The summer holiday season is coming to an end and, for many of us, it’s time to go back to work. But this year, will we return to the office (if at all) as if nothing happened?
During the lockdown period, the way in which companies conveyed their culture and ensured knowledge transfer was fully transformed digitally. However, the paradigm shift towards digitization was already underway prior to the pandemic with:
- The accelerating pace of skill obsolescence, creating a generation gap in organizations and increasing employee integration and training costs.
- Higher employee expectations, forcing employers to build competitive employee benefits packages to attract, engage and retain.
- Increasing UX standards, set by the tools we all use in our personal lives, leading to faster employee disengagement if the corporate tools were not relevant enough.
Covid-19 has only accelerated some trends and created new business opportunities. Since remote working became a norm during lockdown, the number of employees working remotely has increased. According to Gartner, the number of employees working remotely at least part of the timed jumped from 30% to 48% after the pandemic. Other trends are also reshaping HR management: the new focus on employee safety and well-being, the increase in contingent work, the expanded data collection on employee productivity, etc.
Looking at this topic more closely, we identified 3 fields where startups are flourishing:
- Digital employee onboarding, cross-boarding and offboarding. Even if we hope to not have to onboard employees entirely remotely in the near future, digital onboarding tools are a great solution to save time on employee onboarding paperwork, ensure employee integration through personalized onboarding journeys and accelerate employees’ learning curves.
- Digital employee training. With horizontal learning systems and content platforms, soft skill peer-to-peer coaching for white-collar workers or AR/VR training for blue-collar workers, companies can now efficiently measure the evolution of their workforce’s skills.
- Real-time employee engagement monitoring. With continuous sentiment analysis and peer-to-peer recognition tools, companies can reduce employee turnover, chronic stress, burnouts and increase productivity.
* LMS: Learning Management Systems