What’s the future of HR and talent acquistion?

Companies’ human resource activities have evolved over the years — from initial outreach, communicating hiring decisions, empowering employees, and performing a mentoring/coaching function. The latest technological advances have impacted employment strategies to such an extent that talent acquisition now holds a key position in most companies’ decision-making.

The focus has shifted from just recruitment, payroll, and compensation to finding different ways to boost employee experience because workers rely on more than just their pay. The shift has been responsible for turning the Human Resources department into a revenue-booster because employees are crucial to the running of any organization.

The future

Numerous predictions have been made about the future of HR, especially with the greater automation being witnessed today. Here’s a brief guide to what’s in store for the future of recruitment and the human resource Industry:

Greater flexibility and social interaction

Employees today are looking for flexible work hours and opportunities. 9 to 5 jobs just don’t cut it anymore. The future will see this desire impacting not only on hours but on locations as well. More and more companies are opting for remote setups to allow for employee work-life integration.

Social interaction is also being encouraged with a greater focus on the development of intranet and internal social platforms that allow for communication within the company across different levels.

More integration and mobility

The future of HR is set to include a greater diversity of skills, with teams being composed of individuals from different backgrounds. Mobile access to work tasks is also becoming increasingly common and is anticipated to become more popular in the coming years, with remote workforce management being a key focus area.

Reliance on big data and artificial intelligence

Big data is the new rage. The HR industry will see greater use of big data and embrace tools for analytics that will help to keep track of pertinent information. This will help generate insights that companies can use to plan future courses of action. The use of big data will allow better data-driven talent acquisition, retention, training, and development.

The integration of artificial intelligence can allow HR teams to concentrate on solving issues at a higher level while leaving mundane, repetitive functions to software. Such automation is imperative and can speed up HR functions considerably, increasing the efficiency of business operations.

HR service delivery

Greater automation will bring about a change to numerous tasks:

• Queries can be answered using an online knowledge-base without HR teams having to personally respond to them. The online knowledge-base also removes the redundancy involved in similar questions being asked by different people so that quick responses can be offered. This will save time for everyone involved.
• Scanning applicant details and measuring them against the company’s performance standards to provide information on who the most suitable candidate is for the job.
• Learning management systems allow for on-demand training and context-aware learning, as well as virtual career coaches. This will simplify employee training efforts. With context-aware learning, the struggles faced by workers can be assessed, and appropriate courses of action can be recommended. Virtual career coaches can combine the benefits of learning heuristics and virtual assistants.

Greater use of targeted ads for recruitment

With technological advancements, recruiting ads can be used to target the right people through the use of recruitment software applications. Writing clear job descriptions and including keywords can ensure your ad is seen by the right people, thus saving you time and money during a talent acquisition cycle. Targeted ads are very specific and are set to be used even more in the HR industry’s future.