How Technology is Facilitating Better Human Connection in the Workplace

Dr Michelle Deaker, Managing Director and Founding Partner, OneVentures

Dr Michelle Deaker, Managing Director and Founding Partner, OneVentures

Human Resources, like every other industry and profession, is currently going through a transformative period of technological disruption. As OneVentures is one of Australia’s leading Venture Capital firms, we are fortunate to be exposed to many of the newest innovations from companies seeking investment in their products – and we can see that the HR future for Australian workers will be very different from where it is today.

There are two major forces driving technical innovation in HR: The ability to collect and interpret employee data; and the ability to automate generic tasks whilst facilitating human interactions. Fundamentally, whatever tech is introduced into the workplace, it needs to be user friendly for both the manager and the employee – with useful data to be brought back to the company.

OneVentures have invested in several companies who are solving HR challenges to deliver to these needs. The first is Employment Hero, who have developed a HR platform designed for small and medium sized (SME) businesses. The main purpose for the platform is to service SMEs who may not be able to offer the same sorts of HR services as big organisations, purely due to size and resources. With the adaption of Employment Hero in the business, many of the process driven tasks (contracts, policies and access to a variety of HR templates) are all provided. Reminders to supply documents are automated with the employee so onboarding or performance reviews can become more about the person and less about the paperwork.

“There are two major forces driving technical innovation in HR: The ability to collect and interpret employee data; and the ability to automate generic tasks whilst facilitating human interactions”

Employment Hero is also a highly useful tool for managing staff, with everything from operations such as applicant tracking at the recruitment stage to onboarding, rostering and timesheet management and payroll employment hero reduces workload through workplace automation. The platform also supports managers in providing ongoing engagement and benefits to employees with setting of goals and objective measures for performance appraisals, ongoing training and coaching, staff surveys and consistent feedback opportunities. The platform also opens access to a range of employee benefits for reward and recognition – as well as providing discounts and staff benefits in areas such as gym memberships, insurance, grocery discounts and so on.

One of the things that impressed us the most about this particular platform was the intuitive nature of the dashboard and app, and the relative ease with which both existing and new employees can navigate through its requirements. We are aware that one of the more frustrating experiences as a new employee is not only learning the fundamentals of a new role, meeting a new team and integrating into a new company culture – but that every company also operates on different tech systems, which can be quite overwhelming to decipher when you’re on a steep learning curve already. It was crucial that any new HR tech was extremely user friendly and did not require a lot of bandwidth in order to execute correctly, and without additional frustration due to pop-up error messages or user confusion.

This idea of HR tech facilitating the human experience is paramount. In fact, we believe that within some large multi-national organisations, there is the potential that legacy HR systems which require hours of human input and manual follow-up will ultimately prove to be a liability. Tech everywhere is becoming far more seamless for the consumer, and companies run the risk of seeming very behind the curve if the tech they deploy is still clunky and frustrating to end users.

The rise of the expanded workplace with the work from home and work from anywhere models is also driving innovation. How do we stay connected in the digital future that dramatically accelerated during COVID. Companies like Livetiles (ASX: ) has been supported by our venture credit fund. The company has created an adaptable digital workplace (intranet) to bring teams together. As a complete remote work ecosystem, the platform allows for intra-office and internal communications, content creation and management, event co-ordination and messaging.

In terms of the developments in data mining, we know that large companies are especially focussed on data to deliver transformational HR. Often, this comes through as a way to maximise value for the business: reduce attrition and turnover which is expensive and time consuming for a business, measure performance against the industry norms, provide predictive analytics, segment a large workforce and deliver skills for succession planning - as well as glean employee attitudes and sentiment.

One of the emerging areas of data capture that caught our interest was optimising office space. As businesses continue to navigate the pathway out of lockdowns with a hybrid workforce, understanding office space utilisation is becoming increasingly key to deliver value for operations. By creating visibility for management about where staff are spending their time, it’s also possible to understand how time is spent in the office so we can make our spaces more productive and welcoming for employees.

XYSense is one of the companies at the forefront of this emerging tech space, and we saw huge potential in them due to the fact that employee privacy is protected while delivering real time data about office space utilisation. This does not involve camera tracking or other invasive monitoring, instead area sensors detect movement and provide actionable analytics through a user-friendly dashboard.

So whilst our workforce and workplaces are ever evolving, and there seems to be a constant flow of new innovations coming to market to assist the HR process, there is one thing that will never change: Positive interactions are what make us feel connected to our team, to a business and to our customers. And if our technology does not facilitate easier and more pleasant interactions, then it is just getting in the way.