In an effort to remain ahead of the curve, companies need to invest in technology as part of their business transformation journey, which includes adopting Cloud technology. The key objective of these investments is to help them successfully achieve their unique business growth strategy by shoring it up with a focused, proactive, and innovative “people” strategy. Themba Chakela, General Manager, Group Organisational Effectiveness for the Britehouse Group looks at the benefits of early adoption. 

Historically, human capital optimisation has been a major challenge facing companies, especially when they experience swift expansion or hyper-growth. Those that recognise the need for change early, find themselves needing to quickly and efficiently transform their HR from a static, tactical, and transactional function, into an agile, innovative, and strategic business-enabling operation.

To put it bluntly, pushing paper-based performance reviews and record-keeping can no longer be seen as a smart or reliable Human Capital Management (HCM) approach. Not only is this mindset and perspective outdated, but the potential for human errors, such as misplaced data or incorrectly allocated information, is ever present.

Potentially, this could have a disastrous impact on the business and its valued human assets.

Looking at the way forward

The time has come for companies to include a transformative journey for their HR function with their growth strategy. Ideally, this means shifting away from an HR department that is reactive, task-driven, and transactional to one that is a strategic business partner, dedicated to leveraging the company’s most valuable assets. This new approach should empower the business to do better by leveraging its own talent and freeing up the HR team to use their full capacity and capability to propel the business’ human advantage towards achieving the company’s massive transformative purpose (MTP).

To do this, companies need to adopt a platform mindset, one that is positioned from a process and technology perspective and is fit for purpose. To this end, bringing your company’s HCM  to the Cloud presents an enticing and user-experience-focused avenue from which to address some of the challenges that the overall transformative journey brings.

Not only does this place the HR function at the center of the solution, right next to the employee, but it also enables a true 360-degree and 3-dimensional view of your human capital. HR practitioners are then in a position where they can use detailed reporting to push insights into the lifeblood of the company, and broaden the impact base of the stakeholders and role players of the company’s “people” strategy.

Looking at the benefits

One of the immediate benefits of building your human capital castle in the Cloud is how it increases cost-efficiency and reduces complexity.

A simple explanatory example would be employee training. We rejected complicated, time-consuming classroom-based training and replaced our thick, dated manuals with updated, infographic-based online material. During this process we embedded the material with the company’s vision, goals, and objectives, and this fresh, digital approach allowed us to more effectively educate our workforce, who have as a result increased our overall success as a company.

Another benefit is that you can take advantage of the modern user experience. Using Cloud technology enables real-time interactions between managers and employees, and sets the table for fresh minute-by-minute HR data and feedback. For instance, think about something as simple as accessing your company’s address directory for communicative purposes. This can now be done remotely, with the information centrally located and instantly accessible through profile-specific categories. Without going through the traditional manual search process for employee records, your HR division is not bogged down with time-consuming, mundane tasks.

Something this simple saves time, promotes efficiency, and reduces errors. This about what it could do for larger, more complicated objectives, such as bringing business units closer together. The advancement of HR-related Cloud technology allows for precisely this, which is especially beneficial when up to 80% of your workforce is based in remote locations.

In addition, with the biggest HR challenge being that they are misunderstood by the business at large, this technology enables your HR division to speak in a language that is holistically understood, and to report to executive management on critical HR insights that impact the company.

Truthfully speaking, these are just a few instances where I have seen this kind of technology allow company’s to put the ‘human' back into HR. The possibilities and opportunities are far greater when this journey is fully embraced.

Looking at the lessons

The journey of implementing effective human capital management solutions is not without its lessons. I would argue that the most important of these is that of consensus and clarity, especially when it concerns your company’s HR strategy and goals. 

This type of transformation takes both leadership commitment and business partnership. It is imperative that the journey be fully embraced and that it be led from the top down. It (almost) goes without saying that as with anything critical to business transformation, it is vital that your company’s top management invest their time and energy into becoming an integral part of the journey.