Cloud computing is helping organisations build a future-proof digital HR infrastructure: Shailesh Singla, Oracle India
HR leaders now have gradually recognised the importance of leveraging digital technologies as a one-stop solution for organisations to adapt their workforce to a completely new working environment and provide the necessary automation of the internal processing framework, says Shailesh Singla, Country Head & Senior Director, HCM Cloud, Oracle India, in an interview with Express Computer. He also shares his insights on how HR leaders can leverage HR Tech to enhance employee experiences, streamline HR operations, and navigate the challenges of the hybrid working model
Some edited excerpts:
With growing emphasis on employee experiences, and HR operation improvements have made HR tech absolutely essential. What is your view?
Technology and HR operations were at a point not referred to as something that will go hand in hand but during the pandemic, we have seen the accelerated need for technology and for organisations to become digitally savvy. As we progress further into the future, embracing technology to enable personalised employee experiences will become more important than ever. Also, post pandemic, there has been a significant shift in the way any organization’s internal functioning and HR processes operate. In the hybrid working system, HR leaders’ roles have expanded to accommodate the changing workplace dynamics as we enter the ‘Future of Work’ and equip the workplace with the necessary capabilities to streamline internal functioning in remote work system.
Many companies have struggled with talent and recruitment issues, as well as providing an optimal environment in the hybrid working model. Hence, HR leaders now have gradually recognised the importance of leveraging digital technologies as a one-stop solution for organisations to adapt their workforce to a completely new working environment and provide the necessary automation of the internal processing framework. Also, with looming economic uncertainty and workforce disruptions across different industries, investing in smart HR Tech has provided much-needed flexibility and automation support to CHROs across industries, as well as effectively streamlined recruitment and internal HR processes. All these developments and implementations of HR Tech has enabled HR leaders and organisations in effectively managing the workforce and harnessing new employees with modern technologies.
As an HRTech expert, what are the core concerns of HR Leaders? How do you see employee experience emerging in the new normal?
Some of the core concerns we see among organizations working across sectors with respect to hybrid employees are around greater flexibility, agility, and career development opportunities. Employee priorities have moved far beyond the traditional requirements of just payroll or positions. Individuals’ expectations have shifted dramatically over the last three years. They had plenty of time to reflect on what they were going through—the difficulties of being isolated were weighed against the benefits of flexibility, being with family, having resources close by, not having long commutes, and so on.
Now every employee’s definition of success in the workplace have changed, and they stopped focusing on just a high salary, and instead sought more flexibility, work-life balance, and a greater emphasis on their well-being. These factors are only going to accelerate in the near future considering the current trends.
How is cloud transforming the HR space? How can organizations use HR analytics to enhance employee experiences?
In today’s world, the adoption of digital technologies is paramount to build a strong digital infrastructure across all industries. Organizations are looking for ways to take their operational capabilities to the next level and embrace technological trends in order to be agile and future ready as the industry evolves and becomes faster. Among all modern technologies, cloud computing is helping organisations build a solid and future-proof digital HR infrastructure to combat modern workforce-related challenges and streamline internal processes. Various organizations are replacing traditional HR frameworks and automated internal processes with the help of Cloud-based solutions, to avoid the hassle of manual recordkeeping and data management.
Enterprises across industries are transforming their HR framework with Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM solutions to improve agility and interoperability, as well as integrating data at a unified platform to view operations and processes across the organisation and scale growth with analytics-based insights. These solutions can assist businesses in innovating their human resource practises by providing them with the tools to implement their strategy, empower the workforce, engage and support the community, and make more informed decisions.
What are some of the recent innovations in the HR functions? How are CHROs reinventing the wheels of recruitment with AI/ML taking precedence?
One of the reasons we invested in our recent HCM launch Oracle Recruiting Booster was to address changing workplace dynamics, talent hiring, and retention issues with recruiting. We must rethink how we source and engage with people; we must use AI not only to better tailor how we engage with those candidates, but also how we create opportunities and communicate, among other things. So, everything from streamlining and optimising our processes like interview management and scheduling automation to event management and personalised marketing for hiring events is covered. However, the other critical component, which spans the HR suite, is driving additional insights. As a result, talent insights and people analytics are likely to be the hottest and most important areas in the HCM market right now. Organizations won’t be able to keep up with the many changes in the workforce and changing economy that are driving changes in businesses if they don’t understand the people in your organisation and if don’t embrace very robust talent insights. As a result, we’re spending a lot of time with customers, assisting them in understanding and embracing our own talent insights, and we’re continuing to build capabilities in that area.
How is Oracle supporting companies and HR leaders to thrive in the hybrid working model? Could you share some real-world examples of how companies are making use of HRTech to transform their HR operations?
The pandemic has made us come in terms with the fact that we live in uncertain times and in today’s world of constant uncertainty and challenges, cloud-based technologies such as Oracle Cloud HCM are paving the way for better integration of digital and human workforces, allowing organisations all over the world to future-proof their operations. Enterprises today are mapping out their business goals, as well as managing their resources and capabilities with greater agility and effectiveness, thanks to cloud-based digital HR technologies. At Oracle have seen an increase in the adoption of HCM applications in recent years, particularly in India, across a variety of industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, BFSI, and many others.
Within the healthcare sector, we achieved 160% growth for our overall SaaS business in India and HCM business is an important contributor to this growth rate. One of the India’s largest private hospitals, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital have implemented Oracle Cloud HCM solutions to integrate and automate internal processes while eliminating the need for manual record-keeping. Through cloud-enabled HCM solutions, they are empowering the frontline workforce as well as employees working on the backend for administrative processes to combat uncertainty and equip them with vicious operational capabilities to deliver high-quality patient care.
Another case in point is the ESSAR Group, India’s leading corporate, which provides world-class services in the energy, infrastructure, metals and mining, and technology sectors. Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions have assisted the group in addressing issues such as streamlining HR processes, technology adoption, and ease of use not only for HR but also for their entire workforce across verticals.
The BFSI sector remains a key vertical for us, in H1 this year, we’ve witnessed 74% YoY growth in business from the sector on the SaaS side. The sector remains a key industry for the HCM business too and many leading organizations are leveraging our solutions. For instance, AU Small Finance Bank has implemented Oracle’s Cloud-based HCM solutions to strengthen the bank’s HR capabilities. Oracle’s Cloud-native HCM application assisted the bank to improve its talent management processes and provide best-in-class experiences to its employees, resulting in increased employee satisfaction. Many more of our customers use our Cloud HCM solution to improve employee processes like Bharti Airtel, Piramal Group, Apollo Hospitals, Tata Realty, Tata Chemicals, and many others.
What are some of the top trends driving workforce analytics in 2023?
There are various trends driving the workforce but the top 3 in this segment as per my understanding would be predictive analytics, integrating analytics tools with IoT devices to obtain real-time data insights, and making analytic tools more platform agnostic. Oracle recognizes the true value analytics bring to amplify HR processes. We have HCM Analytics which is a prebuilt cloud-native solution within Oracle Cloud HCM that provides HR professionals with ready-to-use workforce insights to improve their workforce diversity, employee attrition and retention, talent acquisition, compensation, and many such decisions. Organizations can also unify human resource analytics across departments and that is possible because of our unique breadth and depth of combined analytics and application capabilities. Our customers can also in turn create custom visualisations and extend them with new data sources.
