“You build brand loyalty by being relevant to employees’ lifestyle,” said Nate DaPore, president and CEO of PeopleMatter, a talent management software provider. “If you look at the traditional talent management system, most employees only use [it] several times a year: when they’re hired, when they need to look up benefit information, when they’re forced into training or performance management. Talent managers need to find a way to get employees back into the system day to day. Using a platform like mobile is a start, but you need to do something unique to have your app next to Facebook, Twitter and email.”
One of PeopleMatter’s apps, Schedule, is an online employee scheduling system that allows hourly employees to view schedules, request time off, trade shifts and communicate with others from their smartphones.
The PeopleMatter platform also includes Hire and Learn, which give employers the ability to manage all of their applicant tracking, hiring, on-boarding, training and scheduling online within a single system.
“You have to provide a vehicle to continuously drive the employee back into the system,” DaPore said. “A schedule is the trunk of the tree for employees; they want to access that information immediately and have it in their back pockets. Benefits, policies and procedures are branches of that tree, but the hours they work are most important, and that’s how you can pull them into everything else.”
When it comes to benefits, many consumer-directed health care programs enable participants to view account information, upload receipt images and file claims from their mobile devices. HR leaders hope making this functionality more convenient might improve engagement in their health and health care.
“Technology-driven innovation is transforming all business processes in a short amount of time,” said Daniel Burrus, author of Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible. “We had customization in the past, but mobility is leading to personalization. That means there are opportunities for us to grow our careers and grow our businesses when we work together, collaborate and communicate in new ways.”
