The COVID-19 pandemic has brought in great uncertainty across industries, including the HR fraternity.
A recent survey has revealed dramatic shifts in the job market. India’s hiring rate has grown to 43% in October 2021, a lot more than in the pre-pandemic era. ( Source: ET) The overall hiring graph is moving upwards across the nation and across all top industries. To attract talent, and retain it is an uphill task for HR teams. Only by adopting the latest technology, and people practices can an organization survive the war for talent that brews outside. This will eventually force HR stakeholders to act agile and improve their efficiency using AI and automation in this candidate’s market.
Here are the top trends that can help HR teams to stay relevant.
Incorporate DEI&B (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging) into Hiring
With a short supply of qualified talent, candidates are enjoying the power to choose employers based on who best meets their needs and aligns with their values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So, there will be a pressing need to encourage a culturally dynamic workplace for all.
In the hybrid era of work, geography and physical distance are no more barriers to reaching qualified and diverse talent. We had witnessed massive exits during the pandemic.This primarily happened because organisational culture was not built to bring teams together in such an extreme event.
According to a study, 83% of executives think that diverse workforce taps into a diverse client base and innovation, and organisations with diverse boards have 95% higher returns on equity. To keep organisational biases under check, it’s inevitable to bring informed AI into action. In a candidate-friendly environment, diversity and inclusion values must be incorporated as a part of the organizational culture core. So the focus must be on adopting data led, new-generation technology to build a blueprint of how a diverse workforce must look like.This means that companies must invest more time in cohesive diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategies.
Here, a combination of human and artificial intelligence has come up as the best strategy ahead. AI-powered systems must be customized to reach out to a more diverse pool of candidates, screen their resumes faster, verify against parameters of their diversity marker, and onboard them within the organizational culture.
Read more: How to use data and artificial intelligence for diversity and inclusion in hiring and onboarding
Optimize ‘Digital Onboarding’ with end-to-end automation
Covid 19 cases may have declined, but the after-effects are long-lasting. With work from home being the main highlight of the HR policy 2021, dependency on digital background verification is only going to increase. When facing fierce competition, using tech-enabled HR and recruitment platforms enhances employee experience. For example, Digital KYC by AuthBridge digitizes customer onboarding journeys end-to-end with liveness detection, OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and geotagging capabilities, adding speed, scale, and security to the customer onboarding process, irrespective of their geographical location. Additionally, SignDrive,an automated, cloud-based digital signing platform lets you upload, sign, submit and manage documents on a single platform. So, both HRs and candidates enjoy the flexibility and ease of sharing their personal and professional documents online.
Improve HR Efficiency with AI & ML
Every day, HR teams are dealing with newer challenges. They are trying to adapt to tech changes in the market to stay relevant and responsive. The inclusion of automation and technology into hiring processes not only improves efficiency but enables HR stakeholders to take on more strategic roles. Verifying and onboarding talent, instantly, efficiently, and securely using digital platforms with little manual intervention is the key. The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning can ease employee onboarding journeys and attract the right candidate. To give an example, AuthBridge deploys a powerful AI engine to add speed, efficiency, and safety to its onboarding and verification processes. The real-time data extraction technology enables employees with auto-fill forms that extract name, address, and other data fields from NIDs like PAN card, driving license, Aadhaar card, etc. AI led image recognition technology is built with face match algorithms to instantly verify ID cards like Aadhaar, PAN, etc. protecting against impersonation.
This enables instant data sourcing and processing to provide prompt verification results and a better candidate experience. Recruiters should also explore automated texting and interactive chatbots to provide multiple candidate touchpoints during the onboarding process.
Adopt ‘Skill’ based Hiring Practices
Because of the pandemic, businesses started moving towards gig hiring, especially after massive downturns and layoffs. The gig economy brought in up to 56% of new employment. (Source:FinancialExpress) We foresee a lot of work being done project-wise, tapping into the global talent pool. So, this segment is likely to contribute significantly to India’s GDP, going forward. Ecosystem enablers like AuthBridge have played a big part in empowering the gig economy to grow to its full potential by providing customisable, tech-enabled solutions for instant and end-to-end verification and onboarding of the gig workforce. Background checks like ID verification, criminal checks have been further digitised with the help of facial recognition and live detection capabilities for real time results. Also, database-driven, real-time checks for validating education, work license and certifications prevent fraudsters from being onboarded in this fast-paced economy.
The move towards need and skill-based hiring will empower domain experts to take up short-term projects in line with their existing work. This trend is only expected to rise in 2022.
The future of HR is fast-evolving. Understanding the trends will prepare organizations to take challenges head-on, hire the best talent, and stay on top of the game in 2022
