Disruption or Opportunities
Today, the role of TS professionals is getting more complex. Thankfully, there are an abundance of HRTech (and LearnTech) available to support their work, eradicate mundane tasks, and enhance their productivity. Recognising the opportunity to support TS roles, the HRTech market has grown in investment over the last 5 years and offers a comprehensive range of solutions to address the various HR functions, covering full spectrum of HR value chain from plan, attract, onboard, engage and develop. As reported by the Straits Times, tasks that were traditionally administrative and manual can now be carried out by RPA, automation and adoption of HRTech. Technology can alleviate the unproductive time spent on manual tasks, such as collating submitted claims which can now be replaced by online self-serve, and generate workforce reports that can now be auto-created on demand. Service providers are also offering to take over lower value-add administrative work, such as recruitment pre-screening, onboarding, and salary and compensation payment.
At the same time, fulfilling talent and skills needs have become a strategic and core role. TS professionals need to create the employer branding that will appeal to the right talents and an experience that will sustain the talents. They need to figure out where and how best to reach out to the sought-after talents, even venturing into unfamiliar talent pools. They need to manage the impact of business transformation on the employees and influence them to come onboard. They need to avail upskilling and reskilling opportunities to the employees. In economies like Singapore where the population is ageing, TS professionals are also expected to drive job re-design projects, so that businesses continue to retain their core talents and reap the aged demographic premium.
With such tall orders, it is high time that TS professionals assess what can be automated, self-served and/or engage a 3rd party service provider who is more efficient in fulfilling some of these tasks. This will then free up TS professionals to perform higher value work such as to analyse and synthesise information into useful insights to justify workforce development plans, backed by data-driven evidence. TS professionals will assume the role of credible partners to the business units to deliver the larger talent and skills capabilities agenda.