Recruiting, administration, reporting, sharing, communicating, monitoring and more can be efficiently enabled by some inexpensive and easy to use and access technology. More than ever HR and the their workforce have access to a myriad of technology based tools to enable communications, organization, sharing, information gathering and much more.

The employee on the go can track expenses in a handy smartphone app, collaborate in real-time with other employees and so much more. The HR department can gather the information they need to facilitate better hiring, compile and distribute reports and so much more. Unfortunately most HR professionals do not have the time, resources and energy to stay ahead of every technology tool and trend that may improve operations and communications.  It is important for human resources professionals to be aware of the tools their employees are or should be using to improve productivity not only for the employees but also for HR’s own use.

To begin the process of identifying the tools and technologies HR should on top we have compiled a list of the top 5 technology issues challenging HR departments today. Review this list and see if you can use it to prioritize your time, energy and resources today and tomorrow.

5 HR Technology Issues Today

1. Going Social: Going social includes using social networks for HR purposes to recruit, monitor and communicate and also training and monitoring employees on social networks. Identifying an internal social communications tool can be one way to improve communications and productivity.  While Twitter, Facebook workgroups, SKYPE, Google Hangouts there are sites like Yammer, HipChat, Slack, Microsoft Lync, Glip, and Socialcast that enable efficient employee and HR communication and sharing.
2. Going Mobile: Includes providing flexibility for employees to work from anywhere using technology that enables them to stay connected. Identifying the way your employees will stay connected while going mobile, including the tools (such as smartphones, tablets and more) can mean navigating many devices and many applications. Tools for hosting meetings, sharing files and reporting information need to be identified for integration and compatibility. The same can be said for employee and HR Productivity Tools. Tools include tools for staying organized and expense tracking such as Evernote (stay organized), Concur (expenses; part of SAP), Expensify (expenses)
3. Data and Analytics: Tools that allow you to gather data about your employees demographics can help you understand turnover and retention, absenteeism management, hiring and recruitment, salary (including tracking to ensure salary is equitable across demographics in the same types of work), for real time and aggregate trend analysis
4. Cloud: This includes data information, sharing, access and backup through various cloud applications that help you connect with and get the information you need out to and from your employees. Challenges include managing the cloud and making sure everyone is able to access and easily navigate. Tools such as Dropbox, Zoolz, Justcloud, Googledrive and more mean time and resources spent on selecting, training and managing different tools services.
5. Security; Social, Mobile, Data gathering and using the Cloud mean security should be on the top of HR’s radar.

Here are 6 elements of technology security HR should become familiar with:
Application vulnerability screening – a security technique used to identify weaknesses in your computer system

1. 1. Intrusion prevention systems – building policies and rules for network traffic with an alert system for your administrators
   2. IT risk assessment audit – Systematic process for identifying and evaluating events (possible risks)
   3. Network penetration testing – an internal attack on your network to check for weakness
   4. Regression Testing – Retesting parts of an application by executing test cases to check on proper functionality has been preserved or if new changes have created bugs
   5. Annual Privacy Data Training – Training system designers and administrators in managing, identifying and protecting confidential information and ensuring compliance with privacy legislation such as the Privacy Act, and PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronics Documents Act)

Technology grows and evolves everyday. You may not be able to address all of these at once so take a look at your priorities and address these issues based on the most immediate need. If you are not sure where to begin finding the best tools, ask a millennial to source some tools and ask a Gen X to review them and see how quick the boomer can figure it out and see what tools are left standing.