Yi Zhang, Human Resources Director at Richemont
During the covid pandemic, many companies and HR partitioners have the sense of urgency to accelerate HR digitalization. But digitalization is a very broad topic which covers many aspects of the technology, organization, process, and people. Dream is always ambitious and promising but the reality is always slow and challenging. Why? Because digitalization is not about the tools and systems but is a culture with a continuous effort across functions and a digital-savvy leadership. Digitalization is all about an ‘experience’ and HR digitalization is about an ‘employee experience’.
Besides those big top-down transformational campaigns and initiatives, can we try anything else differently?
It is important to bear in mind: HR Digitalization requires us to break the functional silos across IT and HR functions. Traditionally HR believes digitalization is IT’s job. But IT is a technology enabler and HR is the owner. Moving on, let’s drive the agenda together! Enable a bottom-up approach without waiting for others to initiate.
Here is a demonstration of HR & IT teamwork regarding HR Robotic Process Automation (RPA) of report preparation for commission calculation on monthly basics:
• HR as an Owner of HR topic - Identify HR colleagues who have shown digital-savvy is key. Encourage individual who has a personal interest to learn new technology – UiPath. Self-learned from free UiPath online courses to understand how this technology might be applied and solve our HR problems.
• HR team input - Educate HR team though RPA basics workshop and brainstorming on its potential area of applications.
• IT as a Technology enabler - HR exchanged idea with IT colleague who has RPA knowhow and is interested to do RPA together on top of day-to-day responsibilities.
• HR consolidates and analyzes most complicated reports & its process. Come up with one template and process— make it standardized and scalable.
• HR explains to IT for programing together. Record computer screen by steps according to process. Feed into UiPath for a robotic process automation.
• Give birth, pilot, and celebrate - Pilot, configurate & maintain by HR colleague who has interest to continuously learn and to extend RPA to other fields. We are invited to share our HR practice in the global meeting and celebrate together.
Finally, the idea of HR RPA came into reality and works well, in the past, we need 2.5 working days per month to prepare a report for 15 Maisons and now, it only takes 5 minutes with 1 click. How about its budget? The entire company spent $2,000 for UiPath enterprise application with unlimited usage. What a great ROI!
Similarly, we have piloted HR Chatbot to serve employees’ day to day questions on policies in Hong Kong. It continuously improved the experience for employee Q&A. Also, we co-created artificial intelligence interview tool with a Singapore based AI company enabled talent acquisition team to have more efficient competencies-based candidate selection for our high volume and repetitive positions. We piloted it during internship interviews and boutique staff hirings. It brings a totally new candidate journey and Talent acquisition experience.
HR digitalization is a journey towards a better employee experience and once you started, it never ends. A real transformation happens every day and is about cultivating a digital mindset.
Small steps make a big change!
