BENGALURU: Today, hiring is not just about finding the right candidate for the right job. Advancements in technology have been instrumental in reshaping onboarding, says Shweta Mohanty, vice-president, head of human resources, SAP, India, in an interaction with TNIE. Edited excerpts:
What kind of changes have happened over the years in onboarding employees?
Once viewed as a mandatory paperwork process, onboarding now emerges as a pivotal stage in the employee lifecycle. It has shifted from being a routine task to a crucial opportunity to set the tone for an employee’s experience within the organisation. The onboarding process, which was once all about documentation and Infrastructure support, has today evolved into an immersive cultural acclimatization.
Automated processes, digital document management, and interactive learning platforms have streamlined administrative tasks, allowing HR teams to focus on more meaningful interactions. At SAP in India, we have successfully completed the pilot phase of our new onboarding project - augmented employee experience. This onboarding experience with Metaverse project was launched in collaboration with the Innovation Centre Network and SAP Labs India. We are able to provide a hyper-personalised and contextualised immersive onboarding experience for our new hires.
Through our Metaverse experience, we have been able to provide an experience where each employee can navigate the office campus and interact with senior leaders at their own pace.
Will AI implementation affect jobs and how SAP is prepared for it?
AI will change the job market by creating new kinds of jobs and automating routine tasks. It will enable employees to be more productive and avoid time-intensive tasks. We believe generative AI adoption by business will be advantageous for enterprise software and free up time for our developers to focus on more customer-critical value-adding work.
This means more opportunities and growing demand for skilled talent. We are investing significantly in our existing talent to upskill/re-skill them on AI along with making them subject matter experts in the respective domains.
We are also looking at the employee and customer life cycles to bring areas of optimisation. An important factor in how employees evaluate their organisation is based on the opportunities they’re provided to learn the skills that will catapult them towards reaching their goals.
What role will automation play in workplaces?
Automation for time-intensive and repetitive tasks is critical. Even if we utilise 10% of our workforce to complete 10% of repetitive task to work on transactional areas, it will reduce our overall productivity and efficiency.