In an era of dynamic design and digitization, organizations are having to re-evaluate how they prepare themselves for the future.
Once viewed as a support function that only delivered employee services, the expectation from HR is to help lead the digital transformation of the organization. Enterprises are now hiring young, tech-savvy employees who are more comfortable accessing information while they are on the go, location does not matter anymore.
These professionals work best in a seamless, transparent, and digital workplace, and the organizations look towards HR to make this happen. As digitization and automation become central to business, HR is evolving accordingly, focusing on people, workplace, and platforms. This shift towards a new set of HR practices is often coined as “digital HR.”
Digital HR is being formed on ideation, partnership, and experimentation. As organizations are becoming leaner and more agile, employees are becoming younger; new methodologies are needed in almost every HR function.
Companies now use service design, co-creation workshops, prototyping, and minimal viable products (MVP) to pilot and roll out HR programs. For example, when Grameenphone decided to revamp its old approval management system, we developed customer personas, performed customer journey mapping, and piloted it for one month inside the HR function.
Even while renovating our parking layout or remodelling our recruitment process, we involved the UX (user experience) and service design team to ensure a better employee experience. This is how design thinking has gone mainstream.
Rather than delivering HR products designed around old ways, HR teams now research employee expectations across all segments & design accordingly.
HR teams are generating their solutions considering mobile apps, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotic process automation (RPA), which is enabling HR response to be near-real time.
The focus is on how organizations can change the HR function to operate in a digital way, use digital platforms, and derive at solutions. Following this concept, Grameenphone has come up with a single digital platform (OneGP) for all its 140+ employee services.
The main outcomes of this app was that it made life easier for our employees, reducing employee complaints via hotline by around 80% in the selected areas. Now employee services are just a few clicks away on the phone, that earlier required multiple calls to the hotline and raising service tickets oniple systems.
The OneGP app is directly connecting employees with service providers. An employee working anywhere in Bangladesh, can initiate a service request on OneGP which immediately connects him or her with the nearest enlisted service provider. The entire process now takes seamlessly without any intervention from the central admin team.
Employees can also rate the service and vendors using the OneGP app. Grameenphone employees can enroll and avail health insurance services through this. A real-time middleware platform is connecting employees with insurance provider systems, which in turn communicates with all the enlisted hospitals.
Technology plays a vital role here in ensuring employee convenience. Ticket booking and accommodation reservation for any official trip is a swipe away! It does not matter if you are out of station or on a long leave; all you need is an internet connection to approve any official memo through OneGP.
Our entire objective around this is to digitize the core and ensure our employees enjoy the seamless and hassle free benefits of digital solutions.
Organizations are now using real-time metrics on recruitment, engagement, attrition, and other measures to help management take informed decisions more quickly. Using chatbots in conjunction with artificial intelligence (AI) in people sourcing is not very uncommon.
Artificial intelligent agents interact with job seekers and help them understand the details of the job openings, selection methodology, and the company culture. A recent research conducted by Deloitte indicates that chatbots can eliminate up to 75% of the questions people have during the recruiting process. They can even be used in writing job descriptions as well as use predefined algorithms to reduce unconscious bias in recruiting.
To up-skill employees to stay relevant in the new era of digital transformation, leading companies are shifting to revamp their succession planning models, and learning and development (L&D) structure.
Increasing number of organizations feel massive open online courses -- commonly referred to as MOOCs -- are integral learning platforms. Along this line, Grameenphone also envisions at least 40 hours online learning for each employee by the end of 2018 in key areas like digital marketing, digital channels, applied analytics, and design and product development.
To that end, the company is offering online learning and development courses from recognized providers such as Lynda, Udacity, and Coursera. Furthermore, to ensure learning-on-the-go, all learning platforms are accessible through mobile apps. Learning here is “always-on” and in “real time!”
The mobile apps and digital platforms support employee up-skilling but it is also essential to create an eco-system that fosters a culture of innovation. The focus is on how organizations can design a working environment that enables productivity and lets employees focus on what matters most; using modern communication tools (such as Slack, Workplace by Facebook) to promote collaboration and engagement.
Telenor was one of the first clients of Workplace by Facebook and today this is GP’s central communication platform. This is not about informing employees about a company decision, but is about sharing the news with them and gathering quick insights and feedback. Millennials are used to this and love this transparency.
Innovation and learning is not always inside out. I think the days are gone when companies can only rely on their internal resources and knowledge base. Leveraging external expertise in areas where the businesses can benefit without compromising on their core deliverables is the new mantra in this time of digitalization -- companies can build-in greater efficiencies by collaborating with established external experts, rather than building that expertise within. “Whiteboard,” our in-house innovation lab is a ripe example of how this concept can be adopted. Whiteboard provides free workspace, mentoring sessions, and opportunities to engage in various partner-led digital events. The free flow of ideas, work style, and collaboration serves to inspire our employees to think outside the box and work innovatively.
There is an age-old saying that, “What gets measured gets done.” HR analytics is mainstream nowadays, a report published by Deloitte surmises that going forward, the quantity of data sources and volume of data will continue to rise, leading to a direction in predicting employee behaviour.
In Grameenphone, we actively use tools that analyze and identify patterns of work-life balance and employee wellbeing. Thanks to these intuitive analytics we can now encourage our employees who need it most to avail executive health check-up.
The purpose of Digital HR is to nourish and nurture what Price Waterhouse and Coopers terms “Digital IQ” -- the measurement of an organization’s abilities to harness and profit from technology.
In Bangladesh, every company in every industry needs to invest and create strategies to increase their Digital IQ; if they do not, the competition will soon surpass them.
We need to ensure policies, processes, and practices that satisfy tech savvy millennials are in place or risk having a disengaged workforce.
A critical first step in raising Digital IQ is to align business strategy with the digital strategy. Leaders must think critically about how their digital initiatives affect employee experience.
By prioritizing the user experience, digital initiatives can increase revenue growth and profit margins as well. Research shows, organizations that embrace policies and practices to improve their Digital IQ are also the top financial performers.
To sustain this transformation, organizations now need to build a new breed of more agile, “digital-ready” leaders. There is neither exception nor any alternative to this.
Quazi Mohammad Shahed is CHRO, Grameenphone Ltd.
Thursday, March 27, 2025
