Information technology (IT) has immensely improved over the past decades. Now, it’s used by businesses and organizations to achieve goals and optimize work operations. In human resource management, managers use IT to improve their company’s recruitment, training, and development processes. This article explores the many different ways information technology is helping HR functions. 

What is Information Technology (IT)?

Information technology refers to the use of any form of technology (e.g., computers, storage, networks) to create, process, and store electronic information. IT is often used in the context of business; however, you can also see it used in healthcare, education, finance, security, governance, and entertainment. 

Ways Information Technology is Helping HR Functions

Information technology makes an HR manager’s job easier. It makes it simpler to track employee performance and information. Additionally, it offers managers valuable data that they can use to make better employee-related decisions down the road. 

Here are a few more examples of ways IT can improve HR functions: 

Enhance Employee Management

HR is responsible for helping employees achieve their full potential at work by providing them with training and other career development opportunities. Not only does this increase employee retention and satisfaction but it also ensures the company has competent employees to carry out daily operations. 

IT can provide managers with a more standardized and organized way to monitor employee performance. This makes it easier to improve training programs wherever it’s necessary. Additionally, it allows managers to create more effective performance reviews and have greater accessibility to employees and vice versa. 

Get Better Recruits

Recruiting new employees can be time-consuming and costly. Fortunately, information technology can help managers create a smarter recruitment process. For instance, artificial intelligence such as resume screeners can distinguish promising candidates from unqualified applicants. This makes it easier for managers to choose which candidates should move forward for interviews. 

Improve Employee Offboarding

A manager’s relationship with their employees is important. Besides ensuring the company has a seamless onboarding process, its employee offboarding should be just as smooth. 

The offboarding process can be puzzling to both the employee and their manager. Together, they must navigate the puzzling maze of payroll, return important company equipment, and deactivate security passwords. 

Manually going through all these steps leaves too much room for errors and miscommunications to occur. With information technology, managers and their teams can ensure a respectful and precise offboarding process for the employee. 

By outsourcing tedious offboarding tasks to IT, managers are free to focus on the more important aspects of offboarding. They can walk the departing employee through each transition step and offer support throughout. 

Increase Worker Productivity

It’s the HR department’s responsibility to ensure important information is accessible to the appropriate employees. Doing so fosters a trusting relationship between the organization and its workers — an important element for optimum worker productivity. 

Storing company information in a cloud-based system is one way you can improve accessibility and security for your employees. This makes data available to anyone who has the appropriate permissions and limits outsider access to sensitive company documents. 

Optimize Worker Scheduling

Overlapping worker schedules is not an uncommon issue for HR managers. Nevertheless, it can still wreak havoc on the company and reduce overall productivity. The right information technology can help HR managers monitor employee availability efficiently. 

Managers can use scheduling software to allow employees to input their availability. This gives your employees more flexibility and the opportunity to achieve a better work-life balance. Taking this simple step, HR managers may notice positive changes in employee attendance, including check-ins, absents, and tardiness. 

Encourage Inclusion and Diversity

Consumers today are more drawn to companies that value diversity and inclusion. A profitable and successful business knows that actively solving diversity issues is key to a blossoming trade. By leveraging workforce analytics, HR managers can tackle inclusion and diversity problems head-on. 

For instance, using information analytics, HR managers can review discrepancies and pay gaps between workers. The company can then adjust its compensation models and provide employees with equal and fair salaries. 

Grants HR More Flexibility to Strategize

An HR professional tackles more than simple administrative tasks like plotting employee schedules and monitoring performance. They’re also responsible for training, overseeing, and developing worker skills — ensuring company goals are met in a timely manner. With the help of information technology, HR personnel can find more flexibility to strategize ways to support overall employee and company growth. 

Final Thoughts

Information technology has forever changed the way businesses operate and strategize. It has helped organizations create a more centralized business structure, increasing accessibility, productivity, and quality of communication. Furthermore, it has strengthened many employer-employee relationships. 

To avoid getting left behind, a company must learn to integrate information technology into its systems. Above are just a few examples of how you can use IT to improve HR functions in your company. Take some time to read over each suggestion and apply it where you see fit.

Arleen Atienza