Will Polish HR-experts appreciate SMAC?

Digitisation has an impact not just on our everyday life, but also on the organisation and functioning of business enterprises. In the era the digital revolution, HR leaders should expect, and be the driving force of, two major changes. First, they need to focus their efforts on stimulating the development of a new way of thinking among their staff, and support them in coping with the ever-changing professional responsibilities. Second, human resources departments will have to face up to the need of adapting new digital HR tools for their own needs, such as educational platforms, or applications. These changes can be summed up with a trend commonly known as SMAC, which stands for Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud. It represents the synergy of four technologies that allow to maximise the possibility of reaching candidates and get to know both potential and current employees better, and yet minimise the costs. The idea behind SMAC is fluent and coherent interaction of these technologies, of which each is equally important.

SMAC in Poland

HR services are a big share of the Polish business services sector. The SMAC concept is gaining popularity in the context of HR digitisation, and Polish companies have taken action to translate this idea into standard procedures. According to the data from a Deloitte report, 74% of Polish businesses consider HR digitisation a key element of their corporate structure.

Acting based on SMAC will soon be common practice for clients and candidates across Europe. Thanks to the implementation of this smart approach, Poland has a chance of becoming the trailblazer of the HR revolution in Europe. HR departments need to get ready for their recruitment activities in a nonstandard way – through social media and mobile devices. Given that 59.6% of Poles check Facebook at least once a day, it is a good way of contacting potential employees. Social media also allow a prospective employer to get a closer look at the candidate, e.g. to see whether he or she fits the team. Beyond the global social media portals, such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, Polish recruiters should focus on GoldenLine, a portal commonly used in Poland.

Since an increasingly bigger part of the labour market is made up of representatives of Generation Y, who practically never part with their smartphones or tablets, today’s HR people should be fully conversant with mobile applications. Thanks to this, they can reach candidates in their natural environment. Likewise, demand will be growing for people with proper qualifications in social psychology who can help to understand and domesticate the generational changes in the employee’s market. It is worth adding that every day in all areas – and HR is by no means different – huge quantities of data are created.

Therefore, it is essential to ensure that departments that deal with human resources be staffed with experts in big data analysis. This will allow to make decisions easier, mostly those concerning promotions, dismissals, or pay rise. Can you imagine a better place to store terabytes of data than the digital cloud? Cloud technology gives rise to the need for data security experts, including lawyers.

SMAC and recruitment

In the era of digitisation of the Polish HR market and the growing significance of SMAC, it is a lot easier and more important to reach candidates quickly by means of a diverse network of channels. This will cause a growing demand for social media specialists, as well as SOE and SEM specialists, big data analysts, and people familiar with AdWords and AdSense. Given the progressing digitisation, it is also important to note the development of competences of HR staff, mostly when it comes to handling new technologies, which opens up hiring prospects for training companies that will be looking for experienced coaches. Demand will also be for creators of mobile applications; the diffusion and dissemination of the cloud technology, in turn, will force companies to employ data security specialists, and providers of these services – to hire IT experts.

HR innovations: decoding facial expressions

A broad overview of the top 10 hotspots is made up of European and North American market economies, all with buoyant economies following the 2008 world crisis and well-established rule of law and commerce – making them desirable destinations for a mid-career change, or indeed a preferred place to start a career in HR.

In Europe, Germany is one of the leading countries. It´s therefore maybe no surprise that the global Theta Award 2017, for best idea in the world to improve HR and recruitment, was won by a German innovation. Andreas Kopp, a German graduate from Nuremburg won worldwide competition with a master thesis on a so-called facial action coding system may help recruiters decode the facial expressions of job candidates, to make better selection decisions.

The Theta Award was founded in 2013 in Germany, to help companies with new HR technologies. With the booming economy there is a high demand for good job candidates, and therefore for new HR techniques and strategies. It makes Germany one of the global hotspots for international HR professionals. Especially multinationals are developing more mature HR organisations and are focusing on enhancing HR data analytics capabilities.