As our workplaces become increasingly digital places, the lines between HR and IT are growing blurry, and as a result, collaboration between the two has become more important than ever before. As we seek to create workforces that are agile in the face of continuous technological change and shifting market demands, HR and IT must work together to elevate the employee experience and provide frameworks that empower employees to be adaptable and productive. So, just how can they do this, and what strategies and tools can they employ to aid them? Let’s discuss.

Unifying Employee Support

A critical area where HR and IT processes increasingly converge is in the provision of employee support. Traditionally, IT and HR have worked in silos, each isolated from the other, but the reality is that their functions are very much connected from the employee’s perspective. HR is responsible for providing employees with assistance to maintain engagement and satisfaction, and since technical support plays a growing part in the employee experience these days, there is now considerable overlap between the functions of the two departments. Likewise, both IT and HR rely on collecting performance data and feedback from employees, it makes sense that our organizations should embrace solutions that can help break down these silos.

Implementing IT management platforms can make all the difference here. These platforms can give HR and IT a centralized, unified system for monitoring endpoint usage and performance. This provides real-time visibility over how employees are utilizing the tools at their disposal, providing vital insights into productivity. Moreover, by employing the best IT ticketing systems available today, these platforms can also provide a hub for employees, IT, and HR to report, track, and resolve issues that may potentially affect the user experience. This streamlines employee support, ensuring timely support is always provided where needed, whether it’s technical or skill-based. All of this amounts to more efficient and productive employees and a more engaging employee experience that fosters satisfaction and retention.

Elevating Onboarding

Another key point where HR and IT intersect is in onboarding. When new employees join an organization, much of their initial days and weeks are spent in orientation. HR needs to introduce new hires to the company culture and outline policies and practices they must follow in their daily duties. In much the same way, IT has an important role to play, ensuring that these employees have proper access to the tools and systems that are required and a solid understanding of how they are expected to utilize them. 

Traditionally, these processes have been carried out separately. However, this disjointed approach can leave new employees feeling overwhelmed as they are bombarded with information from multiple directions. To ensure that employees can transition smoothly into their roles and ultimately succeed in them, the obvious process is to provide a better, more cohesive onboarding experience in which HR and IT work together as one. 

Tech can help to bridge the gap in this instance too. Employing an integrated onboarding software platform, for example, can help to streamline onboarding significantly. These tools can centralize HR and IT tasks, allowing each to observe the other’s progress and plans so that they can coordinate their efforts. Moreover, onboarding platforms can help by automating processes like granting system access and delivering training materials. This ensures that new hires are onboarded in a way that feels clear, intuitive, and seamless so that they can get off to a running start in their roles.

Empowering digital adoption

With new business technologies emerging all the time, the digital landscape is constantly shifting, and today’s employees have to be more agile to change than ever before. Again, there is a critical convergence to be noted here – HR needs to facilitate staff upskilling, and IT needs to provide support as employees adopt new technologies. Given the rapid rate of technological change, the turnover of tools can be high, so organizations need to enact fast, reliable digital transformation initiatives in order to keep pace with the competition. So, HR and IT need to work together to empower employees as effectively as possible.

HR and IT need to collaborate to create a streamlined digital adoption framework. By conferring with stakeholders, they can establish objectives and potential sticking points for digital transformations and create a comprehensive strategy to address them. Implementing digital adoption platforms can help significantly here, too, as they can overlay with new tools and provide contextual guidance to assist employees with learning new tools. Moreover, they can integrate with HRIS (Human Resource Information Systems), using analytics to provide insights into the employee learning experience so that HR and IT can iteratively improve their strategies and decision-making for better results.

By utilizing digital adoption technologies as part of a thoughtful adoption strategy, HR and IT can work together to ensure that employees’ needs are taken into account on all sides. This facilitates faster, more reliable digital transformations, and a more engaged, empowered, and productive workforce.

Creating a Future-Ready Workplace

In an increasingly digital working world, HR and IT need to create future-ready digital workplaces that not only support employees, but also empower them, and the methods and tools we’ve discussed can help them in that endeavor.  By leveraging integrated, AI-driven technologies in conjunction with thoughtful management strategies, HR and IT can craft a seamless employee experience that drives engagement, productivity, and retention to create adaptive, high-performing workforces that will thrive in the face of forthcoming challenges.

Guest writer.