The last decade has seen a leap in the use of technology by business to fast track employees and to build corporate culture and loyalty across borders, according to research from the Top Employers Institute.
Technology is a key trend for HR practitioners to watch in 2015. Through ever-more sophisticated integrated software tools and programmes, technology is giving business access to comprehensive employee profiles and an insight that allows for a level of strategic workforce, career and succession planning not seen in the workplace before.
It also has created enormous scope for employee engagement and training, particularly valuable on the African continent where multinational companies are taking advantage of growth and need to fast track employees and develop a corporate culture that stretches across the globe.
Data gathered in the HR Best Practices Survey by the Top Employers Institute (TEI), which is headquartered in the Netherlands and globally certifies excellence in the conditions organisations provide for the development of their employees, showed that 90% of Top Employers now have specific technology in place for learning and development, while over 70% offer specific technology for goal setting, self-assessment, and personal development plans.
Below an image of our Infographic on HR and Technology worldwide top 3 scoring countries.
The partnership between technology and HR in Top Employers is enabling organisations to build culture, drive engagement and develop business agility that will support their competitive advantage not only now, but in years to come.
Where others remain fixed in their position, Top Employers have opened their business and HR strategy to best practice information, competition and a shared vision with like-minded business leaders. This provides flexibility to quickly change strategy or tactics with lower associated risks from a human resourcing, productivity and engagement perspective than other organisations - and that means - competitive advantage.
TEI, which announced its Top Employers 2015 in October 2014, named Unilever as the number 1 Top Employer South Africa and Africa, with Accenture and EY lyingsecond and third in South Africa. Months of rigorous research is conducted into an organisation’s HR environment covering HR and talent strategy; policy implementation, monitoring and reporting, leadership development, career planning and succession management, as well as looking at its use of smart technology across those areas. The Certification programme is independently audited by Grant Thornton.
Being a global business, connectivity across geographical borders is critical to business delivery and our reliance on technology has become a standard way of working in Unilever,” said Antoinette Irvine, Unilever, HR Vice President for South and Southern Africa.
“As the HR function, we provide state-of-the-art systems to support key HR practices to make working easier, integrated and more efficient for line managers, employees and HR. Some examples include an automated talent and performance management system, an online learning management system with access to global and local learning solutions and access to a wide variety of e-learning and self-service tools for employees and line managers to manage almost any HR transactional requirement they have,” she said.
Irvine said such technologies also provide HR professionals with access to data and information that has enabled higher order HR analytics, a powerful enabler to play a more strategic role and support more informed decision-making.
Technology in HR saves time and improves people management agrees Pretty Charles, HR Director of another certified Top Employer - IBM South Africa. Long renowned as a top training ground for the South African ICT sector, IBM makes use of its best technology solutions to underpin its people development programmes and measure employee engagement.
“We are leaning heavily on technology to recruit, retain, develop and engage our employees,” said Charles. IBM uses technology to rapidly and accurately gauge employee engagement and progress at a local and global level, allowing HR to drill down to identify issues and trends. It also uses a number of intranet portals to manage employee learning and development, and to facilitate collaboration between employees spread around the globe.
This is particularly important in a shrinking world where traditional communications no longer suffice and flexitime and telecommuting are the norm. Technology is allowing business to connect and network employees and build culture and loyalty across distance. Of business’ surveyed, 86% had information on values and required behaviour freely available on an intranet, 77% of Top Employers had onboarding information available to new employees and 81% communicate strategy and business results on an intranet.
Brent Cairns, Talent Strategist Manager, Accenture says that Accenture uses communications tools such as Microsoft Lync, which enables real-time conversations globally, reducing turnaround times, cutting travel costs and enabling knowledge sharing and video conferencing/telepresence for interviews to secure the best talent. Employees are encouraged towards continuous up-skilling by utilising e-learning courses, said Cairns.
In Africa such use of technology in training and development is particularly exciting, adds Crous. Fast access to an unprecedented diversity in training, coaching and mentoring programmes and international exposure for Africa’s top talent is giving Top Employers on the continent a unique ability to build business leaders faster and more holistically than ever before. Statistics showed that 95% of Top Employers on the continent had specific learning and development technology in place, 75% use social media and 69% of Top Employers had international exchange programmes.
“We are joining the dots using technology,” said Charles. “And by putting these tools in the hands of employees and their managers, HR’s function becomes less to manage day-to-day admin, and more to facilitate the processes and look at the bigger trends. This is in line with global trends for HR to move away from a transactional role to a more strategic role within the organisation.” Quote from Charles.
And I agree, Africa sits at the edge of an important economic developmental phase, and it raises the question of how development will unfold. In Top Employers we see a strategic partnership between HR and technology that has the potential to sling shot the development of Africa’s business business.
By doing this, together with an understanding of the unique local conditions, practices and knowledge of Africa, a new script for business on the continent, with Africa’s own at the forefront could be in making.
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