What new developments will the year 2017 bring to the field of human resources management? In the United States, the prospect of a Trump administration is supposed to introduce an economic stimulus package that will create jobs across a few industries; this would likely increase activity for some HR professionals. With regard to technology, HR specialists will certainly see new developments in the New Year as the workplace continues to become more digital.
Here are four technological HR trends you will probably notice in 2017:
Unified Communications
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is already being utilized by virtually all Fortune 500 companies. Unified communications is a business strategy built on top of VoIP to conduct calling, messaging, online collaboration, conferencing, and file sharing from a single platform. Unified communications is being augmented to include the Web Real-Time Calling (WebRTC) technology, which will allow HR managers to conduct job interviews from any internet-connected device equipped with a camera, microphone and modern browser.
Hierarchical Data Structures
If your HR office filing system is arranged in an alphanumeric fashion, you may wish to switch to hierarchical organization in 2017. In this data arrangement, information is retrieved and displayed in a a manner that allows workers to determine what makes it important. Military veterans tend to be comfortable with this method because it reminds them of rank structure and the connections made between different command elements.
On-Demand Corporate Training
The days of hiring trainers, scheduling conference rooms or sending staff members to local universities for corporate training are coming to an end. The web-based and mobile educational tools currently available will allow you to coordinate a training curriculum to meet the needs of your organization, and prospective students will be able to access courses on demand. For example, if one of your staff members is working on completing an online bachelors degree in business to get a promotion, you will be able to track his or her progress through an internet dashboard.
Hybrid Clouds for HR Platforms
Although most HR organizations prefer to use cloud services to manage their HR platforms, some industries are being regulated with regard to the way they handle their data. You may see compliance changes in 2017 with regard to cloud-based HR applications; your company may be required to start keeping employee records in the office or at least within the state. If this is the case, you may want to look into compliant hybrid clouds that allow you to access HR records locally while keeping remote backups.
This guest post is courtesy of Dixie Somers.