Its official, 2018 is half over! What trends are in-play and continue to gain momentum for the second half of the year? Let me put you in my driver’s seat.
As a Regional Sales Manager, I get the great opportunity to visit customers and prospective customers and witness first-hand what HCM technologies are being used to address challenges and to improve efficiencies in their enterprises.
The following are the Key HCM Trends I have been watching in 2018:
- People Analytics
It’s huge. People Analytics continues its growth in 2018. The PDS Vista solution has been designed naturally to support employees like any good HCM solution; however, it is truly a “people database”. In addition to tracking employees, the solution tracks dependents, contractors, volunteers, temps, interns, freelancers, partners, and membership/affiliates as well. Traditional HCMs need to move beyond the employee record and embrace the data demands of all people which touch your enterprise.
Vista’s Analytic tool can be used to measure any data stored in the database, but also organize it on real-time dashboards to the appropriate levels of the organization at the appropriate time.
For human resources professionals, the goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.
- Searching Candidates Passively
In April 2018, the unemployment rate edged down to 3.9 percent, following 6 months at 4.1 percent. Translation? Less people in the workforce looking for jobs. Yeah!
So, finding the right candidate for your specific opening just got harder.
Passive candidates are those individuals not actively looking for new jobs. They’ve been a part of the talent pool for years. Most companies come into contact with passive candidates through headhunters. But not anymore. In some ways, human resources professionals are moving away from sifting through resumes. Now, they’re turning to other potential pools of passive candidates, primarily social media.
HR professionals are actively identifying candidates via social media venues who demonstrate unique attributes for specific roles; they can start communicating with these candidates through these social media venues and even give them links to their career sites and allow for easy to capture profile gathering to begin their interest in your company.
Vista Recruiting is expanding our design to accommodate for more social and board integration. This will make it easier to capture these untapped candidates.
- The “Employee Experience”
More companies want employees to be more involved with their company on every level. That said, the desire for engagement has surpassed the simple ideas of filling out a survey, which is still popular, by the way. With more millennials employees in the workforce, a big emphasis has been on performance and culture. Companies will need to focus on creating a whole new environment by creating my opportunities (experiences), like creating “teams” around projects (example: Evaluation Team for a new HCM), committees (example: Social Team), special interest groups (example: volunteerism promoters), or using teams for more structured grouping (Compensation/Budget Team, Executive Team, etc.) are all designed to engage employees in collaboration and communication across the enterprise to various functional roles and department/divisions in a fun and secure accountable way.
In Vista 7, different levels of security access for structures (based on membership) opens up the system in a way that allows users to experience more of the benefits of Vista. Vista determines membership to these structures (i.e., organizations, locations, and teams) through a series of secured views that evaluate employee records, roles, and manager tables. Using views eliminates the need to rebuild security when changes are made.
More HCMs have or will be expanding their communication features so that the employee’s experience isn’t pulled to other tools like Slack to collaborate.
- Advanced Onboarding
As more employees are being responsible to provide compliance-driven data in a timely matter, that experience of collecting the information, identifying that it came from you, processing & storing for compliance reporting, and providing the audit-readiness necessary is critical.
By way of example, in onboarding a new employee, more companies are leaning on automation to complete the I-9 form.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has nearly doubled the fines for I-9 violations. I-9 paperwork fines alone have increased by 96% with fines ranging from $216 to $2,156 per violation. Whether it’s a missing signature or providing an expired document, it adds up quickly for a company with high turnover.
The PDS Vista solution offers the means to onboard and provision employees as they prepare to start their new role at your company; however, more advanced services such as electronic smart I-9 and e-Verify are offered through our integration with partner EMPTrust HR (www.emptrust.com).
Advanced onboarding services through EMPTrust HR ensures that you stay in compliance with the I-9 verification requirements. They also assist employers in conducting regular self-audits to mitigate possible fines.
- Old Concept Gaining Momentum: Being Paperless but Compliant
Being more “digital” is replacing “paperless”.
Onboarding compliance demands and working remotely are a few examples why more and more companies are going digital. Electronic signature and document management are critical in the fast world we live in today. The high-touch world of day-to-day apps and websites has been the training ground for the consumerization of HCM solutions.
Our certified integration with Adobe Sign provides the ability to add electronic signature fields to any PDF in Vista 7. The seamless integration provides document verification and audit trails from within Vista.
Your system comes already loaded with the majority of the configuration data required to enable the Adobe Sign integration, but there are a few manual configuration steps required before enabling Adobe Sign for the first time.
Purposefully, this integration into Vista was designed so that users won’t need to leave the system in order to perform the signing of documents, allowing for a seamless experience for the user. This functionality has currently been integrated into the W-4 Self-Sign and Benefits Statement Report in Vista, and we plan to expand this integration to other pages in future.
In conclusion, if these trends are on your roadmap, feel free to call on a PDS representative or ask someone in support for additional information and guidance around Vista 7.
Safety tip: Always wear you seat belt!
Daniel J. Price
Regional Sales Manager
dprice@pdssoftware.com
610.238.4576 (w) | 610.304.7524 (c)