Digital Technologies – The Key to Reimagining and Developing Your Workforce
The economic growth witnessed in the Humber region has been phenomenal over the past few years, which is remarkable when factors like the uncertainties over Brexit are taken into consideration. Despite the unpredictability for many industries throughout the UK, the Humber area has consistently performed beyond expectations and at the end of 2017 there were visible achievements for us all to be proud of; with record numbers of people in employment and the lowest levels of unemployment seen in the region for years.
There are two predominant reasons for these levels of success. The first, is the progressive nature of existing organisations in this region, many of whom have adopted an innovative mindset to become more forward thinking, embracing technological evolution and the necessary operational changes required to continually succeed and adapt. This can even be seen throughout our education sector, which has heavily involved itself in the evolution of business in the region, by providing information, knowledge and becoming an increasingly useful resource for professionals.
The second is the amount of major investment in the region from big businesses which have identified exciting opportunities by having a strong presence in the Humber. This has pushed the Humber to the forefront for cutting edge technologies, especially in the energy, chemical and manufacturing sectors, and has generated thousands of new jobs, attracting specialists to the area, generating work for skilled contractors and providing employment opportunities for the local population.
The Humber has also spent the past few years capitalising on its strengths, and this is particularly evident in the renewable energy sector with the region becoming the location of choice for major investment in the establishment of a world class renewable energy hub looking to service future renewable energy investments. The Humber area supplies a substantial amount (approximately 20%) of the current National Grid requirements and provides access to new renewable energy developments such as wind energy, tidal technologies, biofuels and biomass.
It is vital that all businesses in the Humber region can evolve technologically in order to show compliance quickly and move forward. With more and more people in the region moving in to employment in these new sectors, it has never been more important to focus on the workforce and its management to ensure internal employees and external contractors are efficiently trained and competent.
Workplace challenges arise almost daily with new laws and regulations, maintaining a constant state of health and safety awareness and embracing new customer and employee privacy policies with the imminent arrival of GDPR. Other potential challenges that face our region in particular, include keeping a workforce in the loop when operating in remote locations, the requirement for fast and efficient (re)training across industry sectors and the need to align a large influx of new employees and contractors with rapidly changing business protocols to ensure maximum efficiency and safety.
To help Humber-based organisations achieve continual growth and profitability, innovative digital solutions can be the answer to many of the challenges aforementioned. When it comes to developing your workforce and managing contractors to match the standards of your business, smart software choices can be the catalyst for positive change.
Not only can you increase a user’s knowledge retention through interactive learning, but it also provides a consistent delivery and assessment method to guarantee the workforce has understood their training and is measurable by the same parameters for everyone. There are a number of eLearning solutions available by innovative software companies throughout the region, many of which have been created specifically to overcome certain, identified challenges within the workplace, providing numerous benefits, such as automation, streamlining, unification, increased efficiency and cost-saving, to name but a few.
Many of these digital solutions have been developed to not only enable organisations to ensure their entire workforce has access to critical training materials at any time, on any web-based device, but to ensure they are fully inducted or (re)trained to the level required, a far more efficient approach to training than manual, classroom-based learning and often completely measurable and auditable.
Software companies have definitely taken GDPR very seriously and have solutions in place to guarantee that their digital solutions are fully compliant, working with their customers to ensure each product is never found guilty of breaching the new regulations. Developing the software around securely stored personnel profiles for each user, these next generation solutions offer a simple way of managing internal employees or external contractors, enabling the sharing of personnel data across multiple locations and projects and making compliance information easily accessible to HR and management teams.
This type of software can even provide the answer to site access, only allowing entry to staff and contractors once they have demonstrated their competency. Functionality like this firmly ensures compliance and safety is never compromised, on any site. Additionally, online systems like this provide the ability for remote access, meaning any employee or contractor can access the relevant training resources from any location, at any time. This goes a long way in helping to bring a remote workforce together with the rest of the organisation based at headquarters.
Workforce development isn’t just about training though, any team can improve through strong motivation, effective communication and by generating a sense of camaraderie. These are all important values needed within any successful organisation and software can help to address all of these requirements too. Strong communications software helps to keep everyone in the loop, and with the benefit of remote access being implemented within many organisations, ensuring company-wide policies and notices that are sent out are not only received, but acknowledged and understood, with instant reporting capabilities to ensure compliance is always met.
In addition, any company looking to increase their workforce motivation could even consider staff portal software. These innovative solutions come with a large variety of pre-packaged modules, each designed to engage the workforce, instil motivation and develop a positive culture in the workplace through clever incentives and rewards while behaving as a hub for staff interaction and feedback.
As technology improves further and business requirements change, digital solutions are clearly the way forward. Using a versatile software solution is imperative for any HR department or HSE team to be able to instigate awareness of business processes or even to help streamline them, whilst at the same time, increase their employee engagement and improve their health and safety awareness. Inevitably, a more efficient workforce will also quickly demonstrate substantial time savings and cost savings for any organisation.
Our region will continue to be incredibly successful, but a key part of ensuring this momentum is by embracing progressive thinking, technological innovation and by exploring the benefits of strong software solutions within our workforce management.
Now is the time to start re-imaging your workforce…
