To make work more human requires technology. This isn’t a riddle, but something that Emily He, senior vice president of HCM cloud business group at Oracle, says when discussing Oracle HCM Cloud’s spring update. The update will feature an interface redesign for ease-of-use, AI capabilities for candidate personalization from interview to onboarding and AI-powered business processes including a cloud-based HR help desk.
Through market research, customer feedback and other available data, He says, Oracle realized that as technology usage increases, technology productivity has stalled. The reason is something He calls “enterprise fatigue,” where cumbersome and rigid HR systems hinder smooth workflow and employee engagement. To meet customer needs and remain competitive in a time of rapid change, Oracle chose to change the features and capabilities of its cloud platform, so HR professionals could simplify and humanize employee experiences by “making work more enjoyable, smarter and collaborative,” says He.
The announcement was timed to coincide with this week’s Oracle HCM World, which is being held in Dallas and concludes today.
First, to make work more enjoyable, Oracle redesigned its user interface to a modern, newsfeed style with a vertical, continuous-scroll feature and cross-device capabilities. The redesign was taken directly from customer feedback. He says that customers want better user experiences, modeled after some of the most user-friendly tech available, like that of Uber, Lyft and Netflix, which incorporate integrated user data and history to improve the user experience.
Oracle has also enabled cross-device capabilities, meaning employees can pick up where they left off on any device, anywhere at any time. For example, says He, people who started working on their goals in the office on a desktop computer could pick up right where they left off at home on a tablet or mobile phone. She says this was a critical upgrade that not only improves user experience, but productivity.
Oracle also introduced a continuous performance-management feature, which allows for real-time feedback between employees and managers about anything from goals to performance reviews.
To make work smarter, Oracle has optimized its AI and machine-learning capabilities to assist HR professionals (and candidates) from recruiting through onboarding. One feature seeks to help reduce the time that’s needed to fill empty positions by highlighting the “best-fit candidate” and proactively sourcing both candidates and employees who should be invited to apply.
He says that Oracle conducted in-house research, which was one of the driving factors for implementing “best-fit candidate” technology. “We found that the most successful candidates in our marketing departments come from solutions consulting backgrounds,” she says. “This revelation has really opened up how we recruit and hire across the board, and we wanted to offer this capability of predicting who will be the most successful candidate to our customers.”
Other smart improvements include candidate recruiting and communications through Facebook Messenger, a “self-driven” promotion process that guides both employees and their managers through the administrative aspects of a promotion and smart onboarding options aimed at helping new hires become engaged and productive contributors to the organization.
Finally, to make work supportive, Oracle has introduced the HR help desk in the cloud. This feature enables HR professionals to manage sensitive employee information in a secure location.
