As a consequence of the pandemic, many in HR earned a seat at the executive table to help navigate the business and its employees through huge disruption. Now, the people function is under pressure to re-emerge as the champion of productivity.

HR is key to supporting business strength. More than ever before, leaders in organisations of all sizes are expecting HR departments to support their business even further as they look to reinvent themselves and to boost their productivity.

When it comes to productivity, HR practitioners assist in various ways to drive change throughout the entire organisation – such as leveraging technology and design thinking, and relentlessly looking for new ways to improve the quality and efficiency of their own services with the final aim to deliver a great employee experience.

Being agents of change, HR teams innovatively look to improve processes for talent development programmes, performance management, coaching, training, recruiting, organisation design, succession planning and more. Never before have we been focusing so much on employee engagement, mental health, collaboration and workforce fluidity.

So, with these new demands on HR teams, how can practitioners find new ways in which to boost their organisation’s productivity?

Understanding the ‘new normal’
Last year saw HR teams needing to focus on reactive projects to cope with redistributed workforces, new legislations and a renewed focus on the overall wellbeing of employees; physically, mentally and financially.

The global pandemic created an opportunity to challenge antiquated processes and roles such as in-person working. However, as employees remained productive despite distance, provided the right technology was in place, these changes also added invaluable new-found levels of trust, empathy, and a strengthened sense of community.

As industries move out of the pandemic, a return to the ‘old normal’ looks increasingly unlikely, as businesses have successfully embraced ‘new normals’ such as digital transformation projects and hybrid working. The past 18 months has seen traditional workplace practices permanently altered and HR teams risk being left behind if they aren’t able to adapt with modern technology and services.

Hybrid working is now the norm for white-collar workers, and blue-collar workers are also seeing more flexibility introduced for their work life. HR teams need to understand what this ‘new normal’ looks like for each and every one of their employees and understand the new expectations. Only then can they work towards implementing initiatives, projects and technologies that solve the productivity puzzle. After all, more engaged, motivated, happy, and healthy employees are more productive employees.

The role of technology
Technology has played a pivotal role in maintaining productivity, as well as keeping employees safe throughout the pandemic. But, in order to boost productivity for the years ahead, HR teams now need to look to what workplace tools will support their plans. A reimagined HR requires full use of growing digital capabilities to be more productive, in areas where the machine far outperforms people in accuracy, efficiency, speed, and scalable utility.

Today’s HR service delivery tools are pre-built with on-demand analytics to equip HR with meaningful operational data and help drive HR operations’ accountability. These tools provide strong analytics with the ability to measure and monitor KPIs such as time-to-resolution – such metrics are essential for understanding the impact and success of an HR service management solution. A powerful HR service delivery solution with built-in analytics should show a drastic reduction in the time to fulfil requests, even as the number of requests steadily increases in volume.

Not only does this benefit the HR team through enabling better organisation of HR operations, but it also helps to identify what’s most important to the workforce. For example, data analysis can provide insights on which articles employees are most frequently reading, alongside the employee query topics that get raised most frequently.

Through this insight you can see that if for example most interest is around payroll or admin, you may want to consider how you can improve the services in those areas. It also provides deeper insights on the demographics of who is seeking additional support. For example, if there are a high frequency of queries from a particular location, there may be a management issue there to address.

In addition, digital assistants or chatbots provide the ability to automate first level query management, freeing up more time for value creating activities instead. Again, these also help to improve the employee experience through providing a 24/7 HR service in a way that people want to interact in today’s world. People are more and more wanting mobile-first services and provides that for employees, so they can easily, and efficiently access information.

Another area that has come to fore over the past 18 months in particular is the ability for technology to aid in making HR teams more agile. Through an HR service delivery tool, HR teams can have complete autonomy from the IT team to react quickly and disseminate critical information to employees instantly. If for example HR needs to launch a new health policy, it can rapidly get this new policy out to all employees and request an electronic signature.

These are just a few small examples of where efficiencies can be made within the HR team through technology deployment, but essentially, it’s all about enabling HR focus on what’s most important – the people.

Reimaging HR to boost productivity
Reimagining HR requires enthusiastic utilisation of growing digital capabilities that aid in boosting productivity. Primarily, it means embracing digital tools that far outperform people in accuracy, efficiency, speed and scalable utility.

These tools will also prove invaluable in a number of areas such as storing, sorting and processing data, filtering recruitment longlists, supporting decision-making with science and evidence, collating repeatable information at scale, and answering high-level HR queries in a more accurate and productive manner than humans.

Ultimately, with HR now firmly having a seat at the executive table, teams now have a unique opportunity to reimagine their organisation with a culture that taps into the best of humans, but is supported by technology and the rise of clever, workplace tools that meet the needs of both HR and employees.