Mobile HRMS: A Foundation for HR Social Collaboration

The spirit of social collaboration fits well with mobile HRMS technology – it’s all about fluidity and flexibility. After all, in order to enable people to work together across traditional team and role (and geographical) boundaries, being able to provide mobile options is pretty much mandatory – it’s hard to feel free or particularly collaborative if you’re still confined to your cubicle.

Social collaboration is all about providing the technology and tools and then getting out of the way while your people get on with the job of synergetic working. In order to bring them together, you need a suite of interactive communications channels and easy access file-sharing. And by easy that means access anywhere anytime; in other words, mobile HRMS.

The benefits are clear. Wherever they are, your people can check in and work on projects and tasks. They can access information and expertise and provide expertise of their own to those that need it. Updating records, reviewing documents, contributing to meetings, it can all be done on the move or in the field with the right applications and access technology.

Getting to Grips with the Technology

Of course, particularly on the issue of mobile HRMS access, the issue of BYOD raises its head. People want easy access and they usually like to use their own device to do it. However, that does offer the usual challenges. Security for one. Uploading, downloading, data and document exchange across the corporate firewall and other protections carries risks and whatever device is being used it has to be up to your security standards. Then there’s the problem of lost data. Smartphones, tablets and laptops are mislaid (and stolen) every second of every day; precautions must be taken so that if the hardware is lost, the data isn’t lost with it.

The good news is that in the latest Hype Cycle for social software from industry experts Gartner, mobile collaboration technology is past the point of inflated expectations...

So far, these are technical issues. But where HR will need a strong input or even a lead is on the blurring that BYOD and mobile working can cause between the employee’s home and work lives. When someone is using their own device (or at the least, a single device) for both personal and work use, the distinction fades. It becomes almost natural to deal with personal matters during work time and work matters during personal time. Not so good in terms of timekeeping, productivity and stress levels. This is where clear joint policymaking between the IT and HR teams can help.

The good news is that in the latest Hype Cycle for social software from industry experts Gartner, mobile collaboration technology is past the point of inflated expectations and moving towards the zones in which the ‘big talk’ is over and HRMS vendors and users are now getting to grips with the hard work of achieving effective and wrestling genuine results from mobile HRMS technology.