Vishakha Giri Goswami
Ahmedabad, Jan 29, 2022: The past two years have forced many organisations to adopt the HR tech for a more dynamic workforce and work model. With the widespread acceptability of remote and hybrid work, HR technology will see a surge in the coming years. The current and the next-gen HR technology will revolve around employee engagement tools.
The ‘back to office’ has taken backstage as of now amid the rising cases of omicron variant of COVID-19. Now that the companies are shifting towards remote and hybrid working models, the employers are embracing the software and applications that are primarily engaging and designed for employees to manage their work efficiently and hassle-free, while ensuring the employer that the remote working workforce is connected, productive and driving results.
A veteran addressing the Human Resource Challenges of many companies, Mr Surendra Varma co-founded EMGAGE – HRMS in 2016 that caters to growing SMEs, MSMEs, and Startups in India. The company was solely conceptualised by a team of HR Experts and with their extensive experience of working with Startups, SME’s and knowledge of varied sectors from IT, services sector, hospitality, finance etc. Emgage is build to cater to specific challenges faced by these organizations and help them to create Smarter & Productive workplace.
In conversation with Cell IT, Mr Surendra Varma, Co-founder, EMGAGE speaks about upcoming HR tech trends and sectoral growth in India. Edited excerpts.
- How are organisations adapting to the changing needs of workforce/significance and importance of HR tech within the organisation?
We have observed that especially during this pandemic all service-based businesses/organisations are adopting HR technologies solutions because their employees are working remotely and this is the only way to manage the workforce and get the business running. People are the core of any business and with the growth of Startups and SMEs there is definitely an increasing demand for the right HR tech platform to manage people better and create a smarter and productive workplace and there will be an increased demand for HR tech platforms in the coming years.
- How do you see the increasing role of next-generation HR tech such as AI, VR, Cloud-based employee training tools?
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Analytics have become a game-changer for HR tech or any other industry to say. For example, if we talk about the manual recruitment process – right from shortlisting an application to onboarding a talent, it would have been a difficult and time-consuming task to analyse the huge amount of data/ selecting the right candidate out of thousands of applications against the job posting. AI and data analytics tools made the entire process a lot easier.
In the HR services tools like AI bot, machine learning is helping in terms of resolving basic queries related to employee/employer by the bot itself.
Therefore, it has become very convenient to the users as well as the HR team because it reduces the operational time and one can focus on value-adding tasks efficiently.
- What are some of the roadblocks to tech adoption in organisations?
Adoption of a platform by users decides the success of any platform. HR Tech adoption specially is Startups and SMEs are a big challenge because of many reasons like, many organizations do not have structured and defined HR processes and systems, Many of these organizations do not have qualified and experienced HR team to manage the implementation process, attrition of HR team and ofcourse limited budget and resources.
There are many roadblocks to tech adoption in various organisations, firstly; Many Startups and SMEs select the platform based on the price and not based on what suits them and whether the platform is scalable as they grow or not.
Secondly, the product/application has to be user-friendly, easily accessible and adaptable by the end-user, here end-users are the employees. I think what we are failing to understand is that the market and players are building HR tech platforms to cater the B2B models by forgetting the fact that the aim is to facilitate the employees of any organisation.
At Emgage we are trying to change the way employees are getting managed in Startups and SMEs and Empower HR teams by giving them access to best HR practices on the platform which helps them manage HR effectively and do more value driven work for the organization. Unlike other products like CRM, Accounting software which are used by subject matter experts, HR Tech product is used by all the employees and it must be really very very simple like whats up to ensure the adoption is really fast and smooth without much training.
We are building Emgage similar to B2C concept keeping in mind the end-user i.e., employees as well as by synchronising the organisations business priorities.
- Tell us something about the future of the workforce and the growth of HR tech in India?
As of now, the market is focusing to develop a unique platform that can manage the hybrid working model. The massive use of data analytics and artificial intelligence will be used to figure out the scalability and loopholes in the workforce. In the next 10 years, HR tech will be a booming industry in India; there are two main reasons for this hike – one is that India has become a destination for start-ups and the ecosystem is getting matured. Second, SMEs and Startups are contributing to 40% of total India’s workforce and this will further grow.
- How does EMGAGE help in managing employees’ journey? What is the best strategy to retain the existing talent that EMGAGE use?
We have built a very interactive platform and the platform provides accessibility about all their perks, benefits and employment rules and regulations which helps organizations to create a transparent work environment. Our ticketing module helps employees to raise any issue or query, grievances or suggestions etc and they can also track the status of their ticket. Through the platform HR and employees can do real time communication on mobile application . There are automated follow-ups and reminders set up in the system which will regularly notify the operators/users till the time the issues are resolved. This saves a lot of time where an employer can provide regular feedback to the employees which helps organisations to retain the talent through the platform.
- How do you ensure the quality of your product/solution that you provide in the growing competitive market at a comparatively lower price?
This is one of the biggest challenges as well as an opportunity for us, as we are focused to cater to SMEs, MSMEs and Startups because they don’t have a budget to spend on HR tech. This is the last thing that they want to spend on. Once they understand the value this platform is providing, they are ready to put money into it. No company puts their money on HR without getting a reverse.
One of our objectives is to become a market leader in this segment. We are focusing on providing our platform to services-based organizations, we are not just the HR-admin product, we have built features on our platform specifically for these two industries. For example, if you talk about a sales-driven organisation, say a Pharma Company – that has a lot of salespeople, how do you capture their attendance? How do you ensure that the employees are moving in the field and at the end of the day they put a local convenience bill, how do you ensure that the bill is not fake?
EMGAGE has built all these applications with GPS tracking, real-time monitoring, time-sheet etc. through which employers can monitor all this information.Being focused to specific sector helps up to build right features than building many features and this helps up to build a robust stable product which we can make it available at an affordable price to our customers.
We are trying to provide an advantage to start-ups and small organisations where they can give a feel and culture to multinationals at an affordable rate. That is the crux of what EMGAGE is building.