Cloud-based software and services, social networks and big data are transforming how companies’ human resources (HR) departments operate, reshaping such activities as recruitment, employee engagement, training and career development.

Underscoring the growing importance of technology to HR – or human capital management (HCM) as it is more fashionably called – the leaders in the enter  prise software market have spent billions of dollars over the past 18 months acquiring cloud-based talent management start-ups. SAP bought SuccessFactors, Oracle snapped up Taleo and IBM purchased Kenexa. “Over the past five years, and accelerating in the past three, the industry has changed markedly,” says Andrea Bertone, executive vice-president for sales in Europe and North America at Monster, the jobs website. 

Mr Bertone identifies four main ways in which technology is changing HR: the increasing use of social networks, the growth of mobile (smartphones and tablets), the expanding use of mixed content – particularly video – for training and other functions, and the use of big data analytics to discover unexpected patterns in employee data. 

But perhaps the most obvious way in which IT has changed HR is in the use of online recruitment services such as Monster and social networks such as LinkedIn to augment traditional recruitment methods. 

That does not mean that companies – even cloudbased companies such as Box.com – are abandoning traditional recruitment methods altogether. “We use both new and traditional methods,” says Aaron Levie, Box.com’s chief executive. Those traditional methods include recruitment agencies, referrals and college recruitment drives........

Questions

1. In what ways is information technology being used by HR professionals? 

2. In what ways is information technology being used by line managers? 

3. What are the main benefits of using more information technology? 

4. Are there any disadvantages? 

5. When managing the workforce of the future what future uses of IT are envisaged?