'Digital Organization', 'Going Digital', 'Digital Transformation' - these emerging terms are still being defined in our times. We are also witnessing the roles like Chief Digital Officers on-boarded in an Enterprise to drive the Digital Transformation!
To most enterprises, 'Digital' could just mean the changes / disruptions due to IoT, Social, Mobile, and Analytics, Cloud or Other associated technology innovations, depending on what they want to achieve with Digital.
The key question remains the same - do you call an enterprise or organization 'Digital Organization' just because they rolled out these technology changes OR Is there a bigger story - bigger impact - much beyond than these seemingly technology advances ?
No one seem to have leveraged enough from of these disruptive ideas. No one seem to have understood the completeness, either.
Peeling the layers of technology components associated with a 'being Digital' campaign, Enterprises clearly experience that the 'Digital Transformation' is impacting much beyond mere technology advances or changing the user / employee experience mechanisms of the enterprise. The impact of Digital starts all the way from the Organization Strategy, Operating processes and ultimately trickles its way to core of any Enterprise - People.
Why Digital HR?
We believe that Digital is rapidly changing the definitions of work breakdown, workforce and work location for an Enterprise.
Here are some instances which corroborates this hypothesis :
HR function in an Enterprise gets impacted by the 'Social' paradigm of Digital in building Social platforms for collaborative work, Sourcing of suitable Talent, Learning using collaborative channels, encourages knowledge sharing using blogs and build social persona.
'Enterprise Mobility' allows the workforce to connect to work from anywhere, anytime thus improving the employee experience. However, this is redefining the term 'work location' which is completely virtual now as compared to 'nn-seater office' of olden days.
Internet Of Things creates a Connected Enterprise bringing in efficiencies through Automation and usage of Artificial Intelligence support the Workforce which can focus on more value-added work in an Enterprise.
Modern SaaS / Cloud applications bring user friendly business processes and improve the productivity of the workforce. They are changing the technology landscape of the Enterprise for future. These platforms are typically offered on OpEx license models and bring in lower TCO.
Enterprises in Digital era thrive in making data-driven decisions and no longer should look for 'Reports' or 'Dashboards'. Data has a varied meaning in future and Enterprises will need predictive and prescriptive HR Analytics to handle the workforce of future.
All these paradigms impact the basic business of any Enterprise - 'Work'. Increasingly, Enterprise have to focus on acquiring skills for future, refactor the existing talent as part of their Workforce planning to handle the new Digital workplace.
Hence, there is an inseparable relation between these Digital advances and 'HR function' in an Enterprise as these changes 'Transform' the work, workforce, workplace and finally the very operating model of the HR function in an Enterprise, as shown in the picture below :
Consequently, it is imperative that HR function in any Enterprise needs to embark onto the 'Digital' journey first, more than any other group in the Enterprise, to steer ahead into Digital Era.
Our take on building a 'Digital HR' Organization / Enterprise
We believe that Enterprises should focus on Modernizing their HR function by taking several initiatives which shall align to the Enterprise level Digital strategy.
Here are the key HR initiatives which Enterprises need to undertake as part of HR Digital Transformation, to truly transform themselves into 'Digital HR'.
HR Process Digitization - removing the paper-based HR processes in every corner of the organization, replacing with systemic HR processes / transactions.
Integration of Information Islands - ensuring that no part of the HR landscape is isolated and has redundant information. This also ensures that there is single source of truth for HR data.
Globalization and Internalization - to ensure the global deployments and compliance
Information Security - ensuring compliance to data privacy laws and PII data protection across the HR application
Data Driven Decision Making - Build HR Analytics for future to provide prescriptive and predictive Analytics to enable data driven decision making and capture of HR KPIs.
Enhance Employee Experience - by building the Employer Branding and introducing mobility, collaborative work culture, differentiated career planning, innovative CnB packages and learning beyond the current.
Onboarding to SaaS / Cloud platforms - will ensure leveraging the HCM Cloud solutions offered with best practice based approach and flexibility in the total cost framework.
During this Oracle Open World 2017, join our Infosys session that offers firsthand knowledge and advice about Digital Organization & Digital HR that practitioners can take back and implement within their organization covering our Point of View and Offerings in all these areas.