This year could be pivotal in the quest to save people’s time. In fact, there are five ways that workforce management technology can increase productivity, according to Computerworld last week, and three of them involve time.
Technology released in 2015 will revolutionize the workplace, helping people quickly take care of administrative tasks so they can get back to their real work.
And the time for workforce enablement to take a giant leap forward may be now, according to Christa Manning, an independent market research analyst at Eudemonia. HR technology released in 2015 will help the workforce of the future get the right work done.
“A Watershed Moment”
“Everyone is struggling with workforce productivity,” Manning said at SuccessConnect 2015 last month. “Everything is competing for workers’ attention, so there really is an emphasis on running simple.”
That desire to run simple is helping to fuel a technology revolution, according to Manning. New performance management tools have simplified complex processes into things that anyone can do, often quickly and efficiently -- freeing up time to do more important work.
“I think we’re going to look back on this year’s SuccessConnect as a watershed moment in both SuccessFactors’ and SAP’s history,” Manning said. “We went from self-service to smart service ... it’s helping connect the dots to accomplish -- not HR stuff for HR’s sake -- but meaningful tasks and activities.”
Strike Both Balances
“Work-life balance and workload balance are some of the things HR will start to really focus on enabling for their workers,” Manning said. “Whether it’s serving a customer [or] learning something new, that’s what’s going to keep them engaged and retained in organizations.”
Such engagement requires software that can easily guide employees through administrative processes -- so people can get back to their work. New technology, such as intelligent services that SuccessFactors unveiled at SuccessConnect last month, have evolved beyond the last decade’s isolated self-services, improving the employee experience with end-to-end tools that work across software modules and otherwise unrelated processes.
“I really see HR as transforming into workforce enablement,” Manning said. Compliance will still be very important, “but HR will really start to be about workforce support and workforce enablement using technologies in the cloud that are a little more seamless and integrated with other solutions, and then honing in on the best use of workers’ time.”