright leave, ‘quiet quitting’ has become the option du jour. It refers to employees who do the tasks that make up their role, but little else – disengaging from the psychological investment of going above and beyond.
Harvard Business Review points out that while this seems better than an employee quitting (often estimated at costing between 1.5 and 2x an employee’s salary to replace) and the basic responsibilities of roles are being met, it can be more damaging than outright loss.1 Employees who go the extra mile are key to maintaining competitive advantage, and when some employees do less, the burden is shifted to others to do more.
As ESG adherence gains traction, how a company treats its employees is coming under greater scrutiny. Not only should an organisation be doing no harm to greater society, neither should it be doing so to its people. With generation Z and Y – who value environmental and social issues highly – making up a greater percentage of the workforce, such issues will only gain in importance, including when considering employment.2
Indeed, wellbeing and experience ranked in the top three levers workers value most from their employer in PwC Australia’s What Workers Want report. These levers include aspects such as work-life balance, mental health, culture, diversity and inclusion, networks and support. The report also showed there is an expectation gap between what employees want, and what leaders think they want. With finite resources it is not always easy for leaders to know which factors to focus on, and often, leaders are taking cues from the market — rather than their people.
Solving the people potential problem
To ensure happiness, businesses need to understand their people. And to do that, they need to capture and understand data; data that is fit for purpose, connected and provides insights, via cloud, in real-time.
This goes beyond data that businesses traditionally keep a close eye on, such as sales data, revenue, payroll and other financial information. Those are important, but even more so is the ability to cross-reference that data with people metrics, such as sentiment analysis, results from employee experience surveys, leave taken or not taken, employee quotas, use of collaboration tools and more. Even knowing how many steps your employees are taking can be used to improve wellbeing and organisational performance.
Data in and of itself is of course just numbers. Companies then need the tools to understand and execute on it. This is where HR transformation takes centre stage. Replacing or augmenting traditional technology with HR applications can revolutionise a workforce.
Tim Bryant, General Manager of SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Australia and New Zealand, emphasises the impact of such a move. “Cloud technology HR platforms are a necessity to support effective workforce management and a leading employee experience. It’s a transformation from administration, to affecting real change and modernisation in a business or public service. Not only do real-time and predictive analytics allow data-driven decisions, they illuminate employee behaviour and give organisations the ability to elevate and engage their people.”
This technology goes far beyond the traditional payroll. While some vendors offer targeted solutions, many enterprise systems can assist the HR function across a variety of needs.
Applications can include tools for performance management (setting goals and alignment with company direction), recruiting talent (such as by optimised job ads and the removal of hiring bias), onboarding (which when done well can improve new hire retention by 82 percent)3, career planning, learning and development, succession planning, timesheets, compensation and benefits, and even good old payroll.
Together, data+tech+people = insights
Together, these applications are far greater than the sum of their parts. They can connect communities, drive purpose, empower people and allow them to understand where they fit, how they fit and why. With analytics tools teams will be able to ask questions and pinpoint problems. Not just in terms of people experience – important enough in its own right – but in understanding how their experience affects business outcomes.
For example, your data could tell you that employees who haven’t taken annual leave in X days are disengaged, as indicated by measurable declines in communication, leading to an output reduction of X percent, costing X dollars in revenue. It’s the kind of statistic that makes the CEO take notice, and the type of problem that can be mitigated for real results.
Individually, it becomes far easier to help people with their purpose, giving them a view of their career and its development, adding transparency and defined expectations so they understand the link between their performance and their compensation. Ideally, they do this on technology that is easy to learn, is fun, incentivised, and can be used whenever and wherever suits.
On a whole-of-business level, predictive analytics built using AI and machine learning allow questions that are hard to solve, or hard to define, to be answered and plans to address issues to be assessed. What’s more, issues move from being ‘soft’, or based on unproven hypotheses – easily de-prioritised in favour of diverting resources to more pressing matters – to being data-driven imperatives whose business case rockets up the to-do list for executives.
Such insights mean that a variety of operations, processes and people management strategies can be optimised, to achieve diversity and ESG goals, ensure people’s purpose and goals align to business outcomes, the best talent is attracted and kept, or that succession planning for the entire business is easily managed. And of course, can result in upticks in that aforementioned financial data.
People transformation
Surprisingly, 20 percent of HR professionals in PwC’s HR Tech Survey 2022 said that the lack of a compelling use case was holding back their use of disruptive HR technology. But for those who had moved core HR applications to the cloud? Overwhelmingly, expectations were met or exceeded across all surveyed outcomes – 82 percent reported they saved money, 84 percent saw increased employee engagement, 86 percent improved productivity and 91 percent found more employees used the new HR tools.
HR platforms provide the flexibility and rigour the HR team needs to rethink and execute on people strategies, redefine employee value propositions (EVPs), attract and keep the best talent and ultimately, differentiate the organisation in the market. The business case writes itself, and your people will be your reward.
