ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & ANALYTICS IN HR – POST COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted each of us lives. The businesses have been impacted badly and most of the world economies have gone down and are unable to handle the pandemic situation, though after the invention of Covid-19 vaccine the situation is expected to become little better and stabilized however, the economies will still take time to bounce back.

Though, technology wise this pandemic has been a “blessing in disguise” for businesses where organizations have been successful in doing the technology automation and employee’s habit to work purely on applications and technology which they had been struggling to do for years.

As we know, a firm is divided into 3 levels i.e. top level – strategical level where organisation level long term strategies are built and finalized in discussion with managerial level; middle level – Managerial level which is responsible for building and implementing the short term strategies I.e. budget for the year; bottom level – Operational Level which is responsible for day to day activities, analysis of data on a regular interval to make business decisions at all 3 levels plays a vital role for each organization in order to draw a business continuity plan.

Here comes the role of HR, where in order to maintain business continuity from a workforce management perspective HR Vertical plays a very vital role. There is a high need for the organization to track and measure manpower utilization viz-a-viz productivity and the prime job of the HR vertical will be to pro-actively analyse “What can go wrong in the employee’s space to reduce the impact on the business?”.

It is important to understand that HR analytics doesn’t only mean creating pivot tables, charts and dashboards but is to draw relevant inference and analysis from the thus created pivot tables, charts and dashboards to take right business decisions well in time or rather pro-actively.

For maintaining the business continuity in this new normal time, the HR vertical is now expected to provide a successful “Crisis Response Strategy” using various HR metrics to the business for which it is important for HR to track employee data in following five broad areas:

• Employee Cost & Productivity
• Span of Control
• Resource Management
• Employee Wellness & Employee Connect
• Talent development & Skill Enhancement Opportunities

To conclude, the business’s expectations from HR has changed where analytics and use of technology is the catalyst in enhancing the HR productivity in this paradigm shift.

By Pradeep Verma ( Assistant Professor)

Area Head – IT & Business Analytics