With the rapid growth of technology and innovation, transformation towards a tech-centric workplace has increased. Due to technology, today, we can quickly access real-time information from multiple systems. Human resource management, an integral part of all organizations, is also shifting from transactional to transformational HR to use smart solutions to deliver the best employee experience. HR professionals are the responsible identity that conducts all the employees’ processes from hiring to offboarding. IoT is one of the top-ranking technologies that the majority of the HR teams are leveraging to better concern employees’ health, productivity, comfort, safety, and engagement with their workplace.
Gartner also reviewed that nearly 61% of the companies showcase a high level of IoT maturity to get the advantage of an appreciating rate of success. As employees are the true asset and major identities that support getting ahead in the competition, HR must pay adequate attention to them. For HR staff, the utilization of IoT technology will generate a revolutionary impact on their overall workforce management.
Want to undergo an in-depth analysis of IoT usability for the HR department? Then, within the next few minutes, you can get the information for the same by reading this article.
A Brief On Internet of Things
The Internet of Things, colloquially called IoT, is a network for connecting devices, sensors, and machines via the internet to automatically conduct data exchange processes.
A typical building block of IoT is presented in the image below to get a simplified view of this technology’s working-
As the shift towards tech-centric humans is increasing where watches do more than just show timings or bring intelligence to the home automation, IoT is there, making everything possible.
But how does it do so?
In IoT, each aspect is identified uniquely with the help of its embedded system, which is further capable of inter-operate with the existing internet infrastructure. Due to such connectivity, objects can easily collect and exchange data.
Thus in business as well, IoT is taking the ‘center stage’ that enables companies to administer their workplace effectively. This enables HRM to undertake their daily operations on a web-enabled platform. Due to such a transformation, updated terms related to HR functions came into the picture. They are e-recruitment, e-payroll, e-learning, e-performance management, etc. That’s why altogether, you can now call HRM by its updated name e-HRM, as all the tasks are managed using the power of the internet.
What Is The Necessity Of IoT In Handling HR-related Tasks?
Many of us might ponder this question. Then let’s understand this concept better here. HR managers used more physical approaches to track employees’ work, attendance, payroll, recruitment, etc. However, factoHR’s cloud computing transforms all the manual HR processes on automated platforms to make workforce management more effective.
With the adoption of such tools, the HR department got huge relief in handling all the daily operations. But the transformation does not end yet. And IoT is working as a polishing technology that focuses more on understanding employees’ behaviors and work experience with the organization. Thus, how will it remain to have such an in-depth analysis of your precious asset (workforce)? Surely it will benefit your organization in many ways. Catch a glimpse of the same in the further point.
Influence of IoT on Human Resource Management
Implementation of IoT in HRM has got much relevance as companies can painlessly handle Flexi-timings, remote working, continuous productivity tracking, etc., for the betterment of their employees.
The wonders of IoT do not yet end here as in other several areas it is useful as well. Some of them are mentioned below-
Automates Payroll Management
HR personnel need a massive set of data for accurately calculating and processing employees’ salaries. It includes attendance, absenteeism, performance, and many more aspects to process their salaries rightly. For conducting this process using IoT, RFID tags and sensors remain helpful.
By attaching sensors to employees’ ID cards and RFID tags embedded with their information, you can rightly determine the total working hours of the workforce. To precisely record the total timing, you can put sensors at low frequency, which get activated only when the employees go closer to the systems they used to undertake their tasks.
Here, the sensor goes in deactivated mode as employees leave their place. This exact time tracking practice helps HR professionals to know the precise working hours of their employees. Such an application is well-worth for back-office jobs as the employee’s work is mostly attached to their desks.
Betters The Recruitment Process
Recruiting the most suitable candidate is a vital domain for every HR department. In this tech-savvy generation, candidates preferably use mobile technology for job search to get information about presently available vacancies. HR can take advantage of networking sites like Linked In, Indeed, etc., to quickly share details right from their smart devices and identify suitable candidates. This helps to upscale the overall efficiency and diversity to conduct the hiring process by making the application open for all the candidates.
Further, IoT can also make the interview process attrition-free. How? Let’s take an example of augmented reality (AR), using which you can design a virtual scenario and ask candidates to give their responses for it. Using wearable devices, you can rightly track their response and map their suitability in the role you are offering. This betters the selection process and makes the workplace free from any discrimination by truly supporting the candidate’s skills and expertise for the job.
Enables Improvement in Employee’s Health And Safety Concerns
The wellbeing of the employees is a crucial concern for all organizations as the more the employees remain healthy, the more they tend to become productive. IoT can greatly help to ensure that the employees are safe and healthy enough to conduct their tasks.
By allocating wearable devices to the workers, HR can get data related to their food intake, walking distance, etc., fitness aspects. Due to such a connected environment, HR professionals can actively track and monitor workers’ health and figure out the issues that are causing health problems in the workplace.
Furthermore, for employee safety measures, IoT can track machinery, gas connections, and other equipment to notify early about the occurrence of any accidental incidents. Due to such a vast set of usability, IoT is accelerating its market, as shown in the figure below-
Measures Employee’s Productivity
How will you determine that the employees are rightly performing their tasks? You cannot be all-time available to keep an eye on their work. IoT is here to help you out as companies found about a 54% increase in their employee’s productivity using this technology. You can also do the same using eye-tracking technology. Here sensors are used to detect the eye movement of the employees. This helps to get information about distractions they face due to noises or feeling asleep during certain hours, say after lunchtime.
All these data will bring HR’s attention to such cases and help to bring solutions for them. As mentioned above about employees asleep, HR managers can organize break sessions or time management sessions to bring back the activeness of the workers to perform their job.
Moreover, as per employees’ productive nature with respect to a certain set of tasks, HR can provide further career guidance to them. Say, an employee working in a particular department often is a better fit for another department. In this case, the HR personnel can identify the same and share the details with the managers using this tech-centric culture.
Brings More Comfort For The Employees
Comfort is one of the important aspects that impact employees’ satisfaction and engagement with their workplace. When the employees’ working area is comfortable enough and gives positive vibes, they tend to improve their performance and productivity rates.
Let’s take an example where the organization allows open-sitting arrangements to let the workforce sit at their desired place and perform their job. This benefits them by increasing motivation, energy levels, collaboration, and reducing clutters to work in a distraction-free culture. To ensure that they can rightly take advantage of such working arrangements and do not suffer in finding a vacant seat, IoT brings some solutions. By attaching a beacon to the work desk and connecting a display, HR can show the real-time seat availability to the employees.
Another key aspect that impacts employees’ comfort in their workplace is their mental wellness. With the amalgamation of IoT with artificial intelligence, you can track illness patterns of employees. By capturing employees’ images during their work and by using computer vision, you can get details about their mental depression. If the system finds that the worker is having such an issue, then by generating and sending signals to the IoT tools, the HR professional can get an alert for the same. This helps HR to draw attention to such cases early and solve the same to improve workforce comfort.
Final Thoughts
IoT is undoubtedly a catalyst that improves HRM for upgrading employee experience by understanding all their concerns. This technology has got enough potential to generate an unprecedented amount of data related to all the employees and their activities. With such a huge impact, companies should remain prepared to adopt such technologies to generate a productive managerial atmosphere and make the workforce more efficient.
