According to a recent infographic study by the Digital School of Paris on digital recruitment, 82% of HR decision-makers believe that giving a digital dimension to their function is a priority. Indeed, the growing digitization of companies and the advent of Big Data are profoundly changing their organization. The support functions and in particular human resources find themselves impacted by this paradigm shift. Despite the strong humanist dimension at the heart of these missions, the many daily tasks of human resources directors (HRDs) are being reinvented today to become automated and inevitably dematerialized. In addition to the transformation of missions, digital and Big Data are above all tomorrow’s tools that make it possible to anticipate activity.
How does digital play a central role in human resources?
The daily missions of HRDs transformed by digital technology
Among the fundamental missions incumbent on the HR department, we find the training of the company’s employees.
Today, we can learn differently thanks to the development of e-learning:
- Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
- Corporate Open Online Courses (COOCs)
- serious games
- Knowledge management (KM) platforms
These are all tools which, beyond changing traditional formations, are easier to access. The employee can then become a real player in his training, both professional and personal. These new learning solutions represent a considerable advantage for HRDs, since they allow effective, diversified and ongoing training for their employees, at a lower cost.
As part of this article, we interviewed the Training Manager in a French pharmaceutical group. Full interview below.
Alongside the training aspect, there is another component of human resources that is going digital today, namely recruitment . The tedious traditional recruitment process of sorting CVs by hand, which represents a waste of time and therefore money for companies, is also gradually changing. Today, online job sites or professional social networks such as LinkedIn or Viadeo are real recruitment media that provide quick access to a panel of better-targeted candidates. Algorithms can then sort the candidates according to other more specific criteria defined by the employer. Thus, the interview is refocused on its main function which is to discover the candidate – handpicked upstream – and to assess, around an exchange, his behavioral, human skills, but also transversal that are the soft- skills . This digital recruitment is faster, more efficient and less expensive. On the business side, the use of digital can also be useful upstream of recruitment, to develop the employer’s brand and thus enhance its image with potential future employees who will manage to contribute to the growth of the company.
Once the candidates have been recruited, the management of new employees can be complex, especially within large groups. To simplify internal administrative management, new tools provide a complete view in real time to monitor team progress. The use of data from the Human Resources Management Information System (HRIS) within software makes it possible to optimize processes since all the data necessary for most personnel administration operations are easily accessible.
Thus, the result is a better use of data in each task of administrative management
- payroll management
- employee follow-up
- social protection
- retirement
This boosts business performance. As a result, according to a survey by Infopro Digital Etudes conducted in 2019, 60% of companies questioned indicate that digital tools assist them in managing payroll and reporting processes.
In addition to better performance in its daily missions, digital allows the HRD to save time, allowing him to focus on the personalized support of employees and managers, thereby improving the employee experience.
Source: Digital School of Paris
Digital does not only have a short-term impact, on daily missions, but also in the long term.
Digital can help to understand the future
Although its use in human resources remains less known, what is called Big Data proves to be particularly useful there. This refers to all digital data produced by the use of new technologies for personal or professional purposes. Its use makes it possible to apprehend a certain number of phenomena in order to adopt predictive rather than reactive driving. This is called “workforce planning”. This method aims to develop HR action plans aimed primarily at reducing in advance the gaps between needs and human resources.
It allows for example to anticipate on:
- possible scarcity positions
- the list of skills of tomorrow
- the new jobs of tomorrow
- mobility
- employee loyalty
- the development of the employer brand.
Thus, companies will be able to organize themselves more effectively and efficiently. This strategic projection into the future , which is necessary today, is in the hands of the HRD.
Source: BNP Paribas
The new role of the HRD
The HRD plays a key role in this digital transformation since he is responsible for both adapting to and appropriating new practices and new professions related to digital, but also for supporting employees in these changes.
It is also responsible for ensuring the protection of all personal data collected and stored concerning employees. This is why the European Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ) of 2016, implemented from 2018, imposes protective rules that impact the HR services of companies. Among these binding supranational rules, there are several obligations incumbent on the Human Resources Department of companies, for example appointing a data manager, verifying data compliance, safeguarding documents and collections relating to data protection and managing risks and security vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, some employees express reluctance about the collection of their personal information and fear systematic surveillance.
The obstacles to this organizational change
Making a shift to digital within HR is not always easy for companies, which have to deal with various obstacles. First of all, organizational obstacles . The survey conducted by Infopro Digital Studies highlights three main ones. Firstly, the lack of internal resources/skills (47%), then the unsuitability of IT tools and systems (45%) and finally the lack of financial resources (37%). Added to this is a cultural barrier, since cultural resistance is cited by 33% of respondents. The whole challenge of adapting to digital and its appropriation by companies in the coming years is to remove these obstacles.
Source: BNP Paribas
Today, 85% of HR managers believe that their digital maturity is average or even poor, according to a study carried out by Sopra RH Software and the Digital Factory in 2017, with 200 decision-makers. It seems obvious for the majority of companies that today, each of them must integrate digital and adapt to it, not only to improve its efficiency and its overall performance but also to avoid the threat of obsolescence of the jobs in the sector by 2030.
ESCadrille Toulouse Junior Conseil supports you in this digital transition
If some of your employees are still reluctant to digital transition, ESCadrille can help you make an effective transition in order to build lasting relationships with them . In parallel with this support for the digital transition, ESCadrille offers you two Human Resources services to respond to all your management issues.
- A study of the social climate will allow you to avoid any social crisis by reporting on it and subsequently identifying areas for improvement.
- Recruitment support could allow you to ensure the performance of your teams and in the long term, to ensure the success of your company based on a qualified and close-knit team.
Calling on ESCadrille Toulouse Junior Conseil means calling on a young and dynamic team, all the more able to understand the new key issue of digitalization . Working with us also and above all means trusting our professionalism and our 42 years of experience.
To find out about our Human Resources solutions.
Interview of the Training Manager in a French pharmaceutical group
Hello Mrs C., can you tell us more about your position?
” Good morning. My name is Camille C., I am a pharmacist and I hold the position of training manager in a pharmaceutical laboratory specializing in non-prescription drugs. I manage the training of head office and field employees, including our sales representatives and our pharmacy representatives. »
How has the arrival of new digital training changed your approach to internal training in your company and since when have you been using them?
“In our pharmaceutical group, an internal tool called iLEARN has been implemented. It allows you to carry out and follow digital training. It’s a tool that we’ve been using for quite a long time, about 5 years now. It’s quite practical, especially for field employees who are not always at headquarters, since they can be carried out when and where you want. There is follow-up for employees, everyone has their own personal space and is assigned the training they must complete. There are two types of training: mandatory training which must be carried out in a given time and on-demand training which each employee can follow if they wish, they rather target soft skills and everything related to personal development. , management (for a person who is not a manager for example) etc. We can develop on the themes that we want. The confinement having accelerated things a lot, we created a distance training program for our medical visitors who were on leave. To make it more fun and less daunting, we used a platform called Klaxsoon, which allows you to create sorts of “learning games”. We really “gamify” the training sessions, we can create challenges, have small inter-team competitions, lead online meetings, share videos… It’s a fairly comprehensive tool that allows you to change the training medium a bit. The durations are quite short unlike classic e-learning where training can last 3 hours: it’s quite interesting. »
How much confidence do you place in these training methods?
“I have great confidence in these tools. Being quite digital myself, I’m the one who puts them in place and I find it much easier to follow online training. We manage to have more performance indicators, the time spent, was it done well, etc. We can then identify the points of difficulty much more easily and thus implement corrective actions more easily. »
Article written by INES BABOUCHE, 2021.