With the turn of the millennium, several organizations have expanded to become multi-national, resulting in employees being dispersed across multiple locations. While roughly 60% – 70% of the employees operate out of core delivery locations – the remaining employees are often seen to be dispersed across a Long-tail of countries.
KPMG, in its research report titled “Rethinking Human HR in a Changing World,” examines the nature of various challenges facing the HR function and its future direction. The report states that one of the core challenges faced by the HR function is “managing a global, flexible workforce.” The global workforce has become increasingly integrated across borders while growing more virtual and flexible. These developments have made retention of key talent and building workforces in new markets as top priorities of HR departments over the last three years.
Companies from developed countries are seeking newer locations to enhance their existing businesses, while those from emerging markets have acquired sufficient scale to start taking on the world. The resultant challenges faced by an HR organization will include
- Balancing the global and the local – managing, hiring, and identifying talent globally while retaining necessary local talent.
- Managing a flexible and virtual workforce – but not at the cost of loyalty and career development.
- Retaining the best talent
When these challenges as submitted by the HR function in any board room, the immediate resolution in most instances tends to be – “What’s the best piece of technology available for us to address this.” But on the down-side several organizations with a flexible workforce tend to address each entity as a separate island resulting in a myriad of HR platforms and solutions being implemented across the organizations, which results in its own sets of challenges which include inaccuracy in the availability of employee data, increasing difficulty in handling a mobile workforce and tracking cross-border compliance across various HR processes.
Use of technology – “the right technology” will help organizations mitigate this challenge, hence the need for “Smart HR Technology.” Therefore, keeping your global workforce in mind, the following are the steps an organization needs to bear while selecting an HR solution.
Access from the Cloud: A cloud-based HRMS will help the HR team access employee data across geographies. Cloud solutions have better ESS & MSS interfaces that make information readily available. Talent Management happens in real-time, with seamless process flows – much to the delight of an employee.
An intuitive User experience: The rise of the millennial generation among the workforce and, more importantly, the choices an individual sees laid out lucratively in front of their eyes in the market has given organizations the absolute need to re-look at their employee retention policies. While providing monetary benefits and having rewards & recognition programs have been an everyday norm – several organizations have now realized the importance of creating a wow- experience for their employees. An intuitive user interface in the technology put forth to an organization’s employees will help them navigate without ambiguity. Simplicity is truly the essence here, and an uncluttered design provides information on a need-to-know basis and allows us to accomplish this goal.
Security features: With regulations such as GDPR being rolled out – the importance of data security has undoubtedly taken high precedence among organizations. Hence the solution used should ensure the utmost data security for employee information.
User support: Be it a proprietary platform or an off-the-shelf product, all forum users must be provided with adequate training and support, which will help increase user adoption.
HR Analytics: This will help the HR function to better its decision-making ability with better prediction and tangible evidence.
Technology is undoubtedly the game-changer that will help organizations manages their global workforce effectively. However, choosing the right piece of technology will certainly propel its HR function to a new orbit.
If you would like to devise the perfect HR solution for your organization to cater to your global workforce – please write to us at irene.jones@neeyamo.com. We would be happy to look at your existing HR landscape and help optimize it to serve your employees better.
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