SANDRINE BARDOT, Dubai-based RECOGNIZED  INTERNATIONAL COMPENSATION EXPERT, discusses how the digitalisation of HR can help provide an employee experience which is on par with the expectations we all now have as digital consumers.

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We discuss how the digitalisation of HR can help provide an employee experience which is on par with the expectations we all now have as digital consumers.

Digitalisation of HR

In our region, there is a huge push towards implementing the digitalisation of HR, and some organisations are super advanced.

For instance I recently attended a truly breathtaking demo of a performance management system apparently implemented across many Smart Government entities in Dubai.

But let’s be honest, despite all the hype towards digitalization, the HR systems that I see used at my clients are often old…very old… Like for example this client’s “fill this Excel performance appraisal template and send HR a paper copy (!) signed by your manager” which I had to deal with, well, in 2019 !

The gap between our expectations and the

experience of using current enterprise systems

Millennials are expected to represent 75% of the workforce by 2025. In Dubai, in 2016 already, around 51% of the workforce was between ages 20 and 34, as per Dubai Statistics Centre numbers. The Millennial generation grew up with the internet and cell phones, and technology could be considered part of their DNA.

Millenials have definite expectations about how digital systems should behave, and see a significant gap between their experience of digital systems on the consumer side, and the reality of what digital systems in the enterprise can deliver

Chris Pope, VP of Digital Strategy, Service Now – cited in Tawahultech.com

Indeed, existing software solutions in organisations are often “behind” in terms of user interface and responding to internal customer expectations, and do not fit with the way that people want to interact with their screens nowadays.

Today’s workforce is used to getting results fast from its personal suite of shiny new hardware and apps : social media, wearables tracking their health, getting instant coupons when entering a retail space…

Also think online shopping (Amazon and its recommendations), customer service and instant accessibility on any screen (Netflix), relying on recommendations, user reviews and ratings  (AirBnB or TripAdvisor)…

You may say “Well, but this digitalisation has not affected HR yet”. Really ?

Think about it :

LinkedIn has more information on people than most HR systems do (languages spoken, skills, education and training/certifications, recommendations on the person’s professional achievements, and even career aspirations).

Linkedin has also completely changed the way recruitment is done nowadays, and digital has almost finished to kill traditional classifieds in newspapers, and even job boards.

Despite all their flaws, YouTube and short videos are becoming a by-default learning system.

Who hasn’t looked for answers on a work-related question on YouTube, watched a TED video, taken a course on a MooC or a learning platform like Udemy or Coursera ?

So how can these consumer trends translate in digital HR ?

Imagine if your organisation could transform the employee experience through digital HR, for example by implementing some of these solutions :

Integrating social and performance

Some organisations use social integration and performance management results to reduce hiring time and improve hiring quality

For example in the US, Macy’s track which of their seasonal workers are the most positive about their brand and re-invite the top performers year on year, thereby reducing the number of interviews required and the shorten the time-to-hire.

To give you an idea of the scale, Macy’s recruit tens of thousands of temps for the holiday season and Amazon and Target routinely hire over 100,000 temps each during that season. Efficiency is a must-have !

Adapt the user review culture

For example