Are you online or offline?

Effective use of social media can help organisations strengthen their employer brands, compete aggressively for top talent, and engage and retain employees. Here's how they can use online tools to hire, manage and retain high-performing employees

The real action today is actually taking place in the virtual world, the hub of millions to connect. Job seekers are reaching out to colleagues and competitors, industry professionals and corporations, while thousands of recruiters are watching and pursuing them closely. The gap in talent demand and supply, constant global and local economic pressures, volatile emerging markets and the proliferation of technology is forcing human resource executives to stand back and re-evaluate the way they function.

In a way, technology has democratised the human resource (HR) function. Easy access to information on digital platforms has vastly broadened the horizon of talent acquisition and employee management and taken its scale of operations to a global level. It would not be wrong to say that technology has now become the backbone for all human resource functions. For HR to be offline is akin to shutting the door to a gamut of talent, business and management opportunities.

In such a scenario, companies cannot implement efficient HR strategies without the support of technology. It captures systematic data about the complete lifecycle of an employee - from pre-hiring, to hiring and induction, performance management and exit. This has made the talent management process transparent and quick. Plus, it gives organisations the leverage to implement standardised and integrated talent acquisition and management strategies across global markets giving employer branding a leg-up. Indeed, the right HRM technology with a user-friendly presence on job portals, company websites and social media can be a deciding factor for the kind of talent an organisation attracts and acquires and therefore a crucial input in its performance. This is increasingly making CEOs realise that they need to set aside adequate budgets for a presence online and oversee its effective implementation. Thankfully this is a trend visible among companies across sectors.

Smart technology is also helping organisations tweak or upgrade the HR function itself and align it with the constantly evolving socio-cultural trends - all based on rich data gathered from diverse businesses and talent domains. No wonder, big data analytics has become the new-age secret sauce to unlock cryptic codes of social and economic behaviour of people. Data mining technology, HRM tools and statistical modelling assist in human resource trend analysis not only at the micro (organisational) level but also at the macro level across industries and geographies. It clears the many cobwebs that blur the vision of HR teams and helps them to understand where they actually stand and where they need to head and how to systematically plan future workforce strategies or modify the current ones.

Talent analytics, like a crystal ball, is assisting organisations in predicting the future course of their employees - whether they will excel, lead or say goodbye. Losing out on this assessment, especially by large and complex organisations, would be fatal. Penetration of smartphones and the exponential growth in internet usage is also changing the dynamics of the online job market. The trend is similar in Southeast Asia (including Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia) with 124-plus million mobile internet users. But it is the Gulf countries that are leading the smartphone penetration rate with the UAE leading with a 74 per cent penetration, closely followed by Saudi Arabia at 72 per cent.

Data analysis reveals that most job searches online are done via a mobile phone. Online job category searches on high-end devices have grown to a whopping 160 per cent year on year as of June 2014, whereas PCs/laptops gained a mere 3 per cent. The underlining fact is that the mobile screen has become the dominant screen. It is no longer the poor cousin of the laptop or the desktop. The dual advantage of calling and internet connectivity on the go, simplified further by mobile offerings like apps, is increasingly making organisations aware of the need to have a mobile-friendly presence.

The fact is, the talent pool is getting bigger and yet slimmer (thanks to speedy search engines) at the same time. The apps alone are driving the online job market with 1.2 billion people worldwide already using mobile apps at the end of 2013 and an estimated 4.4 billion expected to use them by 2017. But all this opportunity makes sense only if the new-age HR executive and the recruiter is tech-savvy and is ready to tap the opportunities offered by mobile technology applications.

But ultimately it is social media - the immensely popular, non-intrusive yet attractive, approachable and casual platform - that has taken the big leap and is at the forefront of talent/job hunts. Being a low cost recruitment solution is its added advantage. A global study among employers and hiring managers by Jobvite highlights its increasing relevance with a huge majority of recruiters, almost 94 per cent using or planning to use social media for their recruitment efforts. A startling 78 per cent had already made appointments using the social media.

The social networks (blogs, micro-blogs and online video communities) through 'social sourcing' also allow tapping of passive seekers. Recruiters love those easy reference checks through referral engines of social media platforms or company specific referral apps. These end up revealing not just the professional but also personal and behavioural sides of job seekers on platforms where they usually let their guard down - things that are essential to assessing their ethical and cultural fit in an organisation. Plus, there is the added advantage of a drastic reduction in the recruitment cost that posting/sharing job ads with various 'talent networks' or 'talent communities' affords. An active social media presence is also a cost effective way to improve your employer branding score.

As technology becomes extensively embedded in HR functions, one must remember that 'personal-touch' should not be lost by being solely dependent on the robustness of the platform. In the end, it is people who make all the difference.

SANJAY MODI
Managing director, Monster.com, India, Middle East, South-east Asia, Hong Kong