Nurturing and facilitating the whole employee life cycle through digital upskilling
Businesses must digitally transform their HR functions and focus on creating a human digital experience to ensure a fluent digital transformation of their business, according to PwC Thailand.
Meanwhile, the HR team can drive the transformation by reforming its strategic role in nurturing a digital culture workplace and leading the way to upskilling employees.Jirapol Tangtatswas, PwC Thailand's Consulting Partner, said Thai businesses need to accelerate the transformation of their human resource management to digital (Digital HR Transformation) by implementing technology to increase work productivity while covering the whole life cycle of an employee from recruitment and onboarding to performance evaluation and retirement.
"Most companies in Thailand have implemented the human resource information system, a software commonly known as 'HRIS', but it doesn't cover all aspects of HR functionality and the employee life cycle.
"Some businesses only use HRIS to store employee data and calculate payroll. On the employee side, they are still not trained or skilled enough in the new way of working, which demands a digital mindset," Jirapol said.
Digital HR plays a pivotal role in helping businesses to have a better and more transparent employee management process since there is reliable data to support decision-making by executives.
At the same time, digital HR encourages greater employee engagement, whereby the employee can benefit from access to employee self-service functions in real-time.
A recent report, 'Digital HR Transformation Survey 2022: Southeast Asia' by PwC, which surveyed 67 HR leaders from five countries across Southeast Asia including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand, found that 79% of respondents have seen digital transformation in their organisation accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, only 25% indicated that their digital HR transformation agenda is clearly defined across organisations.
Major obstacles to digital transformationJirapol said there are three important factors for successful digital transformation: people, process and technology. However, business leaders tend to focus on technology and process, leaving the people factor forgotten or de-prioritised.
"There are business executives who expect that the invested technology will be able to transform the organisation to digital by default.
"But they simply forgot another important element - the employee, who also needs to understand the purpose of digital transformation and be assessed to determine their digital skill gap, so the business can make plans to develop their digital skills.
"Furthermore, many businesses still haven't added a digital agenda to their corporate culture, resulting in many of their workforces being afraid of using technology," Jirapol added.
This is in line with PwC's report, wherein 37% of HR leaders say a lack of digital skills and the fear of not acquiring them is one of the main obstacles to digital organisational transformation. More than half (57%) of senior management and leadership also expect HR to be responsible for upskilling the digital capabilities of its employees.
"HR plays an important role in reducing the digital skill gap of employees. They must design a performance evaluation plan and training sessions suitable for various skill gaps and time frames," Jirapol said.
"This will require adjusting their work to act as a change agent by focussing on communicating the goals of their projects, which includes skill development activities and recognising employees' success as part of overall organisational changes. Altogether, this will help cultivate a digital culture in the business," he said.
Expectations from HRJirapol said that senior executives and business owners expect the HR team to actively engage in their operations, helping the business achieve goals, both at the organisational and department levels, it must act as a strategic partner.
The ability to report HR insight, ensure employees have the right competencies and workforce planning are tasks that will be challenging for the HR team, he said.
"If the HR team cannot achieve its goal as a strategic partner, it may delay the business's digital transformation journey. This will impact the business's confidence and weaken its capabilities to compete with its competitors," Jirapol said.
According to the PwC report, 96% of HR leaders agreed that the role of HR is changing, away from being just a service provider to focus on being an employee experience designer, change agent and talent developer.
As for businesses that desire to change their HR functions to digital, Jirapol advises they take three essential steps.