Top 16 technical skills for HR professionals

It is now time to sharpen your HR technological skills.

The dependence on HR technology continues to increase, and the days to count on it or the technical member of the HR team is quickly discolored. It's now time to kiss technology, push you to find out more and look for opportunities to use technology at your disposal to make your work day more efficient and eliminate redundant processes.

To succeed in your technological journey, you must develop your hard and general skills. Taking a targeted training on an application will help, but to reach high levels of success, you must have the right state of mind, in particular by being curious, precise and willing to learn permanently.

The expansion of your technical skills will also help you strengthen credibility with other members of your business, including IT, which can facilitate more collaboration and more success on initiatives.

Although it is not exclusive to HR activities, the list of technological skills below can help you succeed as modern human resources professional.

1. Calculation and word processing sheet applications

Regardless of the technological progress of HR systems, calculation sheets and word processing applications continue to be daily tools in many organizations. The possibility of using advanced features in these applications will save you time and efforts.

In word processing applications, this may include the use of themes, mail merger and tables. In calculation sheets, the possibility of using advanced functions will save countless hours and considerably improve the spreadsheets you develop and share with others.

2. Macros

Macros can be a powerful tool in your toolbox, although they are not essential for everyone.

Understand how macros work In Microsoft Office and Google applications and be able to develop them, offer possibilities to automate many manual tasks. For example, you can use them to format a report that you produce regularly, merge data from several sources or develop individualized letters for each employee.

3. Familiarity with common technological jargon

As a HR professional, you will probably meet many of these acronyms and terms: secure file transfer protocol (Sftp), Cloud, SaaS (software as a service), interface, structured query language (SQL), database, human resources information system (HRIS), Active Directory (AD), etc.

It is important to understand what people mean when they use these terms so that you can ask relevant questions and provide comments to the conversation.

4. Social media

It is important to understand how the different social media platforms are important for many in HR, especially your recruitment team.

This includes specific knowledge of each platform, including when you have to publish to reach your target audience, a basic understanding of search engines optimization – commonly called SEO – so that your messages are noticed and how to format images so that they appear correctly when they are visualized on any device.

5. Video conference software

Many meetings take place today using videoconference software, and although a company can normalize using a supplier, you will probably need to use the software of other suppliers when you interact with third parties. The possibility of going from a conference application to the next, connect with others and operating your microphone and the speakers is essential.

You can also explore additional features, such as sharing your screen, making presenters from other participants, using white tables, modifying your background and recording the meetings.

6. Report

Modify existing reports and create new if necessary is useful regardless of the application you use for reports.

If you use the report function of your HR system or a report application, consider taking a training course to find out how advanced features work so that you can go beyond the bases. If you use Microsoft ExcelUse internet information and courses to improve your skills. A wealth of information is available online. The key is to try the functions and features you learn thanks to your research until you identify those that meet your needs.

7. HR systems

It is worth developing competence to use the features of your HR system and the associated modules to their full extent.

This includes the features associated with recruitment, talent management and integration. The use of systems to capture data is one thing, but being able to make configuration changes to capture the new data you need, create workflows, modify forms and perform other “Techie” tasks will allow you to obtain the best return on investment from your HR software. This skill also makes you more precious for the organization.

An HR professional should also have a general understanding of the differences between on -site rentals and cloud -based applications.

8.

Another essential skill is the ability to develop test cases and correctly check that a functionality is working properly.

This includes the possibility of identifying the areas most affected by a change, determining how you validate that the change has succeeded and to guarantee that the existing functionality was not affected negatively by change.

The tests are particularly important during the changes to security approvals, as an error can cause an employee access to confidential data.

9. Integration of your HR system with other systems

Knowing if your systems are integrated and what information circulates from one system to another is important. With this knowledge, you can consider impact changes on other systems, include it in your test plan and offer an opportunity to use all your HR systems to automate new processes.

HR systems frequently payrollAnd computer funding or communication systems can also benefit from access to data from an MRI employees.

10.

AI is part of many contemporary HR systems in addition to autonomous applications. HR professionals should learn How can AI help them Become more efficient as well as some of the traps of using AI.

Talent acquisition professionals should particularly invest in the knowledge of AI, because many talent acquisition systems count on AI to classify and assess the candidates, and some candidates now use AI to write CVs that better correspond to work descriptions.

11. Gathering requirements

The collection of requirements is not only a technological competence, but it is very important that human resources professionals know well If their company implements new HR software.

Before searching for new systems or adding features to an application, HR professionals must take the time to understand what employees and managers need a new system and how suppliers can meet these requirements while considering the needs of the HR team.

12. Document processes

HR employees should be able to document the processes when implementing HR software. A team makes many decisions during an implementation and documentation of these decisions will help people understand in the future why certain decisions have been made.

Documentation can also help save time for HR staff when they perform certain tasks that take place only or twice a year. For example, performance journals and remuneration planning are often annual, and document how to use business technology for these processes can simplify operations.

13. Data importation

The possibility of importing data into an HR system can allow HR employees of hours if they must make many changes.

To achieve an importation successfully, an HR professional must include the functionality of the HR system, the types of files it supports and the data format required. For example, systems often require CSV files instead of XLSX files provided by Microsoft Excel.

The HR professional must also understand the risks associated with data importationAs the importation of data to the bad employee, as easy “cancel” options if an HR employee commits an error is generally not available.

14. TRADED

Various problems can arise when HR staff use software, and an HR professional should be able to solve the problem to find the deep cause.

For example, the manager of an employee may not receive a notification to approve the employee's work, or an employee may not be able to access the information they need in a system despite the employee with correct authorizations.

16. Gamification techniques

Many suppliers have introduced gamification features, such as rankings, to encourage employees to use software such as learning management systems.

HR staff should understand the characteristics themselves and thought behind them.

Eric St-Jean is an independent consultant with a particular emphasis on HR technology, project management and the training and automation of Microsoft Excel. He writes on many commercial and technological areas.