By Sumit Sabharwal
Global economies are already disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, facing new operational, structural, and management challenges to business dynamics. To offer a thorough response and to ensure continuity, businesses must incorporate pandemic planning, and technology can show the way forward.
Employee safety and health tech
Businesses can thwart health risks effectively through appropriate technological implementations. Attendance devices with face recognition and temperature sensing are examples of HR tech to spot unwell employees. Connected wearable devices can track employees’ oxygen levels, heart rates, blood pressure, and many more health-related data points. Smartwatches enable employees to punch their attendance, saving them from touching traditional biometric devices that are prone to contamination.
Telehealth
Businesses can integrate telehealth with their HCM platforms so that employees can virtually connect with doctors with a single click. They should leverage their Learning Management Systems to train employees on using integrated telehealth with ease. Facilitating consulting fees by integration with Benefits Management Systems can make the consultation process seamless.
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Agile development and IT Infrastructure
The IT department, if it is not already, needs to become nimbler, if the business is to benefit. That calls for much more than merely converting development teams to agile product models. Agile IT also refers to bringing agility to the IT infrastructure and operations by changing infrastructure and security teams from reactive, “ticket-driven” operations into proactive models in which scrum teams develop the secure application program interfaces (APIs) that service businesses and developers can use.
Talent acquisition
Changes in demand during the Covid-19 crisis resulted in a brief increase in hiring, followed by significant layoffs as things began to return to normal. Another wave will necessitate a complete rethinking of talent acquisition strategies to address present and upcoming difficulties, such as employee engagement and retention.
Many businesses ended up over-hiring due to the lack of a robust workforce forecasting system. On the other hand, those leveraging the right HR technology predicted their future requirements more accurately and made the right hiring decisions. We need more businesses to take the same approach in the next wave too.
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Conclusion
HR technology has advanced rapidly to deal with the pandemic-driven requirements. Businesses only need to be aware of the available technological solutions and be prepared without losing any more time.
The author is CEO of TeamLease HRtech
.