Technology and workforce planning

¶ … Technology has proved to be helpful in allowing HR (human resource) departments improve their efficiency of fulfilling their vital organizational functions, improving the quantifying of potential and current employee performance, productivity, and vitality. However, HR departments must now deploy the technology they currently use to measure employee performance, to increase their own performance and prestige within their organizations. To do so, they must become more analytical in their approach, and thus more quantitative and specific when presenting their recommendations and guidance to the rest of the organization.

The authors Beth Patterson and Steve Lindsey chronicle how, over the course of the past ten years, human resources departments have been increasingly better equipped with the technology to assist HR transactional functions, such as understanding patterns of workflow management, determining how personnel should be reorganized within organizations, and measuring the productivity of different employees and staff with hard rather than soft data in performance reviews. With quantitative as well as 'soft' or subjective data at their disposal, many HR departments have been able to position themselves to become fully recognized advisory partners within their organization, rather than satellite departments merely involved in employee hiring, issuing pink slips to nonessential employees, and conducting vague and subjective reviews of employee productivity. However, once they reach the executive table, some HR leaders are still reluctant to leverage or provide the hard analytical data to support strategic business decisions, even when the data exists.