Chapter I

Introduction:
1.1 Title of the study
1.2 Why this topic was chosen?
Digital technology is continuing to evolve at breakneck speed, and it permeates nearly
every aspect of our working lives. In the coming years, digital will empower people to
take significantly more responsibility for talent management and HR activities. As
digital enables talent management to become less of a centralized HR activity and
more of an activity that is embedded in the fabric of everyday business, it will
fundamentally change HR as we know it.

To investigate the trends and challenges faced by todays HR executives and their
teams. The findings in this report suggest that HR organizations are slowly beginning
to use digital tools within Talent Management and for increasing knowledge sharing
within their organizations. Further, the HR function appears to be struggling with
service delivery in terms of clear roles and responsibilities both internally in the HR
function but also in the interface with the business. Finally, the report highlights the
perceived insufficiency of HR IT systems.

1.3 Objective
The primary objective of the HR research initiative is to develop insights that can be
useful to both HR and business executives as they seek to maximize the role of HR as
a critical function within the organization. To explore how current business trends
might reshape the nature of the functionin terms of HRs mission and mandate, the
key activities HR performs, the skill set necessary for HR professionals, the metrics
on which to evaluate HRs performance, and the organization and governance models
and roles that will most effectively help HR maximize its value to the business. We
also are examining current best practices in HR, as well as some of the obstacles HR
are facing and how those obstacles can be overcome in the future

Low utilization of digital tools in Talent Management

Recruiting, retaining and developing people remains a top focus area for HR across
industries. Succeeding in recruiting and retaining talent rests on the ability to
understand what engages employees and providing opportunities that drive their
development. Few organizations have established best in class digital processes to
interact with current and potential employees in order to strengthen the employer
brand or utilize digital tools in the Learning and Development process, where
organizations are heavily relying on face-to-face classroom training and webinars.
Connecting the workforce
While recognizing the benefits of connected organizations, HR executives experience
challenges in transforming the company culture to promote collaboration and idea
generation through digital tools. A low understanding in the business of the
possibilities and benefits is seen as a major obstacle combined with the lack of
processes needed to fully leverage the capacity of web. A traditional method of idea
generation, predominantly using an assigned development team, is the norm.

HRs roles and responsibilities

With transformation activities are on the increase in organizations, understanding of
the people agenda renders HR a critical role as a true Business Partner in
transformations. However, HRs ability to provide support is highly dependent on the
sponsorship of top management. For service delivery, HR executives are continuously
working with the clarification of roles and responsibilities within the HR function as
well as between HR and the business.
Underperforming HR IT systems
There is a view that HR IT system solutions do not deliver sufficiently in around 50%
of the cases. Close to 50% of the participating organisations in the study stated that
they are currently considering changing some, or all, of their HR systems. There is
also a lack of sufficiently integrated features for HR to interact with employees and
enhance the employee experience using web 2.0 and digital tools.

.4

Type of Research and formulation of Research Hypothesis

1.4 Duration of the study and Methodology used

HRM in digital age is a exploratory study & main purpose of the study is to identify
the influence of the technology on the various HR function & understand the
changing trends in HR with respect to technology in different organization.
The data have been collected from Primary source . Case study research method is
used in this paper,Multiple case have been used to show the literal replication of the
various technologies available in the market & used in the different organization. The
main reason behind using research method was to bring in the detail description of the
HR technology used by different organizations, research is one method that excels at
bringing us to an understanding of a complex issue and can add strength to what is
already known through previous research. research emphasizes detailed contextual
analysis of a limited number of events or conditions and their relationships. In this
project also it has helped to identify the actual technology used by HR professionals
in public & private sectors.
1.6

Scope of Study

Organizational culture is considered the main obstacle to digitalization.

The lack of support from the organizational culture is stated as the top reason for why
companies are not using digital media or web tools. As a consequence, almost 50% of
the organizations acknowledge the culture
Aspect as an area to work on in order to increase workforce connectivity, closely
followed by increased understanding in the business of the possibilities and benefits
that such connectivity can generate another reason given for the non-use of web tools
is simply that the organizations do not have access to them.

1.7

Relevance to industry

Impact on the Business

As we have discussed in the context of each of the five IT developments, digital
advances will have significant implications on employees, managers, and leaders
alike. The most important implications include:
Talent management will become an everyday activity for each employee and
manager.
The locus of information and decision making will shift to employeesand
away from a central group like HR or a small group of top leaders.
Digital will knock down silos and blur boundariesbetween HR and business
lines, between consumer applications and enterprise applications, between layers in
the organizational hierarchy, between business processes and HR processes, and
between work and personal life.
Talent management processes will better serve the businessbecause theyre
customized to an organizations changing needs and to the employees that work to
make the business a success, and are able to more flexibly adapt to changing business
conditions.
Talent practices will become more integral to the businesss strategic capability
because they are data-driven and because talent data is better integrated with an
organizations business data.
Impact on HR
As digital infuses nearly every aspect of talent management and work itself, it will
transform how HR organizations operate and how they serve the business. It will
impact HR in the following ways:
Structure and size of the HR function. The HR function may become smaller as
digital more efficiently enables transactional processes and as line managers and
employees adopt consumer-like applications to handle HR processes themselves.
What remains in HR may become more project-oriented and aimed at improving
organizational effectivenesssuch as helping to integrate a new acquisition. In
addition, new organizational structures may arise to help HR professionals collaborate
closely with the business and other functions such as IT.

 Core activities of the HR function. HR may start acting like a marketing

organization, by analysing employee data to mine it for insights; creating customized
talent offerings; and marketing, branding and educating employees about talent and
HR processes. Already, in some leading companies, HR analytics groups have been
established whose mission is to analyse data to determine drivers of workforce
performance. HR professionals will also likely take on more of a coaching role,
helping to design cultures, incentives and educational programs to support employees
as they engage in IT-enabled talent processes.
HR information management and technology roles. As the line continues to blur
between internal and external applications, the role of HR information management
and technology professionals could change. Instead of implementing internal
applications, information technologists specializing in HR and talent management
may be more involved with evaluating external applications and building interfaces
between them and an organizations own data and systems. In addition, new roles
associated with constantly evaluating new cloud-based software and the impact the
software might have on the business may arise. And as software becomes increasingly
user-friendly and intuitive, HR professionals may configure packaged software
instead of IT experts. Eventually, software and the manipulation of data may become
so user-friendly that employees themselves may even be able to manage their own
data, with only limited involvement from the IT or HR function.

1.8

Limitation of Study

Adapting to change:
Technological development is the greatest event in the recent history of mankind.
Nobody is alien to the great change that has occurred in their environment over the
past few years: the way we work, communicate with friends, colleagues and family;
how we buy, read and seek information; how we care for our health; how we have
fun, play, and more. Every area of our lives has undergone interesting developments
and changes through these new technologies and ultimately, the new digital reality.
Adapting to change has never been easy How are you coping? Do you have the
guts to try out each new technology? Are you afraid to change your habits? Are you

one of those who carefully study each new device before adopting it? Everyone
approaches technology from different angles and brings it into their lives at different
paces. But regardless of how we are predisposed to change, it is already inevitable. So
in most cases, it is essential to adapt and rethink our way of doing things, while
accepting our limitations and strengths, yet striving to improve daily.
As HR specialists the challenge is even greater: not only will we have to adapt and
continuously re-adapt to new challenges arising every day, but we must also help our
organizations and their people to do the same as nimbly as possible. We have to take
over the reins of the real revolution rocking the foundation of our organizations
culture, at the same time we must be a stable source of guidance. It becomes quite
apparent that those of us in HR have new responsibilities in this new digital paradigm
shift towards our organizations as well as in shaping labour and educational markets.

1.9

Chapter-wise Summary of the project

Chapter II
Literature Review: About the Core Study
2.1

Basic Concepts and its origin

It has been said that the most important assets of any business walk out the door at the end of
each day (Boxall etal., 2007). Indeed, people and the management of people are increasingly
seen as key elements of competitive advantage (Boxall and Purcell 2003; Pfeffer 1998;
Gratton et al. 2000). Spurred on by increasing competition, fastpaced technological change,
globalization, and other factors, businesses are seeking to understand how one of the last truly
competitive resources, their human resources, can be managed for competitive advantage
(Boxall et al.,2007). Thus, human resource management has grown in its range to the point
where it has become an industry rather than just a simple occupation. According to

Armstrong (2010), the practice of Human Resource Management (HRM) is concerned with
all aspects of how people are employed and managed in organizations. It covers activities
such as: Strategic HRM, Human Capital Management, Knowledge Management,
Organization Development, Resourcing (Human Resource Planning, Recruitment and
Selection, and Talent Management), and Performance Management, Learning and
Development, Reward Management, Employee Relations and Employee Well-Being.
E-HRM / Digital HRM is a way of implementing HR strategies, policies, and practices in
organization through a conscious and direct support of and/or with full use of webtechnology based channels. The e -HRM can range from basic personnel records to
sophisticated networks of sub-systems with definite purposes. Today most of these will be
computer systems. The manpower information system can provide necessary information in a
form which can be integrated with any other business data. With most data base systems,
there are facilities to pull out any of the data and present them in the required form.
In the view of Michael Armstrong (2003) e-HR provides information required to manage HR
processes.These may be core employee database and payroll systems but can be extended to
include such systems as recruitment, elearning, performance management and reward. The
system may be web-based, enabling access to be remote or online and at any time. The
information provided by the e-HR process can communicated across organizations, if it
posts static data such as information on HR policies and communications about employer
facilities such as learning opportunities and flexible benefits. It can include links that enable
managers and other employees to interface directly with HR applications and make changes
or enquiries. It seems that electronic human resource management (E-HRM) is gaining
importance in todays business (Cedar Crestone, 2005) and the use of web-based
technologies

for

HR

practices,

policies

and

processes

is

enhancing

within

organizations.Further, surveys of HR consultants suggest that both the number of

organizations adopting EHRM and the depth of applications within the organizations are
continually increasing (e.g.CedarCrestone, 2005). According to Esen and Erdogmus (2011),
using information and communication technologies in human resource services has
become an important strategy to achieve competitive advantages for organizations. Moreover,
the literature on EHRM suggests that, overall, the three goals of e-HRM are cost reduction,
improving HR services, and improving strategic orientation (Brockbank, 1997; Lepak and
Snell, 1998; Stanton and Coovert, 2004). E-HRM is a way of implementing HR strategies,
policies, and practices in organizations with the full use of webtechnology-

based channels. Thus, E-HRM is the application of information technology for performing
HR activities.Utilizing information technology highlights two aspect of E-HRM; first,
technology integrates and connects people who can be in one room of the organization or in
different countries. Second, information technology supports HR managers by fulfill their
activities (this task fulfillment can be both partially or completely according to
organizations strategy and purpose). Similarly, Voermans and vanVeldhoven (2007) defined
E-HRM as the administrative support of the HR function in organizations by using internet
technology. As Zafar (2009) stated, the rise of the knowledge economy is accompanied by a
transformation of the bureaucratic organization into one of the networked types. This
transformation also becomes visible in the relationship between the individual employees and
the organization. To sum up, the chosen statement by Ulrich (1997) tries to show that the ecomponent adds a new dimension that rocks the HR boat. In other words, E-HRM forces
traditional HR professionals to rethink and redefine policies and practices and, indeed, their
own profession (Zafar, 2009).

2.2

Theoretical analysis of the topic

With the increased need for IT in HR and an urgent need to reduce costs in organizations, one
may be tempted to wonder about the possibility of replacing a few, some, or all of the
traditional HR activities through wider use of IT and automation. Although this thought might
be entertained by a few, by no means does collaboration mean replacement. There is clearly
an urgent need for intense collaboration between HR and IT especially given the
significant investments placed separately in labor cost and IT. Companies in India have been
trying to convert their HR services into an array of e-HR functions. On the one hand,
some of them have all their HR functions online through the intranet and, on the other hand,
some companies are revolutionizing with new work patterns such as the virtual teams,
concept of working from home etc There are so many companies which are using different
types of softwares for different HR functions, but the major problem is that the softwares
are not user friendly, especially the software for payroll, ESS, & performance appraisal. Most
of the organizations are outsourcing their HR technology because of which they have to
depend on the third party for the smooth functioning of HR activity. Another problem is the
level of automation is not dependent on nature of the industry; it depends upon the intention
of the top management. Still About 60% of the companies have a minimal or no role of IT

enablement in the areas of Policy formulation, Career and Competency management and
enhancing the morale of its employees. The concept behind e-HR is to create an organization
culture that is system and process driven. The future challenges for the organization would be
to enhance the working knowledge of applications of e-HR among the HR practitioner
without which e-HR cannot add value to business
Observing shifting demographics in the workforce in combination with a business landscape
that is becoming more and more borderless, both geographically and organizationally. There
is an on-going digital transformation, which is bringing new challenges and opportunities for
businesses as well as for the HR function. Through the use of digital media and platforms,
organizations have the possibility to generate and collect enormous amounts of data, but are
running the risk of information overload. With this background, in combination
With the HR barometer survey results, it is expected that leading high performing
organizations will focus on the following topics going forward:
Adding digital practices to the Talent Management agenda:
In todays society, employees demand a balance between business needs, social needs and
their individual needs, and there is a rising demand for personalization, while the workforce
is used to socially integrated, advanced tools and ways to communicate outside of work, they
will increasingly demand this in their day-to-day operations. It will become increasingly
important not to lag behind as an employer in this respect. Improving the employee
experience is a critical ingredient to attract, develop and retain the best talent.
Using collective knowledge to drive business development and facilitate decision-making:
Knowledge is a competitive advantage and harnessing the collective knowledge of the work
force demands improved collaboration and innovation techniques. In a competitive
environment organizations need to take advantage of knowledge and idea spread throughout
The organization and find new ways to collaborate in order to secure internal efficiency and
boost innovation. Such a collaborative environment needs to be driven by top management
and anchored in the business. The implementation of digital tools and culture change to
embrace this enhanced way of working is considered a prerequisite for achieving a truly
connected organization.
Further adapt HR IT to secure efficient service delivery:

Few HR executives consider their current HR systems as sufficient. The rising demand for
SaaS solutions suggests that HR functions require more advanced technology, combined with
the flexibility of on-going updates. These topics bring new challenges to HRs agenda.

2.3

Identification of the project from the study

Digital is fundamentally changing the way businesses and governments operatefrom how
they interact with customers, citizens and suppliers, to how they manage their employees.
New digital technologies enable not only greater integration and flexibility than ever before,
but also the ability for employees to have a greater share of voice and ability to participate in
defining and even creating their own work experiences. Digital is thus poised to radically
disrupt HR as usual and redefine the future of the human resources function in the next
decade. Eventually, HR and talent processes and the technology that enables them will no
longer constitute their own domain or even be primarily performed by a central HR function.
Rather, many aspects of HR and talent management will become fully embedded in how
work gets done throughout an organization, thereby becoming an everyday part of doing
business. HR departments that ignore this transformation could face obsolescence.
In this point of view, we explore five recent digital developments that we believe will
conspire to transform HR:
Data and integration will be king.
Digital will give powerand people managementto the people.
Consumer applications will find a home in the enterprise.
Digital will enable customized talent management.
Cloud computing will enable new flexibility and agility.
Data and Integration Will Be King. Analyticsthe use of data to produce business-relevant
insights that lead to actionhas been heralded as the new step change for HR. Yet few HR

organizations have a robust analytic capability. Collecting data on employees (such as

engagement rates) can be expensive and time consuming; new technologies like Culture
amps Murmur promise to make this easier by enabling HR professionals to offer different
employees a ten minute or less online pulse" survey every day to provide a real-time view of
engagement that is not possible with traditional, annual surveys.
Moreover, companies have found it difficult to gather clean, consistent and integrated data.
But service-oriented architecture, data analytics, master data management (MDM) of HR data
technology and industry consolidation will help companies surmount these challenges. Such
developments can unify talent management applications and enable companies to integrate
data from transactional systems with business data and HR data in a single database. In
addition, data on contingent workers can now also be more easily integrated into a single
system to give employers a more complete view of all of the workersemployees and
contingent workers alikewho are working to create value for an organization. With these
changes, and as analytic capabilities increasingly get embedded into software, the dream of a
data-driven HR function may finally become a realityif HR professionals can keep pace.
Eventually, the lines between business and people management systems may blur, wiping
away functional silos within HR and even the silo of HR itself. For example, better
integration may fundamentally change the role of professionals in HR Centres of Excellence.
Typically, professionals in these roles are organizationally divided by functions such as
recruiting, compensation and benefits, training and development, and career development.
But when information systems help enable talent management to become truly integrated
across processes, rigid functional boundaries between talent management processes may no
longer continue to make sense.
And it wont stop there. As mobility applications develop and people spend more of their
work and personal time on technology platforms, they will leave an ever larger digital trail of
information that can be tracked, integrated, and analysed as well. Already, enterprises like
Google Inc. are analysing a wide array of data on peoples lives (such as whether someone
has set a world record or what magazines someone subscribes to) to create statistically valid
predictors of performance at work.1 For example, Google has determined through
quantitative analysis that ability to take initiative is a far better predictor of high performance
on the job than stellar academic records from prestigious schools.2 Success Factors, an SAP
company, tracks employees searches of external blogs or podcasts to show executives how
and what employees are learning.3 And it is now possible for benefits information to be

provided to individuals based on their physical location as determined from the GPS system
embedded in a persons mobile device. In the future, companies will integrate traditional
business and talent data with Big Data obtained from social and local data sourcestweets,
blog posts, RSS feeds, customer service feedback, GPS coordinates and moreto get a
complete picture of their workforces abilities, wants and needs.
Data and the insights it yields may eventually trump processes in terms of relative
importance. The ability to statistically determine the key drivers of performance and
productivity for particular workforce micro-segments based on hard data, for example, may
become much more important than generalized rewards, development, or learning processes
Designed to support the entire employee population. Imagine a world, for example, in which
an organization could:
Simulate talent requirements based on fluctuations in business demand.
Automatically identify talent gaps and determine how best to close them (for example,
through build, buy or make).
Offer suggestions for advancement based on a persons digital work trail.
Identify top-performing individuals and teams key characteristics and then mine data on
passive candidates found in digitized global talent pools to find people with similar
characteristics.
Combine data on worker productivity with data on variables such as time an employee
spends in and out of the office, vacation time taken, or medical costs to identify employees at
risk for health problems or burnout.
Analytics could make HR the strategic powerhouse it was meant to beby positioning it to
move from historical analysis (understanding what happened) to predictive analysis
(forecasting whats going to happen and what talent levers HR must pull to improve business
performance). But to make this move, HR practitioners will need to develop robust analytics
skills. They will also have to learn the language of business so they can integrate HR data
with other business data to produce actionable insights. New roles and groups within HR may
arise, such as talent data analysts or people insight units.
Digital Will Give Powerand People Managementto the People. As digital technology
advances, its helping companies embed talent management into the fabric of everyday
business and into employees work and personal lives. Technology advances are enabling HR
to put the human back into human resources, and helping give people management back to
the people.

Were not talking about the traditional notion of self-service here, or the ability for employees
to perform mundane administrative HR activities themselves, like updating their address or
viewing a pay check without HRs intervention. Instead, were talking about involving
employees and managers in high-impact talent processesincluding recruiting, hiring,
succession planning, learning and shaping career paths. All this will happen thanks to an
emerging class of social and market-based tools that will let employees manage almost every
aspect of their professional lives digitally.
For example, in the section above, we saw how talent management practices and data are
becoming more integrated with general business practices and business data to drive strategic
decisions about talent. As this development unfolds, line managers will be more likely to
engage in critical talent processes like workforce planningusing data to determine gaps
between workforce projections and available supply of staff, and modelling different
scenarios that could be used to close any gaps. In addition, managers and employees will
shoulder more talent management
Responsibilities. Take salesforce.coms work.com, an information system that lets workers
and managers give feedback and recognition for jobs well done on an on-going basis.
Work.com is integrated with salesforce.coms CRM solution, so a salesperson looking at
accounts in the CRM system could send performance feedback to a customer service
representative without having to change applicationsthereby enabling users to fluidly
interact with the tool where they do work every day.4
Likewise, as mobility applications designed for tablets and smart phones become ever more
user-friendly, and as intuitive user interfaces finally permeate talent management software
following the success of consumer-oriented technologies, employees will be more inclined to
adopt IT-enabled talent processes as well. Consider TouchBase, for example, a wall-dockable
tablet that takes a digital photo of each worker to verify the workers identity instead of
requiring workers to punch in to time clocks. Or consider new technology that is being
developed that will let workers open a talent management application on a laptop and then
work seamlessly in that same application throughout the day on other devices. Although
mobile HR and talent management applications have well permeated recruiting, time and
attendance, employee relations, and learning areas, mobile applications are being developed
And rapidly adopted for nearly every process to make it easier to perform these activities
anywhere, anytime, and on any deviceincluding talent analytics, performance management,
and leadership development. Technology companies like SAP are now designing apps with a

"mobile first" approach, promising to make mobility far easier than ever before for nearly
every talent and HR practice.
Finally, the infusion of all things social into talent managementand the infusion of
principles derived from gaming as wellwill further weave talent management into the very
fabric of employees everyday work lives. Already, employees can learn together through
corporate versions of Facebook or YouTube in addition to centrally mandated training
curricula. Companies can also use technology to draw on an employees social networks to
target and recruit new hires with the right skills for an open position. Moreover, workers can
use social media to advise career counsellors how best to counsel them, instead of having HR
provide this advice. Sites like Mixtent, GILD, and True Office can also help companies
transform everything from recruiting to performance appraisals to learning into a game. New
site Knack, for example, uses a game format to help workers discover their "knack"their
unique combination of strengths, talents, abilities, personality traits, likes and preferences.
The site can be used by companies to help identify high performers for recruiting purposes
It combines gaming, analytics, and the application of behavioural insights from science. (For
more on gaming, see sidebar on page 8: Changing the HR Game: How Serious Games and
Gamification Are Disrupting Human Resources). We expect innovations to keep arising in
this space, as start-ups take off and as talent management software companies continue to
layer social and gaming functionality onto their existing offerings. Eventually, new social,
gaming and mobile capabilities may replace traditional talent management practices, as well
as time-honoured HR tools such as employee surveys and e-mail communications.
Eventually, advances in digital will not only empower the line to take much more
responsibility for talent management, but they may even shift the locus of information and
decision making from a central group like HR or a small group of top leaders to employees
themselves. Social media could take HR as a middleman out of the picture, for example, by
enabling the following:
Employees to define their own compensation in reverse talent auctions.
Employees to negotiate scheduling changes with one another on shift-swapping sites.
Benefits choices to be determined by consensus through analysis of corporate social media
sites revealing which benefits are important to which employee populations.
Managers to analyse Big Data from sources like blogs, social networking sites and other
online forums to determine what employees need and want and to find new employees.

Talent exchanges where workers and hiring managers can find each other without the help of
an intermediary through matching of open opportunities with an analysis of individuals skills
or past performance and interest profiles; or exchanges that act like stock markets, where the
value of each individual worker is determined by the crowd in a quantifiable and searchable
way for sourcing purposes.
Workers to define their own career paths by seeing each other have customized career paths
(through sites that mine transfer and promotion histories) and network with them.
New leaders or successors to be selected in part through opinion polling by those most
affected by the decision.
In this future, the administrative burden that HR departments currently carry may lighten up
considerably. Not only will technology continue to automate transactional HR processes like
benefits administration, but it will continue to enable more strategic practices like many of
those described above to be performed by employees. Technology could then free HR
professionals so they can focus on other work such as analytics. As a result, the group
primarily responsible for HR processes and transactionswhether a shared services
organization, a business services group or an outsourcing partnermay shrink to a fraction of
what it is today. Employees may even manage their own data, and HR data and transactions
may become the sole responsibility of the business with the

2.4

Other outcomes of the survey / literature review

For years, the human resources function has shouldered much of the responsibility for
managing people, in a largely segregated operation. Technology advances will change all this,
by integrating talent management into the fabric of everyday business. HR IT will thus
become a vital component of organizational performance in an increasingly competitive and
fast-changing world. As HR heads toward a future characterized by Big Data, integration,
mobility, social media, gamification, and cloud computing, the ability for organizations to
manage their people will grow more flexible, agile and customized.