In recent weeks I have had the pleasure of speaking with a number of reward practitioners plus many advisers and providers about all things technology and data in our market. In addition many REBA members have been filling in our survey on how they use tech (fill in the Reward & Employee Benefits Technology survey here)
These are the top 5 trends that caught my ear:
1. Reward professionals without analytics and insight skills are losing their jobs We are starting to see experienced professionals being moved out of roles because, while they are excellent on Excel, they can't produce the analytical insights and creative solutions now needed in reward. Good online platforms can now do the data crunching, so we don't need people to. Now is the time to up your insight and creative solutions skills because the great process skills you’ve always relied on are going the way of the dodo.
2. User experience is king You should have been hearing about UX (aka user experience) for some time now. Most of the technology providers have been launching new versions of their products so the employee journey is a breeze (or so they tell me). Lots of clever science going into it all. If you’re offerings look clunky and out of date, then so do you as an employer.
3. It's all about the data While we might still be in a world where different systems don't speak to each other and data is all over the place, that excuse will cut no ice in next to no time. Many organisations across the industry are working hard now to bring data in line in the near future. Providers and advisers unable to help will fall behind those who can. It won't be long (perhaps a few years) before all employers will be neatly aligning their reward spend per employee against their key corporate objectives, analysing the impact of wellbeing interventions, and having good transparency on how effective their bonus and incentive schemes really are.
4. Every HR department will have a Bot (or several) If fact we'll see a lot more Bots everywhere. They are the clever computer programmes that are able to 'chat' to consumers and employees to answer questions. We've got them on retail websites already (no, those aren't real people!), and they are starting to appear in larger HR departments too, reducing the need for employee helplines except for the more complex queries.
Hear more about what lies ahead, thanks to advances in reward and benefits technology, at Innovation Day on 23 November.
See the event programme here. [http://reba.global/event/reba-innovation-day-2017]
REBA Professional Members can book free by inputting a unique promotional code. If you haven’t yet received your code, please email us at [email protected]
Sign up to be a Professional Member here [http://reba.global/users/register], so you can also benefit from attending this event free, plus further membership advantages.
