Digital HR, more than digitization!

Digital transformation keeps on developing with time among various sectors and business sizes. Organizations are looking for new and effective ways of utilizing digital capabilities in HR to meet the growing demand, where digitization is changing the way we think about modern HR and its innovative approach.

On October 28, the AmCham HR Committee organized a meeting entitled Digital HR, more than digitalization. Our guest was Ms. Marta Pawlak-Dobrzańska, HR Strategist and Analyst at Great Digital, who started the session by answering what digital HR is precisely. The best definition of what digital HR represents is an optimization process in which social, mobile, analytics, cloud (SMAC) technologies make HR more effective. The cause of the acceleration of digitization in HR is not the decision-making of a CEO or CTO in a natural transformation process; instead, it is the forced external factor of the COVID-19 pandemic that dramatically accelerated technology adoption across all industries. Effective HR digital transformation is done in five steps: first, we define the problem, choose the application, and then convince the decision-makers. During the implementation phase, the most critical part would be to encourage employees to utilize the tools. The finalization process is to verify the effectiveness of the mechanism by measuring its efficacy.

Following the presentation, our speaker defined the most attractive platforms that support HR functions nowadays, like Medalia (exploring how employee experience practices influence critical people outcomes), Teamtoolbox (a tool for building a culture, releasing people’s potential in working remotely), and Sherlock Waste (encouraging employees to innovate). We have concluded that although technology makes HR processes more efficient by freeing time for HR experts, even when tech can do an adequate job, we still want to deal with a person and not a machine.