The Need for Innovation Within Enterprise HR

Enterprises looking to retain market share often disregard the power behind their position – their employees. Prior to joining a company, the primary point of contact a potential employee has with the enterprise is through the HR department, and while working for a company, problems and concerns will usually flow through the HR gates, making them pivotal in all aspects concerning recruitment and retention of employees.

Despite their importance, HR departments often see little innovation coming their way and the stereotypical image of an HR department full of printed resumes, the sound of a fax machine and dozens of folders may hold true in some places. Luckily for those HR departments, more and more enterprises are realizing the value in integrating innovation everywhere – especially HR, and many solutions are starting to pop up filling the missing gap between the HR need and the enterprise’s capabilities.

So why do enterprises need innovation in HR and what innovations are already available? Read below to find out!

Speed Up the Recruitment Process

When thinking about the tasks of HR departments, one often thinks about recruitment of new employees – and rightfully so. Enterprise HR departments spend a great deal of time finding the right employees for the right department in order to ensure the company operations continue to run in a seamless manner.  

Traditional recruitment processes can be lengthy and costly and may not come up with the most optimal employee for the company culture. Fortunately for enterprises, today there are many solutions that can be integrated into an existing enterprises ecosystem that digitizes and improves the recruitment process. The easiest way for enterprises to source quality employees is by utilizing their existing infrastructure – and in today’s world, that means trusting their employees to know who may be a good fit and using social recruitment tools.  Comeet, a collaborative hiring platform, most recently raised $1.2 million in seed investment and aims to integrate collaborative workflow tools to help high growth companies improve recruitment,  and Israeli based Tomigo created a social recruiting platform that is already used by companies such as Loreal, Viber, Autodesk and more. One company, Woo, wants to further transform the recruitment process by turning it into a blind one where candidates are assessed solely on their skills (this idea already got $4.35 million)

Reduce Turnover and Retain Knowledge

Once the recruitment process is complete and a new employee joins an enterprise, the job of HR is not done. Today, more and more companies recognize the importance of creating a positive workplace environment in order to retain employees, and much of that responsibility falls on the hands of the HR department.

When employee turnover is high, not only may an enterprise suffer from a negative brand image and loss of potential employees who may be deterred by a high turnover rate, but they also lose money and knowledge. Whether formal or through on the job experience, employee training costs companies money, and the more times they have to train someone, the more money is wasted. By integrating innovation in HR, enterprises will be able to reduce employee turnover as well as wasted money, however that is not the only reason enterprises should look into innovation in HR. By reducing employee turnover and integrating technology in the workplace, companies can improve their information retention. Tools such as Facebook for Workplace and Slack have the power to improve the work environment and communication between employees and departments while simultaneously documenting information that may have been lost to an enterprise otherwise.

Stay Ahead

Ultimately, enterprises considering whether they should invest in innovation in HR need to realize that without complete digitalization and modernization across all departments, they will always have blind spots and when an enterprise lacks innovation in even one department, it can impact their entire operational structure by creating isolation between departments.

With so many available solutions and the simplicity of running a PoC to find a customized one, investment in HR should be a given for enterprises of all sizes and in all industries.