Is the future of work, all about technology? Here’s why everybody is talking about AI, automation & Big Data
The ‘new normal’
In a global job market, that’s competitive and frenetically altering shape, approach, and form, everyone wants to be a ‘company-of-choice’.
To this end, HR teams and recruiters are working hard to create new plans and strategies which help make employees feel more in-sync with an organization’s goals, attracting the best talent, and ensuring they stay, propelling productivity.
But this isn’t as easy as it seems. Often teams are derailed by a variety of complex factors, and are not able to seek and source the finest resources, or offer them a workspace that’s value-driven, fair and free of bias, with a focus on employee engagement and motivation.
This is where technology can play a pivotal role. Today, HR teams, managers, recruiters, and hiring leads can use a plethora of tools, solutions, and platforms to enrich and enhance all of the above mentioned factors. In fact, beyond recruitment, technology can transform various other HR needs, from benefits management to compliance and regulatory controls.
Let’s look at this in more detail:
The reinforcement of reputation and market leadership
There’s no questioning this – today, every company, no matter its business segment or size, must rethink its legacy model, and strive towards becoming a ‘digital leader’.
Employees are eager to work in a firm that offers the newest software solutions, is ready to remove outmoded models, and streamline processes and systems, powered by technology. In this dynamic environment, a tech-savvy company will hugely improve its market reputation, and reaffirm its commitment to growth and development.
AI and its transformative potential
Once considered fodder for sci-fi stories and novels, Artificial Intelligence or AI is now a buzz-word across businesses, regular consumers, and state-of-the-art products.
Every tech major, is now experimenting with AI, looking to create platforms, applications, and ‘virtual assistants’, geared to make life as we know it, simpler, faster, and smarter. For businesses, AI-driven chatbots can make a massive difference.
With the implementation of an AI-empowered ‘chatbot’ or ‘virtual assistant’, a number of everyday tasks can be automated, allowing employees to realign their focus on key, strategic assignments. Clearly, this is game-changer – for shop floors, product development, and contact centers, as well as recruitment, induction, and attrition management.
For HR teams, regular hiring functionalities – resume selection, first-round screening, database maintenance, and continuous connectivity – can all be automated and streamlined. What’s more, virtual assistants can help plan and schedule meetings, gather notes, send reminders, help employees fill up forms or adhere to policy guidelines, and at the time of exit, can ensure the necessary paperwork and clearances, are completed as per schedule.
While some opine that the rise of chatbots will dent manual job-roles, the truth is, this will only improve an employee’s ability to contribute in a more meaningful, and valuable way. New positions will be created, and teams will concentrate their energies on the projects, that matter the most.
The buzz around Big Data
While it’s been around for a while now, Big Data and Advanced Analytics has the power to alter how people view data.
Once lost in translation, today companies are constantly gathering data across several channels, to cleanse, assess, segment, and analyze the same – in order to derive new insights and ideas, on what works, and what doesn’t, for a company.
This could change product lifecycles, improve customer experiences, refine business targeting, and boost employee engagement.
For recruiters, the incoming data, and interpretations of the same, will help hire the best talent, refine policy formulation, and better articulate enterprise HR strategies. Importantly, Big Data has made decision-making, more nuanced and data-driven, weeding out speculation and biased judgement.
Joining forces – making man and machine can work together, and how the ‘Cloud’ is changing things
Another key technological movement is Robotic Process Automation or RPA, which is used to collect and capture the critical rules governing how transactions are processed, and thereby, create an automated platform which can automatically replicate the same.
That said, the big ask for most companies, is the ability to intersect digitalization with human intelligence, planning, leadership and implementation.
The most prudent way forward for companies is to make a list of its current systems, understand which are the ones that need to be carried forward, and the identify the ones that are redundant and hamper productivity.
Thereafter, firms must leverage another vital technological innovation – the Cloud. Today, Cloud Computing has made the storage of data, the actioning of software solutions, and the building of an IT department, a completely online and on-demand scenario, where everything exists on the web, ready for use, as per requirement.
An openstack, Cloud based solution will help companies personalize any solution, and envision a bespoke model, uniquely shaped to one’s individualized needs.
And finally, the question that’s vital, and is at the crux of this article: Can man work in-tandem with technology?
With every great breakthrough in the history of civilization, there has always been an upheaval and a tectonic shift, in how people operate everyday tasks and processes. Needless to say, technology in its various ramifications, is a definitive change-of-guard, a switch from one way of working, to another.
It will, like any paradigm shift, have large-scale impacts. Some roles will have to be done away with, there will be unease and dread, but in the end, as always, man will find a way – a refinement of purpose and value creation.
Technology will help us find this bend on the road, and by harnessing its multi-faceted ability for transformation, businesses will unravel a new era of profitability – pushed forward by new jobs, faster growth, improved productivity, and better ROI.
There’s no doubting then, the future of work, society, and mankind as a whole, is empowered and enlivened by Technology.
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